Happy New Year Resolutions!

This year I resolve not to make another New Year's resolution!

Did you make them? Have you already fallen off that proverbial wagon? I bet you at least gave the resolution thing some thought, especially after all that candy, turkey, mashed potatoes, ham, more mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. In 2016, my resolutions are more internal than external. I only pray they turn out better than resolutions from years gone by.

NASHVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - Just last year I did it again. Fell into the trap, under the spell, one of the sheep, a great big (gasp!) follower. I've always prided myself on being an independent person. A leader, a free thinker if you will. But after being bombarded by fitness center commercials and store displays greeting me each and every day with boxes and boxes of weight loss products, who could resist?

Once again I had decided to hunker down, get serious, eat better, exercise more and lose weight. O.K. Let's call it what it really is. I crumbled under the pressure that is the New Year.
    
I headed to the grocery store on a cold January morning, determined to bypass the Little Debbie aisle and head straight for the produce section. I picked out some yummy looking Grannysmith apples and some ruby red grapefruit. Then I began to wonder why healthy food wasn't more readily accessible. By the time I peel the grapefruit I had a headache and needed Excedrin, not food. But this time my desire to fit into a smaller pair of jeans would prevail over the ease of digging into a bag of chips.
   

The salad fixings were next. At least the lettuce was pre-washed and cut. You can't quit the junk food cold turkey, so I put some fat-free chocolate pudding in the cart. I was almost done. A trip down the frozen food aisle (what can I say, the Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers commercials got to me), and I'd be home free. Then I saw it. I slowed the cart down and strolled past the display.
    
"Nah, that's just not me," I muttered to myself. I walked toward the checkout lane. The television images began to fill my head. The skinny women in bathing suits skipping across the sandy beach. "I lost five pounds in five days!" they sang. I looked down at my jeans and remembered how it took a good minute to 90 seconds to put them on earlier that morning. (They were fresh out of the dryer, but that excuse was getting a little old.) The last time I weighed this much I was nine months pregnant with my first child.
   
Ughh! I headed back to the display. I picked up ta can of the milk chocolate-flavored drink.
   
"I could drink one of these in the morning," I thought to myself. Then have a frozen dinner for lunch and a salad for dinner, with the fruit in between meals. "I could do that," I said under my breath.
    
So I picked up a six-pack of the stuff, and with the nervousness of a husband buying feminine products for his wife, quickly threw it in the cart.
    
"This is my year!" I said to myself, resolutely.
    
Happy 2016 to you all. I'd raise my glass of milk chocolate-flavored diet drink, but I threw out the six-pack after one sip. Turns out for the same calories, I can eat a bowl of Raisin Bran and not wince as it goes down. Cheers!