(Continued from Previous post)
Forbes Top New Year Resolutions in My Age Group
Did you make New Year Resolutions? Did you start working on them?
I stumbled upon this Forbes article that identifies the top 14 New Year Resolutions by age group for 2023. I am piggybacking off this article and writing about how I am incorporating these healthy resolutions into my own life.
Here are the top 14 resolutions in my age category (can you guess my age?):
14 – Perform better at work
13 – Make time for hobbies
12 – Travel more
11 – Drink less alcohol
10 – Meditate regularly
9 – Improve work-life balance
8 – Learn a new skill
7 – Stop smoking
6 – Make more time for loved ones
5 – Improve fitness
4 – Improve finances
3 – Improve diet
2 – Improve mental health
1 – Lose weight
#3 – Improve Diet
My grandparents were WWII survivors in the former Soviet Union. They lived through not only scarcity but starvation. They raised my parents not to waste and eat every morsel of food on their plates. In their understanding, slim was equivalent to hungry and poor while overweight represented health, wealth, and abundance. Thus, the legacy of force feeding babies and toddlers and overfeeding children and adults was born.
It was considered embarrassing to invite guests and not serve at least quadruple of what they can possibly eat.
When we immigrated to the US, we were in awe of all the new food there was to try. Ginormous supermarkets with tons of colorful items on sale, lunch specials at all-you-can-eat salad bars, and specially priced vacation packages to all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean made our eyes wonder in amazement. We wanted to eat everything in sight to get our money worth.
Given the fact that I was naturally slim as a teenager and could eat anything I wanted without gaining weight, I developed a very unhealthy relationship with food. I ate and I ate and I ate.
As I was approaching the later part of my teenager years, I started developing into a woman and putting on some weight. I tried to overcompensate by adding more exercise. More exercise was making me more hungry so a vicious cycle ensued.
It took me years to realize that what you put in your mouth matters. Calories are not created equal. The food that I was eating was making me more hungry and the excessive exercise was causing an imbalance in my hormones.
Slowly, I started healing by making good food choices and controlling my exercise habits. I learned to read food labels and select foods that nourish my body with essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. One of my favorite sayings still remains, “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it”!
I have a healthy smoothie for breakfast every single day that is loaded with greens, some fruit, and protein powder powered by leucine, which controls hunger and cravings. (I even carry my protein on vacation!). I eat veggies, protein, and whole grains the rest of the day. I also absolutely love dark chocolate (75% or higher) and have a piece every single day and eat desert on special occasions. Most important, I never go hungry and am able to maintain a healthy weight!
Start making healthy food choices today and let me know if you want to learn more about ingredients make up a healthy smoothie.
#2 – Improve Mental Health
Mental health is a very neglected subject for most people in our parents’ generation. What today can easily be managed through cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation was considered taboo, weak, and embarrassing and placed you in the bucket of inadequate and crazy, not too long ago. Mental problems were considered a family secret that had to be dealt with internally even if no one in the inner circle had any medical training or understanding of psychology.
Thankfully, the world had changed dramatically and help with mental health is only a phone call away.
Mental health, however, does not only have to apply to people with an actual clinical mental disorder. Learning to deal with our everyday emotional baggage can be life changing.
Psychology, specifically human behavior and relationships, has always been a fascinating topic to me. Unfortunately, because I decided to major in public accounting in college, there was little room for any courses not relevant to my future career.
My first books about human interactions were parenting books, followed by adult relationships when my marriage started crumbling. Even though I couldn’t salvage my marriage as not all marriages should be salvaged, I learned an enormous amount of information about myself, my behaviors, my fears, and my responses to others.
Did you know that our problems with our significant other as well as our responses to our children’s misbehaviors all stem from unresolved issues with our parents in childhood. Quite fascinating, don’t you think?
It’s hard to change who you are. However, understanding why you are who you are makes life a million times easier.
Whether you can improve your relationship with your loved ones, learn why you are constantly attracted to the “wrong” partners with the same types of personalities not compatible to yours, or figure out how to pick the right type of life partner for yourself, you will not regret this incredible journey into getting to know who you truly are.
There are so many books on the topic, way too many to list. I encourage you to read at least one and you’ll be amazed at what you discover about yourself. If I had to pick just one book to recommend, I would say go with one of these three by Harville Hendrix, “Giving the Love That Heals (a guide for parents), “Getting the Love You Want (a guide for couples), or “Keeping the Love You Find (a guide for singles).” They were the first eye-opening books on my own road self discovery.
If you want more book recommendations, please reach out and I’ll be more than happy to share more of my favorites.
Wishing everyone peace, self-love, and tranquility!
#1 – Lose Weight
There are 3 types of bodies:
endomorphs – pear shaped, short, stocky, broad shoulders, small waist, short limbs, easily gain and store fat.
ectomorphs – banana shaped, thin, tall, puny, lean built, long limbs, struggle to gain weight and muscle mass
mesomorphs – athletic, easily gain muscle mass
I was blessed with genetics that made me into a hybrid between a mesomorph and an ectomorph. I was skinny as a child and slim as a teenager. I fluctuated slightly in weight as an adult, especially post pregnancies, but always had a healthy BMI. (The before photos above show me shortly after my second pregnancy while the after photos are from this past year.)
Nevertheless, I spent the majority of my teenage years obsessing about my weight and suffering from a low self esteem and poor body image. In the 90s, most teenage girls tried to resemble the anorexic looking models that were idolised at the time. Anything above a size 4 was considered fat. Since such a ridiculously small size is the norm for only a tiny percentage of the female population, most of us ended up experimenting with all sorts of unhealthy diets in order to try to attain the unrealistic and unhealthy weight goals.
I went through enough years of very unhealthy eating, dieting, and excessive exercise behaviours. I felt miserable and guilty that I could not control my body’s natural hunger cries.
Luckily, I caught myself in time and started reading every possible book on the topic of health. I learned a lot about nutrition, fitness, and what a healthy body should look like. I realized that it is not skinny that I should be after but strong, fit, healthy, and happy.
Diets don’t work. Only sustainable healthy lifestyles do. Once I started eating nutritious food and stopped starving and over exercising, my body naturally took on a healthy weight.
I have to tell you a secret: I never check the scale except at the doctor’s office! I am committed to my health and fitness regiment and the rest is a matter of genetics.
As I mentioned in my previous posts, I have a healthy green protein smoothie every single morning and nutritious food the rest of the day. I take multivitamins and probiotics on a daily basis. I stay active every day by doing high and low impact exercise, Pilates, yoga, hiking, running, swimming, and walking. I do many of my workouts on my balcony to YouTube videos.
If you’re curious to know more about what I eat or would like some YouTube fitness channel recommendations, let me know and I’ll be happy to share!
I’m so happy to see that most teenage girls of today look healthy and athletic! Also, it’s wonderful that models now come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and even with imperfections!
Cheers to health, happiness, and longevity!
