It's that time of year when a lot of us make resolutions for the coming year. Dieting programs and gyms have peak membership at this time of year. But it rapidly falls off as people drop out. What can you do to stick to your resolutions?
1. Do a reality check. Most resolutions involve major lifestyle changes; to eat healthier, to workout everyday, to stop smoking, to lose weight. All of these require a serious commitment and major changes in the way you live your daily life. Are you really willing to do what's necessary to accomplish this change at this time? Do you know specifically what you will have to do to lose 20 lbs.? How will you have to change your diet? How much exercise will you be doing? How long do you plan for it to take? Are you sure this is the time to make this change or do you have a bunch of other stressors already taking their toll?
2. Know thyself. Know who you are and what motivates you. Are you competitive? Are you a tight wad? You do hate being embarrassed? Do you hate to lose or be wrong? Do you value the respect of other people? Are you a true blue friend?
- Value the respect of others? Hate to be embarrassed? Tell your resolution to those people whose opinion of you most matters. Your family. Your church. Your friends or colleagues. Whoever it might be. Tell everyone what you intend to do. Be specific. "I am going to lose 20 lbs. by June 1st.", "I'm going to cut down on my smoking by 1 cigarette per day, every week until I quit completely", "I'm going to exercise 5 times per week every week". Why does this help? Because we don't like to lose face among our peers. So we will do what we said to preserve our credibility. If you can make your resolution to someone whose opinion of you matters, you will be doubly motivated to complete it.
- True blue friend? Enlist a partner or partners. Get your spouse, best friend, colleague, or family member to join you. It's harder to eat that ice cream in front of your buddy whose trying so hard. It's harder to skip that after dinner walk when your spouse is going too. Sometimes you will show up to the gym in order not to let down your partner when you would not have gone for yourself. Sometimes we are more reluctant to sabotage someone else's efforts than our own.
- Competitive? Challenge someone to a contest. The first person to lose that extra 20 lbs. has to buy the other one a new dress or tickets to their favorite game or performance. Make the challenge big enough to make it worth fighting for, but not so big that it blows your budget. Put it in writing. Get a calendar and mark down how much you are losing and how fast. Seeing those numbers will make a competitive person chomp at the bits for more.
- Tight wad? Bet someone you will go to the gym five days every week for a certain number of months. If you don't, you have to pay up a significant amount of money. Again, make sure it is enough to motivate you, but not enough to blow your budget.
- Hate to lose? Fix a penalty. For every cigarette that you smoke you have to donate a certain amount of money to your favorite charity. If you're short on money, donate an hour of charity work for every cigarette you smoke. It will keep you busy and your hands full and you'll be less tempted to smoke.
3. Set a realistic plan. Don't try to stop smoking cold turkey. Some people can manage it, but most cannot. If you can, great! If you can't, commit to something more realistic. If you smoke a pack a day, try to smoke 1 less cigarette a day for one week. The second week smoke 2 fewer cigarettes, and so on. So be gentle and reasonable.
4. Reward yourself with something healthy and appropriate. If you lose 5 lbs. take yourself to an event, buy yourself a new outfit, get a massage, get a new gadget. For every 5 cigarettes you cut out give yourself a non-food reward. If you cut down on your smoking or go to the gym, be careful you don't substitute eating.
5. Take it slow. Research has shown that deprivation only makes you want something more. So set moderate goals and focus on slowly changing rather than trying to drop 20 pounds or go from couch potato to marathon runner in one month. Such drastic extremes are also unhealthy, hard on your body and can lead to injury.
6. Beware of alternative "addictions". If you try to cut back on overeating you may notice yourself compensating for this restriction by overdoing something else. You may start smoking more, drinking more, spending more. Nature abhors a vacuum and when you remove something from your life you may leave a gaping hole begging to be filled. Make conscious choices about how you fill that time you used to spend smoking, drinking or eating instead of letting human nature resort to an unhealthy replacement.
7. Identify saboteurs. Unfortunately, when we try to make a healthy change there can be people in our lives who actively work to sabotage us. This may be a time when you find out who your true friends are. They may miss their drinking buddy or their eating pal. They may fear that if you get better they will have pressure on them to do the same. They may be jealous of your progress or fear how this is going to affect your relationship with them. Whatever their motivation, be aware of who is supporting you and who may be sabotaging your efforts. If you identify people who are trying to sabotage you, make an active decision about how to handle them. They may not be important enough in your life to confront them (i.e. a colleague at work) and you may decide just to avoid them. Your saboteur may be your spouse or someone else close to you who you may want to confront about their behavior. They may be someone close to you, like a parent, who has a long history of sabotaging you and who you know is not going to change even if you confront them. In that case, you may want to enlist the support of your spouse or siblings to overcome attempts by your parent to sabotage your efforts. Whatever you decide, be aware of it and address it in a healthy way.
8. Surround yourself with supporters. Many people will be very supportive of your attempts to make positive change. They will take note of your progress and praise your efforts. Keep these people close to you.
9. Plan to succeed. If you set the bar too high, you risk failing. This will cause you to feel worse about yourself rather than better and make you less likely to try again. Set small, attainable goals. Decide to walk 30 minutes after dinner every night. Leave out one cigarette a day. Drink skim milk, switch to whole grain breads, try the lowfat margarine. Move happy hour to a later hour and spend that hour playing with your kids instead. Small changes that you are likely to be able to attain will make you want to "up the ante" and make more changes. It will foster your sense of competence and self esteem. It will give you confidence in your ability to make changes.
Whatever you decide to attempt, be gentle with yourself. It took awhile to get in this shape or develop this pattern of behavior. Give yourself time to replace bad habits with healthier ones. Try to make lifestyle changes rather than starting a "crash diet" or attending a "boot camp" exercise program. Making small, but permanent changes are more effective than trying to reinvent the wheel overnight and you have a much greater chance of succeeding.