If you ask Myren, my chauffeur (and believe me, I would NOT), then of course it’s too late, what are you crazy? You’ve already missed a month! But I’m a fan of better-late-than-never, having been a late bloomer all my life. In fact I’m still blooming. And that’s not easy to do for a woman in the Baby Boomer age range. (If you’re one of those infamous millennials, children of the Baby Boomers, then wait, this will eventually apply to you.) In fact, my resolution has everything to do with keeping well-preserved and flab & fat free fresh and lively. So here it is:
RESOLUTION
(I know it’s cheating, but my resolution is multi-parted)
Stop eating those candy bars and potato chips! – I’m the person at the party who sits next to
the chips & dip and eats more than half the bowl. When my local grocery store started selling chocolate covered potato chips, I emptied the display and bought them all. So this is a tough one for me. What I mean is that I will try to minimize empty carbs. You know the kind–all those good-tasting things. Like chocolate candy and potato chips and my all-time favorite, Fritos. But also bread and past and cake and cookies… you get the bleak picture.
Get rid of all that salt! – This is much harder than it sounds. I haven’t picked up a salt shaker in years, and yet there is so much salt already built into so many foods (I use the word “foods” broadly to include processed stuff) that it is near impossible to eliminate salt. Of course, as Myren has suggested while standing over my shoulder, a person needs a certain amount. And the amount varies. Apparently I need very little. So no more ham, bacon or Fritos for me. No soda (made with sodium), no frozen meals of any kind no matter how low cal and no salted nuts. The list goes on, but I’m stopping here so I don’t cry.
Stop sitting in that chair! – Geesh. I try, but sitting is the new smoking, so this is an important one! A couple of things I’m doing to help with this is first, when I do sit, keep my feet up (this is challenging when sitting in the car–especially when you’re the driver) and second, raise my computer up and stand at my desk. Myren has no problem with sitting. But then he’s a chauffeur. He says “If God didn’t want us to sit he wouldn’t have given us all that padding on our butts.” No sense explaining to him that the point is to not have so much “padding”.
Lift those weights! – No, I don’t mean you need to turn into one of those glistening, bulging veined, bulky-muscled body builders. But keeping muscles toned and maintaining strength is good since it helps your metabolism and makes you look good too. Well, look better. How about not looking bad?
Move around! – This should be easy you say. Yes and no. If you sit in your chair less, you do have a tendency to move around more. But it’s deceiving. I wore one of those fit bits for a while (before it got depressing) and realized that my active time was not what I thought it would be. So now I’ve instituted some one practice to help boost my movement. I have resolved that whenever I drive somewhere, I will park in one of the far away parking spaces and not the close ones. Of course, I have Myren, my chauffeur driving and who knows where he’s going to park…
So what’s with all these staying healthy resolutions you ask? What about the rest of life?
I know, I know. But I’m hoping if I start with staying healthy and alert, the rest will be easier to accomplish. (Note my earlier statement about the Baby-Boomer Age Range.)
As you might imagine, I got a slow start to the year (i.e. I waited a month to write about it) but I’m on a roll now. 5 days in a row. I mean mini-roll. Minuscule roll. Okay, forget the roll. I have a start.