What are your New Year’s resolutions?

Even though I rarely follow through on my new year’s resolutions, I still enjoy year-end reflections and resolving that yes, this is the year that I’ll get six pack abs by summer. To that end, I resolved to not eat any dessert for the month of January. Why just January, you ask? Because avoiding dessert for an entire year would be bat-s*** crazy.

I’ve actually been doing these monthly challenges with my workout buddy Jon since last year, when I first asked him to give up dessert with me for Lent. At the time he refused since he wasn’t ready to give up his daily cookie habit, but he gave it a try later in the year. Ever since then we’ve been doing monthly challenges with varying degrees of success¹.

Subsequent to dessert Jon also gave up chips and pizza (separate months), and then it was No Netflix November. I liked the idea of watching less TV, so I also canceled my Netflix membership in solidarity. However, I started bingeing on Youtube and Prime Video, which I guess wasn’t ideal but hey, at least I’m saving $10/month.

In December I told Jon I’d do push-ups everyday, but then things got busy and I gave up early on. Plus, I was going to the gym, working out, and playing volleyball, so did doing daily push-ups really matter? Fast forward to the end of last year, when we discussed and settled on no dessert for our monthly January challenge².

Jon wanted me to have a penalty in case I didn’t follow through (like in December), so I decided on a $100-per-offense penalty to a charity or cause that I don’t believe in. I think it was something I had picked up from Tim Ferriss re: goal-setting, incentives, and loss aversion. Instead of a predetermined reward (e.g., a smoothie) for accomplishing a goal (e.g., going to the gym 5x/week), set up a predetermined penalty for not accomplishing a goal, and leverage social media to help you be accountable.

In addition to this, I’m resolving to blog and read 2 books monthly in 2019. I guess those can have the same $100 penalty to a charity or cause I don’t believe in, although I will state upfront that there’s no minimum length for the blog posts I write or the books I read. 

I’ve just finished The Power of Habit, which was great, and I hope to use what I learned into practice in 2019.

¹ That is to say, I was about 50/50 on whether I actually went through with the monthly challenges, but I think Jon actually successfully completed all of his.

² Not a requirement for us to have the same monthly challenge; Jon has already decided that it will be No Fried Foods February (which would include chips), but since I’m not crazy I’ll do something else…I’m taking suggestions but may just extend No Dessert for another month…

No dessert update: Two weeks in, I’m feeling great and haven’t had any serious cravings, despite having made 2 batches of my famous red bean mochi for friends/coworkers. (When I told Jon I was making mochi but not eating it, he asked, “Isn’t that like giving matches to a pyromaniac?”)

Fruit definitely helps, or I just eat spoonfuls of Trader Joe’s almond butter straight out of the jar…that stuff is good. I’ve also had 2 dreams where I’ve freaked out since I accidentally had dessert. And just this past weekend I was distracted by what I thought were Oreos but were just protein bars (only 1g sugar!), but still didn’t buy any since it could be a slippery slope.