Tag Archives: resolutions

Restart Your Resolutions

Can you believe it’s almost March?! For Pete’s sake! I  know many of you made New Year’s Resolutions on January 1st – how are they going? It’s not uncommon to lose steam as life often gets in the way of our very best intentions.

In fact, I had the opportunity to speak with Amanda Greene, a reporter for Woman’s Day, this week about this very topic. Her article, “Eight Ways to Recommit to Your Health Resolutions” is included here if you need some inspiration to get yourself back on track! Amanda and I chatted about how Nourish helps clients make and stick with resolutions, and we talked about ideas for recommitting to those resolutions if your resolve begins to falter.

So, if your resolutions have fallen by the wayside, instead of beating yourself up, try to determine what caused you to get off track, and then simply recommit. 2011 will be here all year.

Here’s a link to the full article on the Woman’s Day website.  And here’s the article text, because Amanda is a far better writer than I…

8 Ways to Recommit to Your Health Resolutions

Find out how to get back into your wellness routine—and stick with it

By Amanda Greene Posted February 23, 2011 from WomansDay.com

You’ve probably heard of “January joiners”—those eager gym-goers who sign up to get in shape at the beginning of the year, only to fall off the wagon by February. There’s a reason it’s such a common phenomenon: Sticking to health resolutions is difficult, especially when your ambitions are too high or not measurable. So we spoke to the experts to find out about common goal-setting mistakes and how to recommit to more obtainable aims. Read on to learn eight ways to revisit your wellness resolutions––and make them stick this time around.

1. Shrink your goals.

One of the most common reasons people fail at keeping their resolutions is because they bite off more than they can chew. “I find that my clients make New Year’s resolutions that aren’t really realistic,” says Cristina Rivera, RD, president of Nutrition in Motion, PC. “They’re great for about a week, but people can’t keep them up forever.” For example, one of her clients made a goal to give up soda, her favorite beverage. She went cold turkey and lasted about two weeks, then caved when the cravings hit. Rivera coached her to minimize her portions—a mini-can of Diet Coke, not a Big Gulp––instead of cutting out the drink entirely. 

2. Make your resolutions concrete.

Not only will setting a goal that’s too big derail you, so will making a resolution that’s too vague. “Saying ‘I will eat more healthfully’ isn’t a concrete goal,” says Junelle Lupiani, RD, nutritionist at Miraval, a wellness spa outside Tucson, Arizona. “Instead, say something like, ‘I will replace my afternoon coffee and cookie snack with a piece of fruit, some nuts and green tea.’ Being sure that your resolutions are measurable can help you assess on a daily basis if you’re on track or not.” Other specific—and doable––health promises that Lupiani recommends are vowing to eat a large salad every day or committing to starting each day with a whole grain and some fresh fruit. 

3. Don’t wait to get motivated.

Many people assume they can’t tackle their goals without motivation. So they wait and wait for that push to get them to the gym, but it never comes. “We have the belief that motivation has to come before action—’I felt motivated so I went,'” says Simon Rego, PsyD, director of Psychology Training at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, “when in fact motivation often follows action.” Take the gym, for example. Most people can attest to feeling extremely motivated after a sweaty workout, instead of before. To get yourself to exercise, Dr. Rego recommends giving yourself permission to leave the gym after five minutes if you want. Chances are, once you get moving on the treadmill, your motivation will have kicked in and you won’t want to stop. 

4. Get some sleep!

That’s right—the experts actually recommend hitting the hay in order to accomplish your goals. Why? Because a good night’s sleep can help you achieve virtually any goal on your New Year’s resolution list, says Pete Bils, vice president of Sleep Innovation and Clinical Research for Select Comfort. “Losing weight, exercising or learning a new skill are not human instincts; we have to work at them. You could call a sleepy brain a lazy brain—the human ability of resolve or willpower has been proven to be diminished without adequate sleep,” he says. But it’s not just about willpower; the amount of sleep you get affects bodily functions, too. As Bils explains, without enough sleep, ghrelin (the hormone responsible for regulating appetite) is elevated, while leptin (the hormone connected with satiety) is diminished. So, even if you consume enough calories, when you haven’t gotten enough zzz’s, your body will still send signals that it’s hungry, which will likely lead you to overeat.

5. Set yourself up for success.

Sure, it’s easy enough to resolve to eat more healthfully, but if you don’t implement the necessary lifestyle changes you won’t be able to succeed. “If you’re going to have oatmeal for breakfast instead of your usual doughnut, you have to give yourself five extra minutes to boil those oats on the stovetop each morning, plus more time to eat at home since it’s not a portable food,” says Cherylanne Skolnicki, wellness coach and owner of Nourish wellness consultants. “Resolutions are really about finding out how you’re going to integrate new behaviors into your life.” So don’t join a gym that you have to drive out of your way to get to—choose one that’s on your route to and from the office. Or if you’re trying to drink more water, invest in a reusable bottle so that you always have it on hand. 

6. Be patient.

“When you’re integrating a new exercise routine, your fitness levels will always change more quickly than your body composition. Fixate on how you feel and how you perform before you freak out about your weight and waistline,” says Andrew Wolf, exercise physiologist at Miraval. As Rivera notes, healthy weight loss is only between one and two pounds per week, so give yourself reasonable time to make progress instead of giving up. Finally, Wolf advises implementing ways to monitor your progress that don’t involve a scale or your skinny jeans. Keep track of how many crunches you can do or measure your heart rate while you’re on the elliptical machine to prove to yourself that you’re getting stronger and more fit.

7. Think outside the box.

Don’t throw in the towel on getting in shape just because you hate the gym. Losing weight doesn’t mean you have to join a fitness club. There are plenty of ways to exercise outdoors—find a hiking trail or take your bike out for a ride, for example. Rivera is a fan of alternative forms of exercise, like Zumba classes. “If you have an active job, wear a pedometer and see how many steps per day you can log; if you hit 10,000 steps in a day, that’s like walking four miles,” she says. “Knowing how much you’re walking could motivate you to push yourself even harder the next day.”

8. Find a buddy.

The easiest way to make yourself accountable? Enlist a friend to help keep you on track with your goals. “I’d rather see you walk every day with a partner than run every six days by yourself,” says Skolnicki. “If you can, find someone to meet you, whether it’s at the gym or outside your front door. People’s success rates go up dramatically [with a workout buddy].” Plus, she adds, working out in tandem is a great way for busy women to multitask: Not only will you get in a sweat session, but you’ll also have the time to catch up with a friend.

Give yourself the gift of time

I started this new year off with a bang! At least in my head I did. I was so ready for January 1st to arrive so things could be swept clean, organized, and returned to normalcy after the blessed craziness of the holidays. I’m one of those people who loves (LOVES) to put up the Christmas decorations the first weekend of December while humming carols and sipping hot cocoa…but I also love taking them DOWN and restoring order to our home. There’s something so naturally invigorating about starting off the year that it motivates me to do all sorts of organizing projects. (Apparently I’m not alone – have you noticed all the organizing materials on display in the stores this month?)

Throughout the holidays I could feel myself making a mental list of all the things I wanted to do. In my head I’d be doing them “on January 1st.” My mental list got longer, and longer, and longer until it was painfully clear there was no human way to accomplish all of it in one day. No problem, I thought. I’ll give myself the whole first week of January to get it done. And then the list got longer still. 

At some point, (still in December) I really started to get stressed about how much I wanted to accomplish and how BEHIND I already felt, before I’d even started. I could feel myself brimming with anxiety and so I tried to explain how I was feeling to my husband, the best listener on earth. 

He looked at me, took a deep breath, and calmly asked me why everything on my list had to be done the first week of January. 

Well! Because it just does…have you looked at this house lately? Seriously. Humph. After ranting around in a fit of exasperation for a few minutes, I finally took a breath and actually processed his question. Why DID it all have to be done the first week of January?

And do you know what? I had absolutely no good reason why.

Right then and there, I gave myself permission to extend my self-imposed deadline for my very long to-do list. I got realistic with myself about when I’d actually find the 2 hours I needed to purge our files, the hour I’d need to clean the refrigerator, the 4 hours I’d need to really go through our closet. I searched my calendar for a few free days to hold my own annual planning retreat for my business and blocked them off. I penciled in dates to sort and store outgrown children’s clothes, to research a new software program I need, and to organize the toy closet. You get the idea. I gave myself some time. No one else could do it for me.

Isn’t it always like that? We have an idea and want to execute it right now. We want immediate results. But we each get 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. And sometimes, if we can just take a breath and lift our heads up for a moment, we can give ourselves the gift of time to accomplish all that we desire without losing our minds in the process. No matter what you’ve resolved to do this year, will you give yourself the time you really need to accomplish it? No one else can do it for you.

Bite-sized resolutions

Happy new year! I hope you enjoyed some well-deserved rest amid family and friends during the holidays. (I certainly did, thus the brief hiatus from blogging!) If you’re anything like me, now that you’re getting back in your usual routine, your mind is full of ideas to make this year the best you’ve ever had. I’ve been jotting notes to myself left and right just to keep track of all the goals I have for the year ahead!

If you’re like most people, your resolutions for 2011 will include something related to getting healthier. Have you been in any stores this week and seen the floor to ceiling displays of vitamins and “diet aids”?! It’s overwhelming!

If you’ve resolved to improve your health this year, I applaud you! Just one thought. Please don’t try to tackle every idea in your head all at once. To preserve your sanity and GREATLY improve your odds of success,  will you commit to first changing just ONE behavior?  Choose ONE thing you know you need to do to be healthier and do it. (Drink water. Eat vegetables, Walk. Get more sleep. Whatever it may be.) Then, put all your focus on only that ONE change for a while. Please don’t give up if it’s harder than you expected (hint: it WILL be harder than you expected – change is ALWAYS hard.) Keep at it until you’ve hard-wired that first new behavior into your life, and then take on the second one. Not a moment sooner.


No matter how big your goal, change happens one small bite at a time. So pace yourself – you don’t need to change everything in the first week of January! 2011 will be here all year.