New Years resolutions; love them or hate them, after an over indulgence of festive treats over the Winter season we probably all end up making promises to ourselves that this will be the year that we finally start eating healthily, attain that summer body, get that promotion at work, or make more time for our friends and family.
According to research from Health, over 54% of us give up on New Years resolutions before the first week is out, sinking back in to our old eating patterns and habits, leaving our gym memberships left to collect dust in the back of our purses. Many of the things we list as New Years resolutions however, actually require lifestyle changes, and they need time to adjust to, which is perhaps why many of us give up after the first week. We’ve put together three easy steps to managing your New Years resolutions and keeping yourself motivated to achieving your goals.
Define your goals
With health and wellness being a top priority for consumers in 2016, loosing weight and getting fit seems to top the list for many of us when it comes to New Years resolutions. Many of us list our new health intentions as ‘loosing weight’ or ‘Start eating healthily’ but these are not so much goals as a generic statements that don’t really help us focus on what we’re trying to achieve. Instead of writing ‘loosing weight’ try writing down how you’re going to achieve this and plan how it will fit in to your lifestyle. Maybe your New year resolution is to join a dance class on a Wednesday, and loose 7lbs by the end of the first month. Maybe you’re going to sign up with a personal trainer, and do a three month programme, or perhaps kick start your healthy eating by making sure you have a good breakfast in the mornings. Whatever you want to achieve think about how you’re going to do it, and how you will make time for it in your schedule.
Start Small
It’s tempting to sign up for three exercise classes a week, and promise yourself that you’re going to start each day with a green smoothie and yoga routine, but as with everything that’s worth doing properly, the key to success is starting small and building good habits from here. If your goal is to start eating healthily don’t start by cutting everything out at once, otherwise you are likely to get bored and de motivated fairly quickly. Define what your healthy eating goals are and slowly start to build this in to your routine. Replace your mid afternoon sugar fix with small pieces of dark chocolate and a small handful of nuts, replace any fizzy drinks with fizzy waters and slices of lime or lemon, forgo your hour vegged out in front of the TV with a Personal Training session or gentle jog around the park. As you start to make these small changes part of your routine you can slowly increase them to help you reach your goal
Be kind to yourself
If you find yourself ordering a take out after a bad or stressful day at work, or skipping an exercise class, don’t beat yourself up for falling off the wagon or fall in to the mind set of ‘well my healthy eating is ruined for the day so I may as well indulge myself and eat what I like’ This will only make you feel worse in the long term and have a negative impact on your mindset. Acknowledge that you’ve hit a slight bump, and then put it to the back of your mind. Concentrate on the good day that you had yesterday, or the healthy morning that you had, and then think about what you want to get out of tomorrow
The Weight Care Centre Team
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