Happy New Year with No Resolutions

Happy New Year to all my readers! 

So here we are, almost a week into 2016.  Soon we'll be accustomed to writing 2016 instead of 2015.  All the excitement of ushering in the new year has long since abated as most people are back at work, schools are open today in Ireland and things will soon settle into routine again.

I haven't made any New Year resolutions. I gave this up years ago when I was still smoking and resolving to give it up, because by the end of the first week of January I was back on the cigarettes again.  I did kick the habit but that was not at New Year and had nothing to do with any dramatic resolutions I made.  In fact, I knew I could not afford cigarettes when I retired and this cold fact together with Alan Carr's books on how to stop smoking were the motivating factors in giving up without any withdrawal symptoms.  And am I glad I did give up smoking!

In recent times I have half promised myself to lose weight without actually going on a diet.  A diet suggests you are going to finish with it sooner or later and return to your old eating habits.  I decided that I would cultivate healthier eating without going into a swoon at the sight of an excess calorie.  So far I have lost around 3 1/2 kgs or nearly half a stone over the past 12 months or more.  I have put on a pound or two over Christmas, no doubt of that.  All those yummy things like mince pies, roast potatoes, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding have taken their toll. The good news is that I can get rid of the excess pounds without too much difficulty - well I guess it's easy enough when all the goodies are eaten, I simply don't replace them.  From now on I will be reducing the food portions on my plate.

In December the weather was so bad - one storm after another - that I didn't get out for exercise as much as I normally would.  I love watching the stormy waves and trekked out to the beach as often as feasible.  I try to walk for an hour a day and will stick to this, weather permitting.  This is a great way of keeping my weight down while enjoying myself at the same time.

So all in all, I feel pretty upbeat about my plans.  While in Germany I bought a few women's magazines which all had more or less the same headlines on the cover :  how to lose belly fat or those excess pounds put on over the holidays and - almost in the same breath so to speak - recipes for chocolate cheese cake and yummy cup cakes.  Which sort of mirrors my own weaknesses and struggles against temptation - when you've finished reading the recipes for low-calorie diets, you turn the page and there's the cheese cake recipe. Life's a bit like that, isn't it?