Two Day Magazine

2012 is a new beginning (so take the pressure off)!

So, it's January 1st.  

Are you making any resolutions like buying a gym membership? Pledging more donations to more charities?  Giving up sweets? Quitting smoking?  

Going vegetarian?

About five years ago, my sister Sara and I made the resolution to give up meat.  We decided we'd go cold turkey and help each other stay meat free for the whole year.  After the year was over, we figured we'd see how we felt, how we looked, and how much money we saved by going vegetarian before we decided to make it a permanent lifestyle change.

At the time, Sara and I lived together so we figured it would be a piece of cake to stick to our resolution since we had each other as a live-in support system.

We lived in an area with close access to a lot of restaurants, bars and grocery stores.  We went food shopping together and helped deter each other from eating out at restaurants in order to stay true to our New Year's Resolution.

By February, I was starting to miss meat.  One Saturday morning after a trip to the gym, I stopped at the local bagel shop and ordered a bagel sandwich with egg, cheese and bacon.  I didn't even realize what I had done until I had eaten half of the sandwich on my way back to our apartment.  

I was so upset with myself.  I carelessly ate bacon and broke the resolution I made with Sara.  I decided not to tell her and gobbled up the rest of the bagel sandwich before I got home.

For the next few weeks, I had a couple more slip ups and before I knew it, I was regularly eating meat during the meals I had when I was not around Sara.  I was plagued by guilt but being meat free was not for me.  Fish and chicken were a staple in my diet and I missed those things.

One Friday night, Sara and I decided to stay in and treat ourselves to pizza and a movie.  We hadn't ordered pizza in ages so we wouldn't be tempted by pepperoni as a topping but we were craving pizza and figured plain cheese pizza would taste just as good.

As I was getting ready to dial up the local pizza delivery joint, Sara stopped me and said  "I've been eating meat for weeks behind your back.  Can we please get pepperoni?  I'm tired of having to sneak around to eat meat!"

I admitted to her that I too had been eating meat for weeks and was completely off-kilter from hiding that from her.

We decided then and there that our experiment as vegetarians was over.  We ordered pepperoni on our pizza and enjoyed every last piece.

Our foray into a meat-free lifestyle taught me something. It taught me that New Year's resolutions are hard to keep and more often than not end up being broken.  Being honest to each other about our failures to keep the resolution ended up being the lesson we learned.

Since that resolution years ago, neither one of us have made serious New Year's resolutions.  Instead, we find motivation to make changes whenever the spirit hits us rather than being told we need to make changes as the clocks strike midnight on December 31st each year.

I made the decision to get healthy on a random October afternoon last year.  Sara made the decision to buy her own house one weeknight a few months ago.  

Letting go of the habit of making resolutions only when December 31st rolls around has helped both of us open our eyes and see the inspiration to change any day of the year.  

If you haven't made resolutions yet, maybe you're not ready for any changes right now.  So instead, resolve to be open to change and to actively make changes to your life any random day of the year when the opportunity arises and the spirit moves you.

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