New Year's Resolutions
The beginning of any New Year is time for celebration, as we commemorate the passage of an old year to make way for celebrating new one. It is time when we believe in our own wondrous future, one that holds so much promise and potential. It is also time of letting go of those few regrets the passing year held, glad to see some things pass into history.
The New Year is also a milestone, one that many of use to re-commit ourselves to being healthy, to get fit, lose weight, stop smoking. Fitness centers see their biggest membership rush during the first month of a New Year, and Yoga and Pilates classes swell with participants. Diet foods disappear quickly from grocery shelves and fitness magazines vanish from bookstores. This is the time many people say that their last cigarette has been snuffed out, that rippling abs are their new vision for the future.
So how do you write an effective New Year's resolution for better healthy?
First of all, pick one resolution in each of the three areas of health: eating, thinking, and moving. Pick something very small and manageable. Start by picking the things that are the easiest for you to change and that you are prepared to change for the rest of your life. There is next no advantage to making a change if you don't maintain it. And remember it will be much easier to make the big changes later once you have some momentum.
Second, make sure your resolutions are worded in a way that excites you. Talk about what you are going to do rather than not do and set in the present tense as if it has already happened, i.e. "I am loving eating 3 pieces of fruit every day". "Walking for half an hour every day makes me feel great".
Thirdly, make sure that you act on the resolution, so write it down and place it somewhere you will see it every day. Research shows that if you do something for three months you're highly likely to do it for the rest of your life so keep working at it. At the end of three months, assess you progress. If you have achieved your goals, great. If not, decide whether that goal is till the easiest for you to achieve or pick another easier goal. Either way select 3 new goals and start the process again. If you repeat this four times in 2010 just imagine where you will be by the end of the year!
Results take time. People want results now, especially in today's fast-paced, high tech world. Slowing getting back into exercise, or re-entry training allows muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints to start moving and stretching again with a much lower risk of injury. If you jump into exercise too quickly, you can very easily strain muscle, tendon or overstretch a ligament. Muscle tears can occur too. The injuries make training more frustrating and training often stops for six weeks or more. By this point the frustration levels become high that most people quit the exercise plan.
But, with any exercise plan you need to check with you doctor first. One main reason for this advice is many people have mild, underlying heart problems. This is sometimes discovered when the strain of the new, perhaps overambitious exercise program. This is the worst time to discover a heart problem. So, if you have not exercised for a year or more, make an appointment to see your doctor and tell him/her that you are about to start an exercise program.
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