Happy New Year—here's a mug of champagne

Are you making an resolutions for 2012? This is the time of year when people start vowing spend more time with family, save money, or get in shape and lose weight.

Unfortunately, many health-related New Years resolutions fizzle out by Valentines Day, often because they are vague or unrealistic. Anna Armstrong, a clinical dietitian with Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health in Lafayette, shares a few tips for sticking to those goals, primarily by starting off with SMART resolutions, which are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• and Timely

Though I can’t remember what mine were last year, partway through January, I made a resolution to get a massage once a month (finding a place that made this financially realistic was my inspiration). It worked out a lot better than the unspecified “do nice things for myself” I’d attempted in years past.

I don’t really have any health goals planned for this year besides to keep staying active most days of the week. With my dietetic internship starting in February, I know that 2012 is a going to be a busy year—probably not the year to take on a recipe challenge or decide to pretend I was born with not-deformed feet and start training for a marathon. Some of us just aren’t meant to be runners, and that’s okay.

I do, however, intend to keep getting those monthly massages! Also, since it dawned on me that I’ve been living in NYC almost four years and done very little in the way of sight-seeing, I’m resolving to visit one museum or other New York must-see per month.

Do you have any 2012 resolutions? What are they?