New Year's Pez-olution

I’m sitting on the couch mowing down Pez from Amelia’s stocking stuffer. My puppy just made a meal of her own feces, and our new security system keeps making weird beeping noises, alerting me to the fact that an intruder may stumble across this sad, sad, scene.

It’s December 28th, folks, and as I sit here braless, contemplating all that was 2016, I’m acutely aware that I’ve got no plans for this next year. Everyone’s joining a gym, learning a new language, promising to quit some bad habit, and yet here I sit, munching on some Pez. My New Year’s Pez-olution. 

Last year I vowed to lose twenty pounds, which I did (I just didn't vow to keep it off). The year before that, I vowed to lose thirty. It’s always been about weight with me. Losing it and gaining it. Dropping it and piling it right back on. Carrot sticks to Cheetoh Puffs. Health shakes to Dairy Queen Mocha MooLattes.

This year, as I gaze upon American soil from my very own American couch (or more likely Chinese), I’m reminded that my life, which was once a whirlwind of different countries and emotions and experiences, has finally slowed to a soothing, high-caloric lull. I’m home, surrounded with people who sound like me and even look like me. No more tiny people with all their tiny clothes. No more pencil-thin French women who somehow make smoking look glamorous and sleek, while if you stuff a cigarette in my mouth, I closely resemble a Sasquatch on fire.

I vaguely remember years ago trying on a black gown at a little French boutique. There were no mirrors in the fitting room (just another way for the French to body-shame me), and after awkwardly taking no less than thirty selfies to avoid finding my way to the public mirror, I decided that this dress may actually be a winner. The employees (whom I’m certain moonlighted as Victoria’s Secret angels), studied me like a trigonometry equation. I immediately felt self-conscious and blamed my curves on the baby weight. “I just had a bebe, you see,” I explained to Gisele and Naomi. “Ah, oui,” they mumbled in return. I peeled the dress off of my now shamed body, hung it back alongside all the smaller, impossible sizes, and returned home to my  giant, three-year-old baby. 

And here we are now, 2017 just days away, and I can’t help but wonder if all this self-focus is my real problem; that besides all the food I've been consuming, I’m actually just too consumed with myself. And no, this isn’t some cop-out to losing weight (I know I'd feel healthier and more energetic sans twenty pounds), but rather an awareness that I’ve made myself the center of my universe, and in doing so, I've left little room for much else. 

So instead of some cliche resolution where I promise to go to the gym three times a week until April rolls around (chocolate bunnies, of course), I’m going to forego any actual resolutions and simply try harder: try harder to be a more involved mother; try harder to take less selfies and more pictures of my kid; aspire to notice the needs of those around me instead of only obsessing about my waist to hip ratio; aspire to replace anxiety with faith; and above all, and perhaps most importantly, strive to be continually kind. 

This obsession with food and body image is going to be a lifelong struggle for me. I'm never going to tire of frosting straight from the can, nor will I ever wake up one morning and think, "You know what sounds good, Stefanie? Celery! Go grab yo self a stalk!"

But I can be kind. Always, I can choose to be kind.