I resolve to...

"Yeah, but this year will be different."

Having been back in North America over Christmas and new years, it seems that of the many many people I have told about this site, there are only a select few who actually read it regularly. To the regular readers, thank you and keep it up. To the non-regular readers, it's been 3 months, man, what the hell?!

I realize this is already over a week into the New Year and already, many people have started to lose interest in the ones they've made for themselves - this week’s (not only English) cultural topic of the week:

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS

According to Wikiality, New Years Resolutions date back to 153 BC, when Janus, a mythical king with two heads who could both look back into the past and foresee into the future. Thus, he became the Roman figurehead for seeking forgiveness from "thine enemies". Now, New Years resolutions are set at the start of the new year and have become a cultural phenomenon throughout the world.

Fact: In Europe, over 450 Million New Years resolutions will have been made in 2007. Within the first month, Ninety-five percent of them will be broken.

Every year, people most commonly resolve to do these ten things:

1. Get fit
2. Lost weight
3. Eat better
4. Quit Smoking
5. Quit Drinking
6. Spend time with family and friends
7. Get out of Debt
8. Learn Something New
9. Help others
10. Get organized

Personally, I have never been really big on setting new years goals. Reason is, (for fear of sounding too cynical) I just don’t really care that much. Resolutions are more often than not definitely attainable, but most often mostly unrealistic, and believing that things can change overnight is just straight up wrong. I was about to type out a list just now, but that’s kind of lame. Besides, not many things would actually change, and I’ll just be add to the statistics.

Undoubtedly, HEALTH seems to generally be the overwhelming theme to New Years resolutions. Whether it's towork out more often, to eat more organic food, to stop smoking, or to floss daily, these are really just things that people should do no matter what time of year it is. After all, the question that plagues me, of course, is why someone wouldn’t want to live a healthier life?

For the first month of the New Year, fitness facilities see an average attendance increase of 45%, which, as you could probably figure out, that figure slowly declines over the following months (then sees an increase in late spring (beach season), then again in fall (after thanksgiving)…but gyms are kind of an anomaly). Of course, there’s no sense in working out in an attempt to lose weight unless you change your eating habits.

I finally managed to watch the American documentary “Super-size Me”. After watching this program, a number of people I know vouched to stop eating fast food because of the detrimental effects it can have on your body. Fact is, 5/100 American physicians do not agree that it is unhealthy to eat fast food more than twice a week. Incidentally, my friends who stopped eating fast food had their first McDonalds less than a month later. Will power: the key to keeping up any resolution.

Enter government. Many governments have instituted regulations that actually jumpstart the healthy living process. With Calgary becoming the last major city in Canada to jump on the bandwagon (actually one year earlier than originally planned) Canada has mostly become smoke-free, a trend that even many areas are trying in the UK. Scotland, an unlikely group, has been smoke free since March 2006 and plans for late 2008 are cited for some areas of England as well. While North America has been promoting healthy eating, trans fat regulations are also beginning to be instituted in some parts of Europe and the “5-a-day” campaign for fruits and vegetables has never been more prominent – “Obesity is a global epidemic”. Unfortunately for the British, there are no government regulations on good dental hygiene.

The point is, whether this is your first time reading, or if you just don’t stop in all that often, maybe you should make your resolution to make a quick stop in every week or two and see what I have to say. After all, if you really don’t like it, next year you can resolve to let me know in the comments.