Are You Sticking to That New Year's Resolution?
How's that New Year's Resolution to improve your diet and to exercise more going?
In case you are already falling off the wagon, to start off the new year I started a blog series. 5 Keys to Getting Healthy Eating and Exercise Back on Track introduced the series.
Seeing that research tells us people start a new year promising themselves that this is the year they were going to stick to being healthier and lose weight, but many do not last past February, we needed a way to make that promise stick.
The purpose of this series then is to help make sure you do not become a New Year's resolution casualty.
The first blog in the series was, What is Key to Losing Weight? Knowing Why. Next in the series was, What Can You Change to Get Healthy and on Track? Now we are at the third phase of this five part series, focusing on how to make your resolution stick.
Let's begin with where you should not start.
How is Not Where You Should Begin
When I introduced this series, I stated it is the how where most people begin. That is, most people start with making the promise that they will go on a diet and exercise more.
Changing your eating habits and exercising more are great, but that is not where I recommend you begin.
Where you want to begin is with the What is Key to Losing Weight? Knowing Why post. That is the foundation for helping you stay true to the promise you made to yourself.
For example, when I started my journey to losing 75 pounds in the summer of 2015, it was my why that helped me understand the circumstances in my life that caused me to not stick with my weight loss maintenance.
So go read What is Key to Losing Weight? Knowing Why, then return back here so we can talk about how you can keep those diet and exercise resolutions, thus implementing your change.
How to Keep Diet and Exercise Resolutions
How you keep your diet and exercise resolutions is by changing what you eat and by exercising more, yes, but it is so much more than that.
At its core, sticking with your promise to focus on diet and exercise is about how you live your life everyday.
In three words – it's a lifestyle.
It is not something you do for a few months until you reach your goal, or something you quit before you give yourself a chance to achieve your goal.
What is it then? It is:
- Being prepared and planning ahead. Look back to the What Can You Change to Get Healthy and on Track post to get more insight on this.
- Making sacrifices to make time to focus on your health.
- Changing your habits.
- Removing from your life what does not matter.
- Learning how to read food labels and being mindful of misleading labeling.
- Adjusting to your biology. As we age, what worked for us 10 years ago – sometimes even a year ago – will not necessarily work the same as it did. Therefore we must change our lifestyle accordingly.
- Going on vacation and still making time to exercise and still paying attention to eating healthy.
- Having a mindset that what you are doing is not temporary.
Those are examples of how you keep your diet and exercise resolutions. Each one encompasses the idea of living a healthy lifestyle.
Will you trip up sometimes? Yes, possibly. The key is to keep going. Continuously go back to your foundation – your why. That will help adjust your how.
So How are You Going to Implement this Change?
You are going to begin with your why, not the how.
Make a lifestyle change, rather than solely focusing on an outcome goal of losing weight.
Go back to your why when necessary and before you fall too deep into old habits.
Never give up, simply adjust.
Next up is knowing when to start being healthier.
Add your two cents: What lifestyle changes have you made to keep your diet and exercise promises? Share in the comments, on Facebook or Twitter.