Do you typically set resolutions (or intentions)?
This year, rather than resolutions, I set some intentions.
Last fall, I started doing yoga, and one of the things I really like is that at the start of the class, the instructor has us each set an intention for the practice.
She says maybe you want to let go of something that no longer serves you. Maybe you'd like to make space for something you want to invite into your life.
Often, my intention is explicitly to let go of anxiety and make room for creativity.
Sometimes I focus on opening my heart to family. I work on letting go of anger, and making space for love.
And with this now practice in mind, I set intentions for this year, with the understanding that they are flexible, and that I can always work to let go of the negative and invite in the positive.
Some of these intentions are very specific and not spiritual.
Like, I want to be able to do the splits. Don't laugh.
And I want to get two pieces of personal writing published this year. Last year, I got this one published, and I still feel very proud of it. This year I will focus on submitting, with the hope of two published pieces.
I am also focusing on eating healthy, on being mindful, and trying to get enough sleep. Health all around.
On January 1, Nick and I both started Weight Watchers.
I do not, as a deliberate practice, weigh myself, so I don't get all cucu-bananas obsessy about numbers.
As such, I didn't realize that I'd gained about 20 pounds in 2017. Maybe it started a little before that, and maybe it continued a little after. But most of it, I have decided, happened that year.
It was a big year of loss, and I ate a lot of feelings. Really, I ate a lot of ice cream. And I don't even care all that much about ice cream. But once I got in the habit, I just kept going.
Then in 2018, when I went back to an office job, I had to buy new pants. Because none of my pants fit. Which I'd avoided noticing at home, because I just wore stretchy pants all the time. And OK, some of them had gotten tight, but they were still stretchy and relatively comfy.
So the come to pants Jesus moment was really when I had to dress presentably to go to the office and had no pants.
For about a month, I cut out sugar entirely. I did this because I saw a functional medicine doctor who told me a lot of things and put me on an anti-fungal and said I couldn't drink alcohol or eat sugar for a month.
My intention was to avoid sugar as a practice, like, forever, after that month was over.
So I was done with the ice cream. This also got rid of my brain fog, but that is a whole nother story.
But then after that month I found dark chocolate. I decided that if I ate dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate, I was barely eating any sugar. Particularly paired with almonds, which are protein.
And as my friend Alexa says, dark chocolate almonds are basically medicinal.
Trader Joe's has these dark chocolate almonds that come in a delightful little container that's actually not all that small.
I could easily go through at least two of them a week. Because I am by nature a "more is better" kind of person.
I am currently trying to be a "moderation is awesome" kind of person.
But I digress. I basically felt rather virtuous, with this new dark chocolate almond obsession, which was not, after all, a pint of ice cream a night.
And still, my old clothes, which I should really just call my clothes, because they are not old, and they all fit until I ate approximately 365 pints of ice cream in 2017, did not fit.
Last month, I went to put on a skirt for my office Christmas party. A skirt I had worn in the past. And there was no hope of hooking it. Not even with sucking in my breath and never exhaling. It was like one side kind of waved at the other and then they both shrugged and that was that.
Instead I wore a wool dress with Spanx and holy cow do Spanx not spark joy.
Anyway, that's how I came to that intention, and the fact is that Nick and I are both already feeling a lot better for it.
He gets to eat way more than I do, and has lost twice the weight I have since January 1. This is because he is a large man and I am a small woman. Also, it is worth mentioning that his end weight goal is approximately twice my end weight goal.
But this forced mindfulness has been a great shift.
My other intentions are less specific, in that I am continually working to make space for love, and continually working to let go of anxiety. Another intention is to let go of anger, because it sure as hell does not serve me or anyone else in the world.
A further intention is to eat a more plant-based diet. Now that Nick is open to more beans and vegetables, this is both an appealing and realistic goal in our household.
My overall intention is to tread more lightly on the world, so that we might leave more of a healthy planet for the future.
I'm hopeful for 2019, in a way that I was not for 2017 and 2018.
And these are my current intentions.
(Also, I am also thinking about clog boots, which is why I included them in the drawing. But they're wants and not intentions.)
