How to Make Resolutions that Stick
It’s just not the right time.
A new year is beginning and you’re getting your New Year’s resolutions ready. You know you want to lose weight, but you tell yourself it’s just not the right time. It’s going to be a busy year, after all: you have a lot of work commitments adding anxiety to your life, not to mention that big trip to Italy you’re planning – who can concentrate on losing weight with all of that pasta around?
Next year, you tell yourself. Next year will be the year.
Does that sound familiar? There never seems to be a good time for weight loss, at least when you’re first starting out. But the truth is, getting fit and healthy should be a priority – after all, without your health how fun will those other things be? That trip to Italy won’t be very enjoyable if you find yourself winded exploring the streets of Rome. It’ll be even less so if you wake up in a Milan hospital after suffering from a heart attack.
The truth is, resolutions are hard to keep, no matter what you have planned for the year ahead. Even when we make them, we set lofty goals and quickly become discouraged. There’s always an excuse to stop trying long before the year is up.
But if you want 2012 to be different, you need to treat your resolutions differently. We work hard at things we find important, so weight loss has to be important to you. Why exactly do you want to lose weight and what makes this attempt different than your efforts of the past? Once you’ve determined that, success is all a matter of how you approach your goals. Research shows that the key to making a successful resolution is a person’s confidence – knowing that he or she can make a behaviour change. Resolutions are also a process; you need to commit yourself to the long haul, and you need to make your goals as specific as possible to make them work.
To make 2012 the year you actually set resolutions and make them happen, consider the following:
Set Manageable Goals: Your goal weight shouldn’t be based on the fashion models you see in magazines – it should be realistic to you, according to your height, weight and healthy body mass index. How fast you plan to reach those goals should also be realistic – remember, if you lose weight too quickly it’s more likely to come back because you’ve made changes you can’t maintain.
Consider the Big Picture: Make a plan. It’s easy enough to say “I want to lose weight,” but without a specific plan on how you’re going to lose it, that’s not going to get you anywhere. Do you need to change your diet? Or maybe introduce more exercise into your life? If you consider what it is that made you gain the weight in the first place, you’ll be able to better understand what it will take to lose it. Was it stress that prompted you to overeat? Was it laziness or erratic eating? Or maybe it was going without food for the first half of the day, only to binge eat at night? Your plan should consider all of these because they’re potential barriers to reaching your weight loss goals.
The Short Term Matters Too: While you need to look at your big-picture goals, the short term is just as important. Breaking the year into weekly, monthly or quarterly time frames will make your larger goals easier to handle. How much weight do you want to lose in a week? A month? Are those realistic goals, and if so how are you going to accomplish them? If part of your plan is to eat more vegetables and less high carbohydrates and starchy foods, what does that mean? How many servings of vegetables will you eat daily and with which meals? Or, if increasing your exercise is a goal, decide how many times you need to be active each week, the type of exercise you’ll do and how long the exercise sessions will last.
Keep an Eye on Your Progress: You want to know how you’re doing. After all, tracking your progress can be a great way to stay motivated and keep your eye on the prize. Recording information in a journal is one way to monitor how you’re progressing on your weight loss journey. Keeping track of measurements and body composition assessments, such as weight and body fat percentage, are also extremely valuable to see if your efforts are paying off. Just don’t be discouraged if the change is slow to happen – that’s how your body works. It’s only after the accumulation of these changes that the transformation is visible. But the scale isn’t the only way to measure achievement: maybe you have more energy now, aren’t as winded when you walk up the stairs, or don’t crave sugar in the same way. Research suggests that these immediate health benefits may be the most effective motivators for helping individuals who are overweight to shed extra pounds and commit to keeping them off. So, stay on course and keep measuring your progress – eventually, if you continue towards your goals, that progress will lead to real results!
Celebrate Your Accomplishments: You’re working hard and you should be proud of that. So when you reach one of your short-term goals, reward yourself. Not with food, of course, but with something special just for you: a trip to the spa, a new haircut, or maybe some new clothes to fit the new you!
Always Remember Why: You’re going to have days when you’re feeling discouraged – everybody does, after all. But always keep in mind why you’re on this journey in the first place. This is about creating a healthy lifestyle for yourself; you’ll have your own reasons as to why that’s important. Don’t forget them, especially when things are looking down.
So, maybe this is the year for making weight loss resolutions after all. And maybe it’s the year where those resolutions become actual goals, and those goals become a reality. To make that happen, though, requires real lifestyle change. What better time to create that new lifestyle than now, though. There’s a whole new year in front of you, after all – why not make it the year of you?
