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.
- 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.
- I encountered an extremely aggressive, road-rage-filled man in my daughter’s school parking lot who called me a “fat bitch”.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- Positive self-talk. Fill my head with positive affirmations. Love myself. Accept myself. Praise myself.
- 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.
- 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!