Resolutions for 2016

Okay, I get it. Resolutions to lose 10 lbs or start a new healthy eating plan or write that novel in the upcoming year are pretty much doomed from the get go, which also makes making them kind of, well, pathetic. I know this -- hell, I've comforted my unresolved self with all the articles about the resolution-initial effort-failure feedback loop every December for at least 5 years running. I know that most of us well-intentioned ninnies will fall off the wagon by February (where I come from we call that Mardi Gras).  And yet.

This year, I'ma do it anyway. I'm going to try putting myself out there in an Amy Schumer flailing among the Knicks Girls at the end of Trainwreck kind of way. 

I accept -- and dutifully resent -- that my perpetual discomfort in my own skin is to no small extent the result of Western media's patriarchal bent and a capitalist angle of whipping female self-esteem into submission until we acquiesce and buy the products that will squeeze us almost, but never quite, into the current mold.

In my early teens, like so many of us, come December I would always resolve to stop eating until I morphed into Jessica Alba -- starting once eggnog season was over, obvi. Regrettably, this always coincided with the start of king cake season. And no, I never equated my love handles with this seasons-by-food paradigm before just now. Eventually, king cake season also came to mean open bar season (see "Mardi Gras" above) further impeding my planned asceticism.

After Carnival, Lent rolled around with its 40 days (Sundays literally don't count) of required "penitence" or some other predecessor of "detox." Aha! I'd think, This is it! Here's my moment for unfettered self-denial. After the first week of recovery Sunday came along and I'd always rediscover my old pals in the cookie aisle. Crash, burn, and before you know it we were all digging into Easter candy anyway.

College and casual feminism have helped me put away much of the self-loathing, and a plethora of articles meant alternately as encouragement -- "How to Actually Keep Your Resolutions
This Year" -- and as a social-psychology eyeroll at the practice -- "Things  to Do Instead of Making a New Year's Resolution" turned me off to it.

So why am I re-starting now? In part, I need to be creating more content, and blogging about the travails of creating a more zen, healthier, better-looking me could be the perfect schtick to get me back to blogging. More pressingly, however, I have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). That's a self-diagnosis; my French gynecologue couldn't be bothered to tell me more than that I had chysts on my ovaries because I "have some extra pounds." Let the record show that I am 5 feet 3 3/4 inches (160 cm) tall and weigh 132 lbs (60kg). My BMI is 23.4.

Is it wrong to mention that this doctor is a man and has a waiting room peppered with brochures about vaginal rejuvenation procedures?

Resent of the patriarchal medical industry and befuddlement and body mass metrics aside, I am uncomfortable. I jiggle all over. I burp randomly during conversations. My face is an oil slick by 3 p.m. Most of all, boy, would I like those cysts to go away. The NIH says that diet and exercise are often the best, fastest treatment.

So this year I'm tackling diet and exercise again, this time without self-loathing.

Because I haven't yet found my "happy weight" or a way of eating that leaves me energetic and satisfied, I'll try 12 different wellness-oriented approaches to food this year. From vegetarianism to the blood-type diet, at the end of 2016 I hope to settle into an approach that makes me feel good in a steadier way than my current system of sugar highs and bloated comedowns.

Exercise-wise, I'm shooting for twice a week. A modest amount, right? I already do a fair bit of walking with my dog and just to reach public transportation. Here too, I'll be experimenting both with activities I've enjoyed and given up -- horseback riding, hot yoga, Swedish aerobics, pilates -- as well as getting out of my comfort zone and into some new adventures.

I'm also going to start drinking a liter of straight water (read: not coffee) every day. My poor kidneys put up with enough.

Finally, I'm going to blog my way through this. Every day. I'm still working on the closing pun that's also a truism about this -- To create content and contentment? It's going to take a bit more experimenting to get it right.