January… a time for new ideas, fresh starts and list upon endless list of resolutions. Whether it’s losing weight, getting fit, giving up the booze or turning vegan, the expectations and pressure we place upon ourselves is quite frankly ridiculous and a giant waste of time. Come mid February, the majority of us have given up and we’re feeling pretty damn pants about the fact we didn’t have enough will power to see any of them through. We were incapable of steering clear of those half price doughnuts, unable to keep relentlessly dragging our sorry butts out of bed to make it to the gym every single day, and proper down in the dumps about our severe lack of restraint when it comes to bacon sarnies.
I’m fed up of the let downs; January needn’t be all doom and gloom and filled with restrictions on what you can and cannot do. This year it’s gonna be different folks, I’m taking my stand against all things resolutions and am asking you to join me.
Welcome to my New Year Revolution!
You see resolutions are indeed for losers, because that’s EXACTLY what they make you feel like… a loser. And there ain’t nothing positive about that!
I’m not saying I’m perfect, in fact I celebrate from the rooftops that I am 100% imperfect, but I blinkin’ love that. And I’m not saying that there aren’t certain elements of my lifestyle and diet choices that could do with the odd tweak here and there. But…. I am certainly not going to beat myself up about any of this stuff. Life is too short and I like flapjacks and Prosecco way too much to start banning them from my short life. The way I see it is, yes of course I’ve put on a few pounds over Christmas (jeez show me one person who didn’t, and if you do manage to find them I’ll shove a Toblerone down their neck pronto!) but I’ll lose it again now that I’m eating three normal meals a day again rather than chocolate with every course and as snack breaks in between. And yes it was barely even worth me wearing my Fitbit over the hols for the very limited steps it recorded, but again now that things are back to normal, the school run has resumed and I have more time to fit in workouts and runs, I’ll be getting those green flashy ‘yay go me’ alerts again. And yes yes yes I have drunk my entire body weight and some in Prosecco over the past fortnight and yes I’m going to lay off the booze for a fortnight, but it has nothing to do with any of this Dry January malarkey, no siree I am doing it for my liver and to reduce my tolerance so I can get back to being a cheap date again – healthy and thrifty!
I get that’s it’s all well and good me coming on here and writing about how happy I am, but what about those of you who genuinely want to make positive changes to make you feel happy too? Ultimately, without getting all hippy dippy on you, nothing’s gonna work until you master the art of self-love, because until you love yourself, respect yourself and care about yourself you won’t have enough oomph to do anything about it. The best advice I can give is to imagine you as your friend. If a friend asked you to help support him or her with something, you’d be there right? Offering words of encouragement, sending motivational ‘you can do it’ texts and just generally being there for them. You need to do that for yourself.
I guess for me, I no longer feel as if I need to make changes in January, because if there’s something I’m not happy with then I’ll do something about it there and then, not wait until the new year. And I know some people go in for all that goals disguised as resolutions thing, but seriously… it’s the same flippin’ thing!
So up the revolution… here’s what I’m doing:
- Eat cake when I feel like eating cake.
- Drink wine when I feel like drinking wine.
- Miss a run when I don’t feel in the mood.
- Give even less of a damn.
- And continue living my life the way I blinkin’ well want to.
