Make this year different.
It’s the new year. Over the past few weeks, you’ve been hearing and seeing a whole lot of ads geared toward New Year’s resolutions. Whether it’s a gym special, a diet program special, or gentle reminders that a new year means a new you for your weight, sleep habits, or money-saving habits, the message will be loud and clear. It’s important to understand that not all approaches are created equal, especially when it comes to New Year’s resolution diets.
Doomed to Fail?
While making a New Year’s resolution is a great way to make a positive change in your life, it also sets you up for a whole lot of failure. According to Statistic Brain Institute, in reference to New Year’s resolutions for 2017, the percent of people who felt they were successful in achieving their resolution was 9.2 percent. Furthermore, infrequent success was 48.4 percent, and the percent who never succeed and fail on their resolution each year was 42.4 percent. Pretty grim, eh?
The second biggest resolution, according to the data, was weight loss. Whether that’s working out, dieting, or a combination, the statistics show that it’s more likely than not, that your resolution is going to plummet. But why?
If you set the intention, you know that it’s something you want to do. What a great goal to have: to give your body the love it deserves by eating well and exercising often. The problem surrounding the connection between New Year’s resolution diets and failure is pretty simple, actually.
If it takes all of that hype to get you going, you’re simply not sustaining yourself. Outside-in solutions like dieting and joining the gym fail because they have very little to do with a game plan. They offer promise on the enamor that is the New Year alone, and not the gift that the entire year, and your life, is in general.
The Bigger Picture
Essentially, the grander scheme is put in the backseat, and the diet pills, programs, and gym memberships are put in the forefront, only long enough for you to get sick of them. A first-month special is just long enough for you to lose a bit of weight, feel good, and then kick the full-price membership to the curb.
While you may believe the Pilates class will inspire you, and the no-carb challenge will motivate you, the reality is the only real motivator is yourself. So when the enamor fades, if you haven’t put your mind into it, you will end up taking up the habits that feel like home; like you.
You can see the effect of change in other parts of your life outside of dieting. Taking a pill alone for your anxiety isn’t going to be enough if you’re not mindfully open to the idea; if you don’t admit you are putting yourself in anxiety-inducing situations.
What it all comes down to, be it New Year’s resolutions or your mental well being, is self-discipline. Having that alone will allow you to welcome the discomfort not as an obstacle, but as a sign that you have committed to becoming a better version of yourself.
Tips to Succeed this Time Around
There are a few important tips that will help you to restructure how you approach your New Year’s resolutions. Tied in with helpful Skinny Ms. recipe ideas and workout tips, let this bit of advice serve as a guide for getting in gear all year and beyond, not just the month of January.
1. Start small
Make simple challenges with yourself in order to end with a big success. Throughout every day, find things that you know bother you, like your absolute need to have a salty chips, and replace that with something a bit healthier. Try simply swapping the processed chips for homemade kale chips.
2. Stay positive
Just as much as it’s important for you to be okay with the discomfort, it’s also important for you to love yourself. Negative self talk should be avoided. Don’t harp on your insecurities like they are a setback, but use them as a positive tool toward change.
The more negativity you have, the more opportunity for excuses not to eat well and exercise. These tips are a great key for how you can boost your confidence with positive thoughts.
3. Challenge yourself
Rather than commit to a workout challenge that is generalized, come up with your own. If it’s not about you, then it’s difficult to connect. Challenge yourself to give up fast food. This challenge is a great outline, but you can tweak it to make sense for you. Perhaps this outline doesn’t have an alternative you like for tacos. That’s where you choose to plug-and-play to make a challenge that works for you.
4. Build trust
If you sign up for the hardest HIIT class there is, but have never worked out more than a swift walk on the beach in years, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Don’t promise yourself you’re going to go to that class every single day until you lose 10 pounds if you know it’s an empty promise.
To build self-trust, it all goes back to starting small. Maybe that means a beginner’s HIIT class twice a week, or trying this 12-minute at-home HIIT workout to get started first and build up that trust.
5. Be aware of your habits
It goes without saying that you’re going to have a bit of faulty behavior as you take on a healthier lifestyle. It’s not so easy to kick your habits overnight, nor is it easy to assume you can pick up a new workout routine and stick to it just like that.
That’s why, perhaps more than anything, you need to develop self-awareness. Knowing your weaknesses is the first step to understanding how you can get to the healthy place you want to be at. Even just meditating can make you more mindful of how you operate.
As you can see, the reason most new year’s resolution diets fail begins with you. You need to put work in from within in order for the workouts to work and the eating plans to pan out. Make it about you, not the advertisements, or the pressure from society to have a resolution at all. You can get healthy and stay that way!
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