It is a new year so people have probably started making resolutions.

I myself have not made any such plans to "fix" or "better" myself for the first time since I was old enough to make resolutions. This year is a new experiment for myself. An experiment that I feel a lot of people like myself should attempt this year. Instead of becoming a more "physically" healthy at some number of pounds and inches around, this year I choose to "eat the cookie."

Past me has always made a resolution. Always purchased at least one self-help book to help me shave away the pounds that for some reason I can't seem to accept as apart of me. In my past, a new year marked several meticulous plans to create a better me in the span of 365 days. Most of these plans would only be accomplished with tremendous weight loss or dieting. When results didn't prove fruitful I lost hope in fruit diets, "carb" less, sugarless, "gluten" less, and excessive exercise. There were years where the weight seemed to come off, where the inches around my thighs and hips seems to decrease to that heavenly number. However, it was almost always an almost heaven inside the small cramped dark storeroom "changing-room" with just a single size smaller jean pant struggling to zip to a finish button. The dim lighting was almost as dark as the thoughts that swirled in my mind.

Most of my life has been spent preaching fitness and learning about exercising. I once trained with an Ironman once a week, while having three+ sports practices, and a separate group training. I wouldn't say I was ever thin or large back then or even now for the matter. However, somewhere along the way, my brain decided I was overly large. It didn't help that the Wii told me at thirteen I was overweight. I probably also didn't help that a majority of my friends were underweight and I looked like none of them. As someone that's eyes have consistently deceived her into having a war with herself and her own horrible body image, resolutions have consistently been unhealthy both mentally and physically.

Whether it be the keto, vegetarian, or just plain not eating certain meals dieting has never given me the perfect "angelic" or beach body look. Dieting has only ever lead to the increased worsened state of mental illness, body dysmorphia and other horrible things that people should not feel duty bound to deal with out of some "new year new me" mentality.

I know that for most people dieting is beneficial and leads to great results not just for weight loss but overall health. I have to be honest though in saying, if you're like me, eat the cookie instead. For those like me who recall crying in the changing room over the fact that your hunger did no provide you with a smaller size dieting is a slippery slope. For those who are far too young to endanger yourself dieting is not the salvation to the "big boned girl" comments that your skinner friends say as a means of not calling you "bigger" or "fat." Do not run up and down flights of stairs in order to burn the number of calories you absorbed that day. Stop counting each calorie as though you are rationing for the end of the world. Because bottom line, loving your body as it is right now, is not the end of the world.

A chocolate chip cookie from Subway may be 200 calories and that may seem so hard to choke down but once you stop counting the taste of bitter yet sweet chocolate mixed with the soft sweet warmth of the doughy cookie will slide down your throat and make you feel whole. I don't mean to say eating with being your absolution, it is not that simple. Love yourself will be the only absolution. Living for you and not chained to the electronic hum of the scales ups and downs will save you. I think if we all could pick up our head and get out of the numbers whether the be pounds, inches around, or size whatever we would all be much happier within our own bodies and hearths.

So this year I will not resolve to lose any more of my mental health in order to chase down yet another way to make myself smaller. I will look to my inner self, my hearth, and build myself up from the small girl mentality. I will not look at a cookie and see the carbs and calories and the miles to run, sit-ups, or stairs to climb in order to be rid of it.

I will just eat the freaking cookie.

I will not buy some detox tea or celebrity endorsed lollipop appetite suppressant. I will allow my body to be hungry but I will eat when I am hungry because I deserve to be full. I will grow further and further away from that starving girl without losing the memory of her. Instead, I will keep the memory of her in mind but not as a goal of what to shrink into, I will keep her safe as I show her how to love her curves the way so many brave women in my life have shown me. I will teach her how to love the numbers on the scale instead of sobbing over the gains or obsessing over their shady digits.

In 2019 I will eat the cookie.