Help Your New Year’s Resolution Bloom Back To Life This Spring And Get Healthy

Hi everyone! Hope your year is going well. Have you been keeping to your New Year’s resolutions? For myself, I would say I’ve been committed to them about 50-50, not that I have many, but at least I’m still mindful of them and am striving constantly.

Today we have a guest post from the wonderful Sheila Olson, a fitness professional who runs the website http://fitsheila.com/ which is a wonderful blog site. Don’t forget to check it out later. In the meantime, enjoy this post:

“Perhaps you were overly ambitious in setting your New Year’s Resolution at the start of the year. Your heart was in the right place, but now you need to reevaluate your original plan so that it’s more effective and achievable. There are ways to successfully add nutritious food to your diet, cut out alcohol, or start an exercise routine. Resolutions usually start in January, but you can start one anytime, and this spring is the perfect opportunity to get on the right path.

Why You Didn’t Succeed

Don’t try to solve your entire problem at once; instead start a small, new routine. Focus on transformations that change your lifestyle, not life-changing transformations. Losing 60 pounds is life-changing, whereas cutting out soda is a new lifestyle. Publishing your first book is life changing, whereas emailing a new book agent each day is a new lifestyle.

If you focus on the life-changing transformation instead of the lifestyle transformation, you’ll likely take on more than you can handle, which sets you up for failure. The lifestyle transformation will lead you to the life-changing transformation.

While setting unrealistic expectations is one reason that resolutions fail, a lack of motivation and a lack of desire to actually change are also culprits. To combat this, have an accountability buddy, which should be someone close to you and to whom you have to report. Also, you have to actually want to change to be successful, so focus your thinking on new behaviors and thought patterns. “You have to create new neural pathways in your brain to change habits,” says Psychology Today. And don’t forget to celebrate your successes between milestones to keep your motivation going.

This Time Around

To stick to your goals, make your lifestyle change a part of your daily routine and schedule it in. If you want to stop consuming sodas, have water every day in its place. You can schedule the glasses you need to drink so you know you’ll reach your goal. If fitness is your goal, use the stairs and park further away in parking lots every day. Schedule a specific time three or four days a week to walk for 30 minutes. To keep yourself motivated and to add a fun factor to your stroll, you can even bring a furry friend. Take your pup to the park. Of if you don’t have a dog, start up a side gig as a dog walker.

Think of all of the usual excuses you make, write them down, and come up with ways to deal with and get rid of your excuses. Change your focus so that instead of thinking about what you still have left to do, look at what all you’ve accomplished, and pat yourself on the back. You have to stay positive and don’t be too hard on yourself. Making healthy lifestyle changes doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be having fun.

Keeping Motivation

When you stop drinking alcohol, you lose weight, reduce your chances of getting type 2 diabetes (Medicare also offers diabetes prevention programs to help you get started), and improve your heart and liver health. You’ll also start sleeping better and feel more alert during the day. Concentration and work performances will improve, as well.

Exercise and healthy eating have similar health benefits. You can slim down and tone up, reduce stress, fight depression, improve heart health, and more. If you attend a gym, you may meet new friends who have similar goals and interests. Having an accountability buddy means you’ll get guaranteed hangout time with him or her. Likewise, if you’re trying to maintain a well-balanced, properly portioned diet (get an accurate kitchen scale to help you out with the portions), you can set aside one night a week in which you and your friends gather to cook for one another. You’ll learn new recipes and get to spend time with your friends while keeping true to your new diet plan.

Making the decision to lead a healthier lifestyle provides mental, physical, and emotional benefits. Just because your resolution flopped at the start of the year doesn’t mean you can’t try again. This spring is the perfect time to revitalize your resolution and reap the many benefits of improving your lifestyle.”

Inspirational eh? Hopefully you can take the principles she outlined and apply it, so that you can get back on track this Spring (or for most of us it would be Autumn). Don’t forget to check out
http://fitsheila.com/ also. And these too: