New Years Revolution

Say what you want about making change manageable, you know, baby steps.  Sometimes that just doesn't work.  I guess I'm too cynical and have too little willpower, but I have never really been one for making resolutions.  Trying to change little things about your life based on an arbitrary date is futile.
Once upon a time I quit smoking.  I did it pretty much cold turkey, I did it because I was in love, I did it because I wanted something more than I wanted a cigarette.  I don't remember the date, I don't technically remember making the decision, I just didn't smoke anymore.  It wasn't a resolution, it was a revolution, I simply became a non-smoker, over the course of time my body has reinforced that identity.  I used to be able to smoke now and then, but lately, after almost 15 years of non-smoking, too much tobacco smoke gives me a wicked headache, like it used to when I was a kid.
I'm not trying to brag, like I admit above, I have very little willpower.  I actually tried to quit several times, via "cutting down" or "tapering off."  I would make little bargains with myself, compromising with the enemy, and it never seemed to work.  What finally worked was flipping the switch.  If you want to know how it goes when I give myself wiggle room ask me about my relationship with food.
I have been trying to have a similar revolution with food for years, but unfortunately you can't quit food altogether, because of the whole death thing.  Partial revolutions are never quite as easy.
Spiritually speaking, I had an easy revolution from agnosticism to faith, but in the walk of faith it's all partial revolutions.  Sin is a lot more like food than cigarettes.  Most of us are a lot more vulnerable to twisted relationships with good things than we are to simple vices, which is I guess why idolatry is always such a lurking problem.  What is idolatry but a gluttonous desire for the sorts of feelings that one normally gets from God! (that might be worth revisiting another time)
I always think that the reason people started making New Years resolutions is because they feel like such gluttons after Christmas that a little austerity seems like a welcome change.  I know, on the rare occasions when I have made them, they almost always had to do with diet and/or exercise.
When I was on the Camino de Santiago last spring I experienced what I think a healthy relationship with food ought to be.  Now, let it be known that I was burning upwards of 6000 calories a day by backpacking, so it was virtually impossible to overeat, but what I found was that, as long as I was engaged in something I wasn't hungry.  There were times when my body told me I needed to eat, but it wasn't in the form of hunger, it was in the form of weakness, it was literally my muscles saying, "Hey we need some carbs down here."
My stomach was largely left out of the equation, I never got that growly bad feeling in my gutttywuts.
When I'm sitting around watching TV, burning almost no calories, I often feel like I "need" to eat, when actually, what I need to do is something other than eat, or watch TV.
I think the thing to learn here is that trying to change some behaviors, particularly gluttonous behaviors, is better served by replacing them with something healthy.  In the case of cigarettes it was a healthy relationship with a woman who eventually became my wife.  In the case of food, I have found that simply walking can replace the boredom that is that core of so much of my really unhealthy consumption.
I guess it's sort of like the political theory about power vacuums, if you take away one power you had better replace it with another or else chaos ensues.
In instances of true and positive change it is almost always a revolution not a resolution, because something bad was replaced by something good.  It's not deprivation it's replacement.  Keep that in mind when you plan your New Year's revolution.