New Year's Resolution : Goals must be realistic for new habits to stick
On New Year’s Eve, many well-intentioned revelers pledge to improve their lives, often promising to eat less and exercise more. More often than not, such a pledge is the same one made a year earlier.
This year, experts advise, devise a down-to-earth plan for keeping your pledge and achieving your goals.
Like many, Denise Alexander’s First of January promise to herself involves her health. “My New Year’s resolution will be just to add maybe a day or two of working out a week,” she says.
A worker, wife, and mother, in the past 18 months Alexander has lost most of the 50 pounds she gained during her pregnancy with daily runs and step aerobics--an impressive weight loss campaign she hasn’t sustained entirely, but hasn’t abandoned either.
“All my pounds are gone but I still think I need to tone. I’m into all my clothes now,” she says.
To combat the stress and sometimes back-breaking ordeal of being a parent, the hair stylist and part-time student integrates her fitness into household realities. “If I do a Tae Bo video downstairs, [my daughter] will watch me,” she says. “When I was doing my triceps pushups, she started sitting on my stomach, so it gave me a little extra weight to push up.”
Alexander avoids fad diets. “I have lots of friends who are taking Fen-Phen and diet pills,” she says. “They take them but they don’t change their habits. Once they are off them, they gain all the weight back.”
She continues to devise creative workout strategies. When the weather turns warmer, Denise will buy a baby jogger for fresh air fitness, no baby-sitter needed: “I think it’s very smart to take small steps because larger steps just don’t help,” she says.
Weightloss is perhaps the most common resolution made, says registered dietitian Roxanne Moore, RD. Eating and drinking less, quitting smoking, and making more money and, for singles, dating more, are also popular ambitions.
“They want to get smaller, lose body fat or gain more muscle,” says Moore. “Of course associated with changing their weight is changing their eating habits.”
The trouble with most pledges is that they’re made in haste and are unrealistic, says Moore, who works at Towson University, just north of Baltimore. “A lot of times people set themselves up for ‘no-win’ situations: many of them are as big as Mount Everest,” she says. “They want to accomplish something like 50 pounds of weightloss or running 10 miles everyday--the goals are just simply too huge.”
Start small and then build yourself up, advises Moore. “If you haven’t been exercising at all, can you find maybe 3 days a week where you can add 15 minutes into your day and start exercising?”
On average, a short, daily walk would result in 4 pounds being lost yearly.
Accumulate exercise throughout the day and reduce meal portions. “Park your car far away at the mall to burn a few extra calories and don’t use the escalator, use the stairs,” urges Moore. “If you eat a huge bagel at breakfast, eat a smaller bagel or a half a bagel.”
Noting progress reinforces the new commitment. “If you track your goals, if you keep a journal and write down what you accomplish each day, you can look back at the success you’ve had,” says Moore.
Resolutions made as the clock ticks down to midnight of the new year almost always fail. The best-kept promises require planning and reality check. “If you have a plan as to what your are going to eat throughout the week or when you are going to exercise during the day helps you stay on track,” Moore says.
Knowing the effects of specific sacrifice can serve as motivation. Over the course of a year, replacing soda with water, for instance, can mean 9 fewer pounds. Substituting low fat yogurt for ice cream--one of Denise Alexander’s newest habits--can keep 15 pounds off.
Don’t be overly hard on yourself should you slip from your plan, says Moore. “Sometimes we are going to have setbacks and we learn from those setbacks and go forward.”
