A few weeks back I wrote about my new approach to New Year’s resolutions. I decided that this year I wanted to make some lasting positive changes to my life. In the past, resolutions haven’t really stuck with me. At best they stick around for a couple of weeks, but they tend to be ideas floating around in my mind that never actually make any observable presence in my life.
To change this, I decided to focus on habit creation. I’m going to pick approximately one habit to focus on each month in the hopes that by the end of the year I can say that I achieved quite a few of my resolutions.
For January I wanted to focus on creating a daily habit of teeth flossing. Overall, it has gone pretty well. I can’t say that it is a full-fledged habit just yet, but I haven’t completely blown it off or forgotten about it either. It will be probably take me a few more weeks to really incorporate it into my routine.
However, since the tooth flossing has been going so well, I have decided to try to incorporate another habit into my daily life. In February my focus will be on adding one serving of green veggies into my daily diet. I tend to eat pretty well, but the food I eat on any given day tends to be red (tomatoes are possibly my favorite food), brown (I crave bread and peanut butter) or white (dairy is a weakness). I really try to add green into my meals, too. But every week I buy a container of romaine lettuce or spinach leaves, and every week I throw out at least half of a container of romaine lettuce or spinach leaves.
Even though it is extremely easy to throw together a salad or put some lettuce onto a sandwich, it feels like work to me. I think the reason I’m so lazy about such an easy thing is that I’m not motivated to make a serving of green foods to add to my dinner. I need to find some exciting ways to prepare my greens in order to really make this habit work–I’m thinking spinach smoothies, salads with interesting ingredients, and roasted broccoli, among other things.
Perhaps by the end of February I’ll be writing about how I haven’t had to throw out a single container of green veggies since January. That’s the goal.
