My take on New Year's Resolutions

So, it's start of January again - my Facebook-Page was full with the pro's and con's of new year's resolutions - science says, those resolutions are doomed to fail ... but what does failing mean anyway? Is it even possible to "fail"? Isn't there always a win with any resolution we try to do because we learn more about ourselves?

I absolutely loved a cartoon of lunarbaboon.com that had been shared, because it made me think even more about this topic:

I remember last year ... my motivation at that time - as always I never could have dreamed how this year would turn out. Yesterday I met with my father and we had some champagne and chips and at some point we were talking about fitness and diet and that he wanted to make fitness a priority in 2016, moving more, eating better - and you know what? I really welcome this even though I know what statistics say!

Start of December 2015 I just got out of depression - one reason for it was the feeling I had failed my resolutions - regained my weight - that I had "fallen off the wagon" as it is called. But when talking with my father I suddenly realised, that there is no such thing as failing, because I've grown so much in this one year!!!

Our human mind is a tricky thing - you can't ever trust it. Depression might come, but good feelings do too. Your thoughts don't always reflect reality. In the months where I regained weight, I tried other things, I tracked food and I established healthy habits. I never could have imagined at the start of 2015, that I would be able to have no snack between meals.

Those things are easy for me today - let me give you my list of habits I have at the moment:
- Drink 2 liters of water
- Don't eat more than 1 snack between meals
- Do 5 pushups and squats everyday
- Do 5 mins of walking everyday
- Have vegetables and protein with every meal
- Track food
- Count calories before dinner
- Do my daily chore
- Get up and immediatly get dressed, brush my hair, splash water into my face and do exercise

This is a huge list for me the overweight "fitness noob" and I worked towards it really slowly, but those small things changed my life and not one of them would be possible, if I hadn't decided on January the 1st 2015 that I would do "that weight loss thing". I've completed 5 six weeks challenges in the Nerd Fitness Forums, found many accountability buddies, tracked thousands of calories ... but I also stopped weighing myself, started eating grains again and many more things that I'm not proud of ...

.. but life is never steady - however, my mindset starts to be. With every calorie that I entered on Myfitnesspal my intuitive feeling for nutrition has grown and grown and today, I can't eat a meal without watching out to add some protein and vegetables.

So, New Year's Resolutions DO WORK - just never give up if they develop in a different way than you planned. You have to stay fresh in life - never hope for routine, because routine is dead! Be passionate about something, but let it go when you feel you need something else to motivate you! it's normal to expect more than you can realistically achieve - but don't let this information bring you down - your expectations are the fuel to your awesomeness!

With those words I welcome you to this blog, which I write to stay accountable to myself - something I discovered to be crucial when trying to stick to uncomfortable things. I'm not perfect and never will be, but I'm full of life - I AM life itself! So what can there be more perfect?

I really appreciate your visit on this site and that you read my text until here - if you leave a comment, maybe in telling me about your own New Year's Resolutions or leave me a link to your own "Battle log", this would be so great, because this way I know that there are people out there trusting me to write again every week.

Namasté and most sincerely!
Elanor the Fair - aka Jaana

PS: maybe you noticed that I'm no native English speaker, so I really appreciate if you leave your corrections to my grammar and spelling in the comments below also!!