Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions are interesting. They usually seem to me to be a combination of all the stuff we wish we had done differently mixed with all the things we want for ourselves squeezed nicely into one massive more than likely difficult goal. Interestingly they are usually health related. Some examples are:

Quit smoking

Lose weight

Run a marathon

Stop eating white flour

Meditate every night

Even money resolutions are health related. Money is a huge cause of stress in people’s lives. If you resolve to save money, you are resolving to lower your stress in preparation for your future or to make sure that you can afford to take care of your health in the future.

All of those resolutions are valid and great. I mean, who doesn’t want a loved one to quit smoking, lose excess weight, or become more empowered? It’s not the end goal I have a problem with, it’s the lack of pre-goal goals. In order for a person to achieve a grand resolution such as drink eight glasses of water every day, they would need to first try drinking just one. Even if you feel as though you already drink a glass of water every day, you are probably not making it conscious. Consciously commit to drinking one glass of water every day. The ultimate achievement and success of that goal is going to propel you to the next step: drinking two. I think you get the idea. When you finally get to your eight glasses of water a day, you will have gotten there by persistence and hard work. You will truly be an eight-glasses-of-water-a-day person instead of a person who forces themselves to drink water all day long in order to keep up a goal they no longer remember why they made. Does that make sense?

Think about it in terms of your job or career. Did you wake up on the 31 of December and shout, “I want to be a (insert name of current profession here)!” Then woke up again on the first to discover you had in fact been given the job. Unless you have a truly amazing story, which I would love to hear all about, you are going to say, “No, Sarah, I have been working, studying, interviewing, and constantly striving to get to where I am.” If you are anything like me, you are still doing quite a bit of the striving and studying part. Now, when it comes to my job, this doesn’t depress me. This is fairly normal. It’s a part of the way society functions that we work hard for what we want and hopefully we will keep moving forward with our goals. Our little goals are what combine to help us achieve our bigger ones. It makes sense with ones’ career so why are so many people distressed (including myself by the way) when their health goals don’t miraculously appear within the week, month, or year.

I can’t even count the number of times I have declared some decadent resolution on the 31 like, “I will never eat sugar again!” or “I will run for five miles every day!” Heck, even something as innocuous as, “I will work out three times a week” can be doomed. I think the best way to achieve a goal is to break it down. Break it down to the smallest possible version of that goal and then slowly work your way up. Let’s say you want to lose weight. (I only use weight loss in this example because it is a common goal for many people I meet.) Well, how are you going to lose weight? Eating less and moving more? Okay, so I say start small. Let’s just take the eating thing to begin with. If you eat dessert every night, then maybe your first resolution could be to skip dessert on one night of the week. Just the one, that’s certainly doable. It’s small, my friends. Or maybe you never eat breakfast. Well, how about one day a week you eat a banana first thing. That seems reasonable; it could even be on Saturday.

Now onto the exercise portion of your goal: if you never exercise at all, then you could start with a five- to ten-minute walk twice a week. I know that sounds simple and it should. The point is to achieve the goals. Try those little goals for a week or two. If it feels good and you are achieving your goal, then up the ante, but do it small. Pack your lunch one or two days a week with healthy food. Up your five-minute walks to every day. If you were already exercising, maybe this means you want to add one day of week of weights. Or perhaps you want to make your walks longer. Each little goal will be different for each person.

My tiny goal this week is to make coffee at home one morning a week instead of buying it. The whole idea is to pick goals that are small enough to achieve and goals that are pushing you in a direction of a bigger goal. Eventually I would like to make coffee every day and put fifteen dollars a week in my savings account.

Recently I met a woman who was talking about her considerable weight loss. I asked her how she did it. “Small goals,” she said. She walked for five minutes every day. After a week, she upped it by one minute. She then walked for six minutes every day. She did the same with push-ups and crunches. She could do four push-ups on her knees when she began. She did four push-ups every other day and eight crunches. When that became easier she did five push-ups and ten crunches. She just kept moving forward in small baby steps. She is one of those women who I truly believe will keep her weight off because she lost it slowly. It’s the same with all your health goals.

I propose that everyone take a good look at your health resolutions for 2010 and see how you can make them smaller in order to make the bigger ones stick.

Be Good to your Body, it’s where you Live