There is a lot of change coming into my life, fast and hard at this very moment. I’m embracing it, trying my best to try new things, it’s difficult but must be done in order to improve myself.

On food, I was pretty consistent the first two weeks then I kinda had a few cheat meals & snacks the past few days, which is gonna definitely set me back but overall I have been cooking for myself and am definitely better off than I was before. It’s easy to avoid sugar, but its’s hard to avoid chocolate when it’s in my fridge. 🍫 I ended up eating an entire chocolate bar, its too addicting for me and I just am gonna throw it out on sight or give it away if I see it again. The only positive is that I did lose weight from the start of the year, I hope to keep it up moving forward.

On shopping, I had to literally hold myself back from buying stuff, which is something I never thought I’d have to do. Currently my Youtube suggestion videos are all mainly centered around beauty and fashion, there are way too many “haul videos”, “what’s in my bag videos”, “Amazon favorites” and “my best 2019 purchases videos” out there right now and I am an absolute sucker for pretty packaging, little hacky gadgets and cute dupes 😅I end up window-shopping and adding stuff to my cart then going through my list of questions I promised myself to think about when it comes to purchases like (“Is this from a sustainable brand?”, “How many times will I wear this?”, “Is this made from plastic?”) it helped me avoid all the purchases. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t make any purchases at all but I did avoid all the unnecessary ones. I did buy a 2020 wall calendar and some skincare, but avoided all the clothes and jewelry yay!💥

Pongal (பொங்கல்) 🌞🌾was a few days ago, it’s one of my favorite holidays. I got to celebrate it and attend the local festival celebration filled with bharathanatyam, parai and an authentic Tamil dinner on banana leaves and payasam dessert. It was wonderful to see the community locally driving this right here in NYC. My heart was so happy to feel home.

It’s MLK day today, I always like to take the day to reflect on the role many African Americans like MLK have done for justice and equality in this country. It’s a reminder that we all have to continue that fight. Like MLK said:

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King Jr.

On that note, I’m off to bed. 🌙