You spent the majority of January focused in the weight room, and sweating, lunging, squatting, crunching and even grunting your body to success. You know that the foods you eat affect your mood, and that your health and wellness is entirely up to you. So, as you move into February, are you continuing to do your body good, or very, very wrong?
Here’s the skinny on New Year’s Resolutions: Most people that went head first into getting fit, toned and ate clean for a clean, balanced life lost their fizzle within 4 week’s time. Those eager new students of fitness that once bombarded every gym around the country just after the New Year have gone back to their usual habits. How quickly priorities change! That is, they’ve gone back to staying in and watching reality TV or indulging in the latest bacon cheeseburger at their favorite burger joint, instead of progressing towards their weight loss goals.
Are you focusing on your daily achievements, or have you given up in hopelessness when you think about your final destination? Are you mindful about what and when you eat, or have you eaten pizza at midnight for the past two evenings, along with digging into a side dish of self-loathing and despair?
Start Small, and Begin Getting Your Body Back
Get back into the gym and out of the house. Sports newscasters, animated cartoon characters and your favorite prime time TV family can’t motivate you to lose weight, improve your strength or give you that inner determination to change your life. Only you can do that. So, set your DVD to record your can’t-miss-TV, focus on just one activity that you can participate in, and feel the burn – just for today, just for thirty minutes, and just because it’s time to start respecting your body and stop sacrificing your health.
Re-Write New Goals for the Coming Week
You love to give yourself just one more day before taking your hand out of the cookie jar, don’t you? You may have gotten into the habit of eating simple carbs and added sugar throughout the day, with a promise that on Monday you’ll start back up again with the workouts. The problem is, no amount of exercise can compensate for what you’re putting into your body.
Losing weight is 80 percent what you eat, and 20 percent exercise. So do good, and do your body good. Start right now, in the moment, by writing out your goal for today. What small thing that you accomplish, and can you control? You can control what’s in your lunch, so commit to having a protein-packed midday meal, and write it down so you can have the satisfaction of crossing it off after sticking to it. Tomorrow, write down your mini-goals to start your mindset off in the right track, such as where and how you’ll get 30 minutes of exercise into your packed work schedule, and what you’ll eat.
If relapsing on your New Year’s resolutions shows you anything, it’s this: when you put your mind to something, you will achieve it. Now it’s time to swap out the pizza for Pilates; the cookies for cooked chicken and steamed vegetables, and a frustrated mindset into a focused one. You know you can do it. Why? Because this is the body you were born to have. Now it’s time to respect it, nurture it, and strengthen it – and reap the benefits of long lasting health and happiness.
