New Year, Better Me

Happy New Year 2016

Not a “new” me, a better me.

Who’s got new year’s resolutions?  I don’t normally do them.  For those of you that do know me, you may remember that I used to have another blog where, a few years ago, I documented my journey through a year of 12 mini resolutions.  I picked one resolution each month and stuck to it for the whole month.  I really liked that.  That was fun – I introduced myself to all kinds of new things: new exercises, new foods, new lifestyle choices.  It was great, but the problem I had with it was by the end of the year I was really struggling to come up with something I wanted to do for a whole month straight.  But I got through the year with 12 resolutions under my belt – some more successful than others.

Last year I didn’t really do resolutions.  I started this blog instead.  ?  And believe me, it was a harder project than I thought!

This year, I really feel the need to set one for myself.  Last year wasn’t the best year for me, for a lot of reasons.  I wrote a little about it here, and really what it comes down to is I didn’t have healthiest year last year.  I didn’t feel good about myself, I didn’t make enough good choices, I stopped going to the gym for a while, and this weighed on me.  For the first time ever in my life, last year, I was called “fat” three times.

  1. While waiting to board a plane, my daughter said she knew why I didn’t want to go to the bathroom on board – because I was too fat to fit into the airplane bathroom.
  2. I encountered an extremely aggressive, road-rage-filled man in my daughter’s school parking lot who called me a “fat bitch”.
  3. My doctor told me at my yearly checkup that I was “a bit on the heavy side, don’t you think?”

The good news is that all of those experiences played a major part in getting my ass back into the gym.  But the bad news is that all of those weighed pretty heavily on me.  For one thing, I never look at myself in the mirror and think that I’m FAT.  Sure, I look in the mirror and wish I could lose a few pounds around my mid-section, but overall when I see myself in the mirror I am not 100% displeased with how I look.  I like that I’m curvy.  But I will look at myself in the mirror, think I look good, then see a picture of me taken the same day and wonder, what happened to the cute chick I saw in the mirror earlier?  I have some kind of reverse body dysmorphia thing going on or something.  I don’t know.

What I do know is, there are some things I need to STOP doing.

  1. No more negative self-talk!  No more nitpicking on myself and the things I want to change.  Instead: LOVE THYSELF.  I need to love myself exactly as I am.
  2. No more comparing.  No more stalking Instagram feeds that are meant to be inspirational fit feeds, but instead make me look at six-pack abs and wonder if I work hard enough, if I will ever have them.  Instead:  LOVE THYSELF.  I need to love and accept myself exactly as I am.  I am 35.  I will never have six-pack abs.  To be honest, I don’t even want six-pack abs, and not because I’m not motivated enough to do the work to get there – but because I have other, more important things I would rather spend my time on.  So I need to stop filling my day with those kinds of images.  It is only damaging my psyche.

And some things I need to START doing:

  1. Positive self-talk.  Fill my head with positive affirmations.  Love myself.  Accept myself.  Praise myself.
  2. Keeping a regular workout routine.  So far I have been maintaining a MWF gym routine, with TThS yoga routine.  This has been good so far but I want to make sure I work on incorporating something active on days when I DON’T go to the gym or do yoga.  Those days I find that for whatever reason, I can’t do the workout that I planned – instead of not working out at all, do something else active instead.
  3. Keep a gratitude diary.

In addition, I have some additional things I want to do – I have us on two different savings plans, and I want to make new recipes.  I would love to make one new recipe a week!  I also have lots of plans for this blog.  I have new recipes to cook and photograph and share with you.

Speaking of my blog – it’s almost been a year since I launched it!  I can’t believe it.  Let me tell you that keeping a food blog is harder than it looks.  It could legitimately be my full time job if I let it.  You know, I launched this blog with the intent of turning it into a money-making machine.  I wanted to put ads on it and generate income from that.  But over the past year, I have done lots of research (read: stalking other food blogs), and do you know what the #1 Most Annoying Thing is?  Blogs that take too long to load – because of too much ad content.  And too much pop-up, bells-and-whistle shit.  It makes me abandon their blog and go back to the drawing board and look for a similar recipe elsewhere.  Guess what – it doesn’t matter how good your food photography is, or how good your writing is – if I can’t get your friggin’ site to load up, I am leaving.  I don’t have the patience.

I don’t want my blog to become that.

So I am rethinking that whole avenue for Slutty Food Blog.  My goal for this blog is to share food with you and make you want to eat.  It’s a virtual way to do what I love to do in real life – cook for people.  So I don’t know.  Maybe someday I will put ads on this site, maybe I won’t.  Who cares.  It’s all about the food.

Also – this year – 2016 – it is THE YEAR that I move!  I am moving out of my house in the city, and into the country.  Or somewhere closer to the country.  I don’t really know yet.  But it will all happen quite fast.  I can’t wait to have a new house, with windows for food photography, with a bigger kitchen, a double oven, a big bedroom, big bath tub.  Dogs… maybe chickens!  Land.  Land, land, land.  A garden.  A greenhouse?  Maybe a greenhouse.  A barn.  A fire pit.  A hammock.  Green trees.  Grass.  A driveway.  OMG, a garage!  So so much to look forward to.

It’s only January 5th and I already feel very positive about this year and what it has in store for me.  I wish all the same optimism to you as well.

Happy new year!  Here’s to better versions of ourselves in the coming year!