It’s Time to Set Your New Year Resolution!

It’s that time of year when we all make new year resolutions to ourselves to improve our current state. Many of our desired self improvements involve health and fitness. Our goals may sound like:
1. “I’m going to start exercising at the gym for one hour sessions four or more times weekly.”
2. “I’m going to eat a full plate of veggies everyday at lunch and dinner.”
Although these goals sound like good, healthy habits, they’re not necessarily realistic for everyone – especially right away in January.

There are a few things that are important to understand when setting health and fitness goals in particular:

1. Bad habits take hard work to change.

Shaking a bad habit is not easy because it’s often something you’ve been doing for for a long time, it’s ingrained in your brain. It’s often easier to go the unhealthy route vs the healthy one. For example, skipping the gym and ordering takeout while watching TV instead is much simpler than making a healthy dinner after a one hour workout.

2. Forming long term habits takes time.

Research shows, that it takes over two months of consistently performing an action, to successfully make a new behaviour a habit.

3. Real, long term change requires you to alter your current habits.

It’s important to assess your current nutritional, fitness and lifestyle habits before attempting new goals. Understand which of these habits may hold you back from achieving your new goals, and why. After understanding this, you have to take action to change the old habits replacing them with healthier, new ones.

Try these 3 strategies to ensure success with your new year resolutions this year:

1. Don’t try to change too many things at once.

I’ve found my clients have more success achieving their goals when they change one thing at a time, and gradually build upon the goal. For example, don’t try eating a full plate of veggies at every lunch and dinner when you haven’t walked down the produce isle at your grocery store in 6 months; this only leads to frustration. Start by filling your grocery basket half full of a variety of veggies and fruits, and try consuming 2 salads a week for lunch + have 1 serving of veggies at three weeknight dinners.

2. Prepare, prepare, prepare!

Take it from me, life will get in the way of your healthy habits sometimes! Plan for these bumps along the road by building out monthly fitness schedules and weekly meal plans. Throughout the month, track how many times you went to the gym, and what you ate. Understand why you may or may not have met your goals each month and revamp your plans as necessary.

3. Have a support system in place.

After about six weeks into the year, most people start making excuses about why their resolutions can’t work for them. It’s at this point, that you need to have someone there to motivate and hold you accountable for your goals. This will make or break your success.

Have fun with setting and sticking to your new year resolutions! In 2017, try to make better choices and when you make a mistake, learn from it. This will help you become a more confident individual who is proud of the choices they made this year. Please reach out if you would like to talk more about how we can make sure your 2017 new year resolution sticks!