Happy New Year 2011!

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope you all had a safe and blessed holiday season.  Now that the countdown is complete, you’re either spending the day watching football, eating black-eyed peas and collards (Which I have never done on New Years!) or making those resolutions!  If you’ve been paying attention, you know I’m all about making resolutions, and I make them all throughout the year (Like here and here and again here!).

It's that time of year again!

So if you’re looking to throw a few health resolutions into your 2011 mix, but don’t know where to start, you know The Nutritionista is here to help!  Here are a few ideas and some links to some of my posts from 2010 to help get your mind working:

• Kick soft drinks to the curb! They’re no good, people!  You know it, I know it, so make this the year you put them away for good!
• Get your drink on…H20 that is! One of the best ways you can give love to your body is to hydrate it, so drink up!
• Crack down on unhealthy, unnecessary food additives like dyes, MSG, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and soy.  If you see these ingredients on the food label, walk away!
• Make fat your friend! Most of us are deficient in the really beneficial essential fatty acids, so make this year the one where you pay more attention to the quality of your foods rather than the number of fat grams!  Think healthy oils like coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil, real butter, avocados and nut butters.
• Trade in those refined sugars and starchy carbohydrates for high-quality protein to keep your blood sugar more stable and see better weight loss results.
• Veg out.  And I don’t mean park yourself on the nearest couch, I mean start eating more vegetables, especially the really low-glycemic, antioxidant rich ones like spinach, asparagus and broccoli.

These are just a few suggestions, but you have to find something that really inspires you and make some commitments you’ll stick with this year!  (And I think that’s what they should be, commitments, not just random statements of intention.)  When it comes to any resolution, I suggest steering away from any non-measurable goals, such as “I will gossip less this year.”  There will be no way to measure whether you really kept that resolution at the end of the year.  A better goal would be, “I will say at least three positive things about people every day in 2011.”  (I have no idea why I picked that as my example, but you get the point!)

Would ya’ll be so kind as to share your health resolutions with me here?  Your nutrition and fitness goals might inspire me and the other readers as we dream up our resolutions today!

Thank you for reading my blog this past year and here’s to a happy and healthy 2011.  Some delicious recipes are in the works, so stay tuned!