Each new year brings new hopes for many people, and we make a list of resolutions to make them happen.
Many people make resolutions every year, but few people challenge themselves to complete it.
We share four people who made a resolution and worked hard to make it happen.
1. Brandon Campbell lost weight.
Atlanta-based designer Brandon Campbell resolved to lose 10 pounds.
“My wife and I had moved down south from Brooklyn a year beforehand, and my indulgence in southern comfort food (and craft beer) was showing,” he told HuffPost.
“My friend Nalani and I wrote our resolutions down on cards, sealed them in envelopes marked with corresponding numbers, and sent them across the country to each other,” he said. “Many of the resolutions were written as goals with distinct milestones, so ‘quit drinking’ was written as ‘no drink for three months’ and another card for six months, and so on. Once a goal was achieved, we would let the other person know which envelope to open.”
“There’s an added element of satisfaction when you get to share the achievement with someone in this way,” he said. “There is also a motivating element of accountability when trying to get someone else to open all of the envelopes by the end of the year.
The other person doesn’t know what is in those cards, but how sad would it be if the months passed without a single envelope being opened? They’d just be sad, little, mysterious pipe dreams collecting dust on Nalani’s shelf.”
Campbell achieved his resolution, and ultimately losing a total of 18 pounds by cutting out meat, eggs, and dairy from his diet. “Eating became more fun as I discovered more options I hadn’t considered before,” he said.
2. Kelly Grover finally quit smoking.
When Kelly Grover was 21, she started smoking. Last year, at 46, she was going through two packs a day. She finally decided to quit smoking in 2019. “It was time to give up the bad habit,” she told HuffPost.
She took her doctor’s help, who prescribed her Chantix. She also used an app to track her progress.
“Some of the hardest moments were in the beginning,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the smoking itself that I was missing, but the habit. If I’m stressed or upset, I was used to smoking. I didn’t have the ‘crutch’ anymore, so that was, and still is ― hard sometimes.”
“As of today I am one year and seven days smoke-free and have saved $5,573 ― although I wish I would have put that money aside in an account,” Grover said.
3. Natalie LaFrance Slack read a book a week.
“My resolution is boring, all things considered,” Natalie LaFrance Slack said of her resolution to read one book a week in 2019. When she told this to HuffPost she was nearly 50 weeks into her goal and already ahead of schedule. “It’s kept me challenged throughout the year,” she said.
“In the past, I’d had a generalized plan to read more often,” she said. “This was the first year that I set a timeline to reach my goal, along with accountability practices, and intention to ensure that I truly would spend 2019 reading.”
4. Stephanie solved her stomach issues.
Stephanie (who requested to not use her last name) suffered from gastrointestinal issues at 53, she told HuffPost she’d repeatedly been misdiagnosed with IBS.
In 2019, she visited her doctors regularly in hopes of resolving her stomach issues with more medical intervention. But, later she decided to take matters into her own hands. “I did a bunch of internet research which led to trying a series of elimination diets,” she told HuffPost.
Stephanie cuts out a variety of different foods, often with no success.
“It took a lot of patience,” she said. “You have to wait several days before trying something new. If one food makes you sick, you have to wait until your body recovers. I thought it was a gluten sensitivity, but when I started adding ‘gluten-free’ items into my diet, I got sick again. That threw me! I was ready to give up.”
Stephanie finally found out which foods upset her stomach, and cuts them out of her diet. It worked, she prepared her food in advance and she became extra careful about what she eats. She says, fulfilling this resolution was well worth it.
“I feel zero symptoms of my previous condition and have a wonderful quality of life that I’ve never known before,” she said.
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