New Year, New Resolutions

It is truly crazy to look back at January 1, 2015 when my health journey began with a resolution to set one fitness and one nutrition goal for myself each month, treating myself to a prize if I met them. January was simply to drink 8 glasses of water a day and go to barre fitness class three times a week. It wasn't all salads and prizes - one of my most popular posts this year was Sugar-Free Stumbling about my massive fail of a first attempt at getting refined sugars out of my life. Then around May, as with all resolutions, I gave up. Not because I stopped being healthy, but because along the way I stopped needing to set goals and rewards for myself - being fit and healthy was my reward. In January 2015, the more bread and cheese the better the meal and the less sweat required the better the day. Now, in January 2016,  I follow a paleo diet and am pissed if I leave a workout without dropping a sweat - who am I?

Well now it is a New Year and I need a new resolution. 2015 was very much about me, my independence, my health, my happiness. Sound selfish? It is, but guess what, at age 25 with no husband and children, moving into a new chapter of my life was a great occasion to take a year and be selfish. More than a year, might make me unbearable however. Therefore in 2016, my New Year's resolution is to be about other people. Specifically, I resolve to meet one new person a week. There, it is in italicized writing so it is official. By meeting one new person a week, I don't mean making a new best friend nor do I mean smiling at someone in the subway. Simply, to learn someone's name and something about them. It is my hope that sticking to this resolution will allow me to be more present in my surroundings. It is simply an added bonus that a weekly goal makes for great blog fodder.

If you hope to have any success with your New Year's resolutions, well you better eat your lucky New Year's foods! We will forget for a moment that if you eat the same thing every New Year's day, but still have good years and bad, then those foods aren't very lucky. Well+Good (which I love) sent out an article about 5 lucky foods for a New Year from the Japanese tradition - Herring Roe for family growth, Yellowtail Buri and Hamachi for career advancement, Prawns for longevity, red and white vegetables for happiness and lotus root for your wish for the future. If 2016 goes really poorly, then maybe I'll try those in 2017, but in the South, and in my family, we have our own New Year's food. Black eyed peas and rice (Hoppin' John), collard greens, stewed tomatoes, ham and chopped onions. Now, i'm cheating a bit this year and hoping for the best - skipping the black-eyed peas and substituting cauliflower rice. Yes, I could have just made it traditional and been well within the realm of safe paleo cheating, but I didn't. I didn't even want this for dinner, but I fear my grandmother's wrath if I were to skip out on this traditional meal to bring in the New Year.

A secondary New Year's resolution (and the one most likely to fade) is to back off the treats and the occasional (weekly) gorging I do on sweets. The danger runs exceptionally high when I come home after a few drinks. So, I promised myself that if on New Years Eve, if I didn't gorge when I got home, then I could make a scrumptious dessert for New Years Day (and have 1 serving!). FYI I am writing this portion of this post on NYE so that if I fail, I have to delete this entire section.

Good news, I passed! So, to test my self control right on Day 1 - New Year, New Dessert. I've had leftover caramel apples since making my awesome caramel apple cake and finally pulled them out of the freezer to make caramel apple shortbread bars for the New Year. Based off of Vanessa Barajas' Sour Cherry Bars in Clean Eating with Dirty Mind, the only change I made was halving the sweetener and subbing the caramel apples in place of the sour cherry compote. If I am being honest...I snacked A LOT while making these, but they are just so delicious I couldn't help it. I did only have one and a half actual bar though, so that counts for something right?