New Year Resolutions

I’m seeing lots of talk of Dry January, banished chocolate, happiness and new fitness regimes on my Facebook and twitter feeds, and it got me thinking about New Year Resolutions.

I’m not usually a fan of doing NYRs – mostly because New Years Day falls at such an inconvenient and weird time of the year. Not only does it take me until February to know what day of the week it is after two weeks of everyday feeling like a Saturday; I believe us humans should be doing what most animals do over winter – we should be hibernating. We should have slowed down in an attempt to avoid the cold and dark, and we should have put on a couple of kilos so we know we can survive the elements. We shouldn’t be fighting nature, we should go with it. Winter ends in March, so we need our creature comforts for a couple more months.

But apparently the first day of a new year is a great time to give up the treats we enjoy, dramatically change our personality and set ourselves crazy goals! According to a study by some University, here’s the top 10 New Year’s resolutions for 2014, with my motivational insights…

1. Lose Weight (this will happen in Spring when we get active post Winter hibernation)
2. Getting Organised (organisation is subjective. I know where everything is in my messy desk draw!)
3. Spend Less, Save More (sometimes you’ve got spend to save, and you can’t take all that money with you!)
4. Enjoy Life to the Fullest (how? By not dying? Yep, this is on my list for 2014)
5. Staying Fit and Healthy (getting fit is usually a good start, but because you want to not because you feel you should)
6. Learn Something Exciting (learning is always exciting, and we should always be learning)
7. Quit Smoking (can’t disagree with this one. Unless you also want to lose weight. The two rarely go hand in hand)
8. Help Others in Achieving Their Dreams (Dreams aren’t real. Although Angelina Jolie can help mine come true any day!)
9. Fall in Love (done, unexpected as it wasn’t on my to do list that day)
10. Spend More Time with Family (unless you’re too busy getting fit, saving money, etc!)

Some of these resolutions are so fluffy, I’m not sure how people work out if they achieved them or not? Why not set ourselves specific, measurable, attainable, relevant resolutions to do in 2014?

So, say I was to make a NYR for 2014 what would it be?

Clare and I eat out, a lot. Maybe once a week we’ll pop to TGIs, Nandos., Pizza Hut etc. We occasionally wonder if do it too much or have got lazy. We played with the idea of not eating out for a month but, to be honest, we’d probably starve or end up eating one of the cats. It’s not that we don’t enjoy cooking, but we like a change in scenery and sometimes the cupboards are a little uninspiring.

So what’s our new year resolution? What life changing goal have we set ourself? What dirty little habit are we going to break whilst enhancing our wellbeing and happiness…

Yep, that’s right, we are going to continue eating out, whenever we want, and as often as we want…

But we are going to make a change, a little one that we hope will enhance our experience. We’re going to eat at small, local and independent eateries instead of hitting the same big chain brands.

We are going to try and review our new eating experiences on Trip Advisor, as we find it a great resource when looking for places to eat.
So, if you know of a restaurant we should try please support our NYR and let us know!