Dear Diary: A change for myself

If you cut me right now, I would bleed iced tea & a turkey sandwich.

A New Year has begun, and as always that means New Year’s Resolutions. We all make them, hoping that a new calendar year will also mean we will finally, FINALLY get our crap together. We make them our Facebook statuses to “keep us accountable” and follow Instagram accounts that will constantly remind us of our goals. This is that time of year where we go 0-100 real quick, but then we end up right back at zero after a couple of bites of that Valentine's Day chocolate.

One of my many New Year’s resolutions is to enjoy food more. Not to eat less or restrict myself from certain foods. Too often I find myself gulping down coffee while walking or shoving a sandwich down my throat while texting. This absent-mindedness is why I’ve been able to eat pretty much the same food every day, all year. If you cut me right now, I would bleed iced tea & a turkey sandwich. No joke. I’d like to start paying more attention to what I put in my body, when and why.

A lot of people tend to make New Year’s resolutions about dieting or losing weight. It’s great if you want to be healthier, but be sure that you're making your resolutions for the right reasons and achieving them in a healthy and sustainable way. I’ve personally gained a lot of weight this year, and I did last year too. Despite, or maybe, because of that- I had a great year! I accomplished a lot of my goals and began a new chapter of my life in College.

I realized that it doesn’t matter if I gain 10lbs or lose 20lbs, my family and friends will love me the same. Random customers at work will still tell me I am beautiful, and I’m just as likely to have a date on Friday night.

When I was about 15 & still in high school, I overheard these girls behind me discussing “the worst insult ever”. They went through a lot of the obvious stuff pretty quickly, curse words and all, before landing on “fat”.

That’s absurd. While there may be a few things I would rather be than fat, there are so many things I would choose fat over in a heartbeat. I think the word fat has all of these negative, irrelevant connotations attached to it like undesirable, lazy, smelly, stupid, unworthy, the list goes on and on. And I'm not sure why to be honest.

It IS possible for you and everyone else to love your body at whatever size it is right now, so if you’d like to make 2016 the year you slim down a bit please ensure you’re doing it safely and because you truly love your body and want to take care of it!