New Year’s Resolutions We Can Keep

We’re hobbling out of the high-fat, high-stress holidays and into a new year.  In fact, we get a whole new decade.  Everything is possible now but we need to lose 25 pounds and we’ll do it by signing up at the gym.  Fewer pounds, more work-outs; two resolutions made most frequently and two with the highest failure rate.  In fact, by mid-February, they’re toast.

The reason is because we attempt to change the essential nature of ourselves.  We think we’ll transform from a fat person to a thin person, from someone who spends to someone who saves, from a person who detests exercise to one who loves workout equipment.  Its as if a switch gets turned on at midnight on the 1st and we’ll look in the mirror and see someone new.

Here are some resolutions that are so easy we can all do them and best yet, we can stick with them.

1. Drink bottled water only when you’re on the move.  Otherwise, drink tap.

2. Jump in place 40 times per week.  A study reported in the New York Times says this is the best way to build bone density, better even than lifting free weights.

3.  Resolve that at some point in the next 12 months, if there is someone you love who never hears that from you, you will tell them.

4.  Absorb sunshine whenever you can, even if it’s through a window.  My doctor says “most people” in Upstate New York are vitamin D deficient.  Sunshine takes care of that, you just have to take it in.

5. Replace butter with olive oil whenever you can.  Olive oil was found this year to be one of the five healthiest components of the Mediterranean diet, considered by doctors to be the healthiest diet in the world.  The other four items are: salmon, almonds, beans such as navy, kidney, garbanzo, etc. , and wine.

6. Always approach people with a smile and look them square in the eye; the person at the grocery checkout, bank tellers, clerks.  You’ll be amazed at how friendly everybody seems.  It can change your life.

7. Bend down and reach for your toes.  Every day.  An earlier column on the blog addressed this exercise as a way to ward off a heart attack by increasing the flexibility of your arteries.

8. Clean out one closet or dresser.  Just one.  Over the next twelve months.   Take it to the Goodwill.  Someone might need the stuff more than you do.

9.  Eliminate the $3.00 cup of coffee just one day per week.  Just one day!  You can do that!  You’ll save $156.00 by this time next year.

10.  Take a portion of that savings and anonymously apply it toward the layaway account of a stranger next Christmas.  Altruism heals.  I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

There.  Is this reasonable?  Did I forget some good ones?  Let me know.

Tagged as: healthy living, holistic medicine, new years resolution, save money