4 tips on how to stick with your healthy New Year’s resolutions – words Al Woods
About 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the middle of February, says Business Insider.
And Forbes adds that only 8% of people succeed in achieving their resolutions overall. Therefore, you’ll need to put in a lot of work to stick to the resolutions that have to boost your health. The biggest part of your success in this will depend on making the right kind of resolution and developing a plan for it.
How to Achieve Your Healthy New Year’s Resolutions in 4 Steps
1. Set precise goals
Resolutions are your goals for the next year, so you should go about them the same way you go about developing business goals. This means you need to make concrete achievable resolutions. For example, instead of saying ‘I will eat healthier next year’ you should use something like ‘I will completely drop junk food from my diet’.
Steele Williams a leading fitness expert at TRAIN FITNESS says starting resolutions turn of the year to make some positive changes to your life can only be a good thing. He warns don’t seeking perfection – life is too challenging for that. But if you can stick to 75% of them for at least three months, then I’ll consider it a job well done.
As you can see, this kind of change narrows down your resolution quite a bit. That’s why you’ll need to make a long list of all the essential changes you need to make to your life in order to become healthier.
2. Create plans for every goal
This step is closely connected with the first one. In fact, you should combine them and write a plan of action instead of a resolution list. This way, you’ll know exactly what to do to achieve your ultimate goal.
Plan from the ‘big resolution’ down breaking it down into manageable steps. For example, if your goal is to lose 80 pounds by next summer you should start with developing a weight loss schedule. 80 pounds in 5 months means you’ll need to burn about 4 pounds a week. The next step is to calculate the number of daily calories you’ll need to consume and make a list of ‘banned’ and ‘allowed’ foods. Finally, draw up a detailed weight loss plan to achieve your goals. It must cover diet, exercise, and supplements or superfoods you’ll need to speed up the process. It’s this kind of detail that you need to include in your ‘healthy New Year’s resolutions’ plan.
3. Focus on one step at a time
Usually, the best advice for achieving New Year’s resolutions is doing one thing at a time. However, health-related goals are different because they require a continuous effort and you can’t achieve them fast.
That’s why you need to have a plan. It will allow you to focus on one step at a time. For example, today you’ll stop buying junk food and next week you will start jogging for 30 minutes every morning. The small changes will add up to make you a much healthier person by the time the next New Year arrives.
Please note that if you struggle with some changes, you should consider putting the others on hold. Some habits are hard to break, so you might need to literally focus on one thing only to reduce the overall stress.
4. Track your success
In order to achieve your New Year’s resolutions, you need motivation, and nothing motivates like your personal success. With the plan in hand, it’ll be easier to keep track of your progress. However, you should try and make this into a special experience.
For example, have a ‘review day’ at the end of each month and celebrate your achievements. You can even write reports to yourself and make amendments to the plan to account for any changes in your life.
