The Obligatory New Year Resolution Post

For the last several years, our New Years dinner topic has been “What is your New Year’s Resolution?” YL12’s answer has been the same every single time. “Nothing. I love my life just the way it is.” I think I’m going to take half a page from her book this year.

I’m not making big resolutions or setting goals. That doesn’t mean there are things I don’t want to change in my life. It means that goal setting isn’t much of a motivator for me. I do, however, have a new mindset that should impact every part of my life.

That’s it. No more and no less. My plan is to make healthier decisions at every step of the way, regardless of whether it’s a health decision, financial decision, or any of the dozens of small decisions we have to make every day.

On New Year’s Day, we traveled the entire day. That’s a pretty tough way to start the new year. If I’d made a resolution to eat X number of calories or go on a low carb diet or even lose 10 pounds, I’d have been off the wagon on day one.

Instead, we made the decision to eat lunch at Subway. Mark and I both got 12″ subs on whole wheat and loaded with vegetables, and non fat condiments. I didn’t get chips! Score one for me. Then, since we were going to be on the road the whole day, I set aside half of my sandwich for later. I was so proud of us, since we didn’t stop for junk food or snacks the whole trip. We had a picnic of the 2^nd halves of our sandwiches at the rest stop instead.

About an hour from home, Mark mentioned wanting a good bowl of soup for dinner. I offered to make it, but then realized it was 8:00 PM, and I was exhausted from being on the road all day. I wasn’t really going to make soup, in spite of my best intentions. So, we started looking at places to stop to eat. We wanted to find a Sweet Tomatoes or a Souper Salad, but those were nowhere to be found. We did pass several buffet restaurants, but I knew if we stopped at one of those, we’d eat way more than the soup that we wanted. We drove until we found an Olive Garden, and had their Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks.

If I can keep up the trend of making good decisions more often than giving in to the bad decisions, I have a feeling that 2009 will be a far better year than 2008 was. I’ll keep you posted.

Please share your resolutions in the comments. We want to know where you want 2009 to take you.

Tagged as: Decisions, diet, Dinner Topic, Food, Goals, new year's resolution, travel