{"id":289,"date":"2018-01-01T16:14:28","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T22:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/?p=289"},"modified":"2018-01-01T16:19:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T22:19:06","slug":"new-years-fantasies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/2018\/01\/01\/new-years-fantasies\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year&#8217;s Fantasies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-291 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/new_years_resolutions_list-300x175.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"175\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/new_years_resolutions_list-300x175.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/new_years_resolutions_list.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Every year we go through the same thing.\u00a0 People want to start anew.\u00a0 People want a new beginning, a &#8220;do over&#8221;, essentially.\u00a0 &#8220;The road to hell is paved with good intentions.&#8221;, or something like that.\u00a0 And this is big business, too.\u00a0 I&#8217;d be willing to bet that weight loss programs and gym&#8217;s make most of their money in the first three months of the year, just as toy retailers make most of their money the last two months of the year.\u00a0 The &#8220;season&#8221; drives the rest of the year.<\/p>\n<p>There are probably a dozen or so common resolutions, but we&#8217;ll focus on the &#8216;Big Three&#8217;&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Weight Loss:\u00a0<\/strong> America is fat&#8230; and in the interest of full disclosure, so am I.\u00a0 It stands to reason that people want to be healthy and\/or feel better.\u00a0 I get that.\u00a0 But why wait until AFTER the holiday eating season?\u00a0 Wouldn&#8217;t it make more sense to start your program on October 1st, instead?\u00a0 Head those extra few pounds off at the pass!\u00a0 I mean, if you&#8217;re serious&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise:<\/strong>\u00a0 Joining a gym.\u00a0 Again, timing, why now?\u00a0 And what, exactly, are you going to do in the gym?\u00a0 Are you a weights person?\u00a0 Elliptical?\u00a0 Team sports?\u00a0 Swimming?\u00a0 Will you be going alone or with a friend or two?\u00a0 Ask these questions first, before you make the commitment&#8230; and it is a legal commitment.\u00a0 Referencing payment above, there&#8217;s a reason gyms make you sign a contract for a minimum period of time (usually six months), and require auto-deduction from your credit card or bank account.\u00a0 They know that the excitement you feel in January fades by the end of February and is totally done by the end of March.\u00a0 How busy the gym is during these months also says the same thing.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Quit Smoking:<\/strong>\u00a0 Definitely a laudable goal, and worthy of doing at any time.\u00a0 Quitting smoking is hard (so I have heard, I have never smoked).\u00a0 It is common for people who have been both cigarette smokers and heroin addicts to say that quitting heroin was easier.\u00a0 I would think, though, that timing could be any time of year, not some arbitrary calendar thing.\u00a0 Seems to me that if you&#8217;re basing your new lifestyle on a date on the calendar you are bound to fail.\u00a0 You&#8217;re doing it on a wish, not because you really want to.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So here I am pointing out other people&#8217;s flaws and I know what you&#8217;re thinking.\u00a0 You&#8217;re thinking, &#8220;But Ken, have you ever done any of these?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You bet I have.\u00a0 Back in the early 1990s I joined Weight Watchers (in the spring).\u00a0 I hated it.\u00a0 I like food, I like good food, and good food wasn&#8217;t anywhere to be found.\u00a0 But I was determined and stuck to it&#8230; until the last day of the first week, a day before my first weigh-in.\u00a0 I ate an entire medium pizza for lunch.\u00a0 And I had still lost eleven pounds that first week, even with the pizza.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 In a perverse way that actually motivated me, for awhile.\u00a0 Then I slowly regressed to eventually not doing it at all within a couple months.\u00a0 But, due to my experience, I know for a fact that Weight Watchers works, so should I ever be serious I would go back.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 2000s I joined a local gym.\u00a0 Same reasons.\u00a0 I joined a very nice gym.\u00a0 They had an indoor swimming pool and everything.\u00a0 As mentioned above, I had to sign a six-month minimum commitment.\u00a0 I went twice a week for about four months, then started to slack.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not a weight-lifting person, that&#8217;s boring.\u00a0 I wasn&#8217;t able to commit to team sports like volleyball for time reasons.\u00a0 I did use the pool occasionally, but mostly just used the treadmill and watched tv while I walked.\u00a0 Well shoot, I can walk at home for free, so when my contract was up I canceled.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, when you decide to do something like this, ask yourself some important questions.\u00a0 Primarily, why now?\u00a0 Are you doing it because you wish you lived better and because you know you should?\u00a0 That&#8217;s what ding it based on a calendar date would suggest.\u00a0 or, are you doing it because you&#8217;re fed up with your current lifestyle and you know it&#8217;s time to change?\u00a0 That&#8217;s the real reason and that happens any time of year, albeit not always at your convenience.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re doing it for the right reasons I will support you to the ends of the earth.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re doing it because you think you should&#8230; I&#8217;ll roll my eyes.\u00a0 I won&#8217;t say anything to you, but I won&#8217;t believe you, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year we go through the same thing.\u00a0 People want to start anew.\u00a0 People want a new beginning, a &#8220;do over&#8221;, essentially.\u00a0 &#8220;The road to hell is paved with good intentions.&#8221;, or something like that.\u00a0 And this is big business, too.\u00a0 I&#8217;d be willing to bet that weight loss programs and gym&#8217;s make most of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disbelief","category-observations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}