Resolutions for the New Year

So, tomorrow is the big first day of 2019. What resolutions have you come up with for the new year?

If you are like most people, you probably have 2 or 3 big things you want to change in the coming year. Just like last year or the year before that or the decade before that right?

Well I have made resolutions in the past that I made it a whole 10 hours before breaking them, others took me a couple days, some weeks. Its not easy to change is it?

So, what can we do THIS year to make it easier for us to succeed in what we want to change about ourselves or our situation? I use a KISS method, Keep It Super Simple. Lets go through just how its done and see if it can help you this year with your resolutions.

I try to break everything down into its simplest form, then work towards that. Take weight loss for example, since so many people have that as a goal. First be realistic in your goal, not easy, but realistic. Say you weight 220lbs now, a real goal would be to weigh under 200 by April 1st. So that is losing 20 lbs in 90 days. Now, take that 20 lbs and divide it by 13 weeks, thats 1.53lbs a week. Divide that by 7 days in a week and you only have to lose .21lbs a day. That is a realistic goal, losing just .21lbs a day. Then you start to look at diet and exercise, calm down, I said be realistic didn't I?

Diet in this sense is just simply cutting out a little bit of everything you can. Don't say you will stop eating chips, or drinking pop all together, just say you will start to drink a little less (1 can a day), or eat just a bowl of chips instead of a bag. After a couple weeks, just cut out another can of pop and eat a little less chips again. It would also be nice to add some more water and maybe some grapes instead of chips too. Then a couple weeks later, again replace some "Junk" with healthier stuff. Baby Steps.........

Now exercise is a whole different animal, maybe you don't exercise at all, then its easy to just add a walk in here and there, maybe park your car farther from work or the store? Maybe take the stairs intead of an elevator, maybe just do laps around your house at night when its too cold to go outside? You can join a gym sure, but if you haven't been a regular at a gym, maybe start with some exercise bands at home until you feel comfortable enough to do more. It doesn't have to be complicated, just try everyday to break a sweat. Thats the simple goal, break a sweat each day on purpose. If you are active then maybe you need to change your activity up, lift weights, do hill training, something different from what you normally do to get that sweat going. There are 1000 different ways to do it and they are all correct if they get you to sweat.

I read a lot of books, one thing I learned from a book is that in order to change, a person needs to become someone else to get there. So, simply put, you need to learn and do new stuff to become something you aren't right now.

Now, this KISS method can work for anything you want, whatever your resolution is, break it down into its simplest form and then figure out how to get there with baby steps.

This month in the office each week we will be talking about how to make healthy resolutions work in the simplest ways possible.