Flipping the calendar to another year is always a good time to reassess and make changes. 2015 has been, for me, an exciting, stressful, life-changing year. So many things have happened this year – personal and professional – that it’s one of those years I’m sure I’ll look back on as a turning point in my life. 2016 is a big year too, and I’m looking forward to a lot of fun! In 2016, my husband and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary and our 20th anniversary as a couple. We’re planning a nearly two-week vacation to France, Germany and the Netherlands as a special treat (so you can look forward to posts on French, German and Dutch food!).

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions per se. It’s too easy to give up on your goal once you’ve slipped up. Instead, I’d rather lay out my goals for the year, which gives me something to work towards instead of ways to let myself down.

Here are my goals for 2016:

• 3 HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts plus 1 strength training workout per week – There is no better way of working out for weight loss than high intensity interval training, according to professional trainer Michael Matthews (as well as tons of other trainers). My favorite HIIT workouts are from YouTube channel “Fitness Blender.” My husband and I also do HIIT runs once or twice a week with a six-minute warmup jog then alternating 60 seconds at full speed and 60 or 90 seconds walking until we reach 2 miles.
• Do yoga on off days – Instead of vegging on the couch in front of the tv or laptop on off-workout days, I need to get moving enough to do a quick yoga routine. I’m a huge fan of YouTuber “Yoga With Adriene.”
• Dress better – I’ve cleaned out my closet of all the super cheap but not very flattering items of clothing taking up space there. Following plus-size bloggers and vloggers has given me so much inspiration for great-looking outfits for work and play. My favorites are Girl With Curves, Loey Lane, Katana Fatale, Gabi Fresh and The Curvy Fashionista.
• Cook healthier – Some things going on in my personal life led to several months of pretty unhealthy eating for our family at the end of the year. In 2016, I’m getting back into my old routine of researching recipes, buying better ingredients and batch cooking on weekends. I love love love The Pioneer Woman, especially making healthier versions of her recipes. Tori Avey is another great food blogger who has tons of quick and easy recipes for family cooking. I’d love to go back to basics this year and revisit some historic recipes with a focus on making them more healthy.
• Blog more – This practically goes without saying, and I think all bloggers set this goal with each new year. With so much going on in my life in the year ahead, I want to make sure to capture important food moments to share, so be sure to follow me on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to keep up with all my food adventures in 2016!
• Love myself more – And document it! For practically my whole life, I’ve hated nearly every single picture ever taken of me. I come from a long line of women who hate pictures of themselves (I’ve watched both my grandmother and my mother tear up and throw away photos of themselves). As a plus-size girl, I have a lifetime of body-issue baggage that I had never really started to unpack until this year. Combined with feeling like I wasn’t photogenic, that made for many years of hating my body and hating almost every picture of myself. It has taken a lot of soul-searching and a husband who absolutely adores me and my body for me to start to truly love myself and my body. The body positivity movement and the rise of backlash against fat shamers are so important for girls and women who don’t fit mainstream society’s view of what beauty is. Despite running regularly and doing 8k’s and 10k’s, doing kettlebell and HIIT workouts, eating healthy and avoiding junk food and soda, I am still a size 16. For the first time in my life, I’m ok with that.

Here’s to a year filled with food, drink and culinary history adventures, and here’s to more photos like this – of me being happy and healthy!

So those are my goals for the year ahead. What are your goals? Do you make New Year’s resolutions?