Local naturopathic physician and fitness competitor Jillian Sarno Teta shared her own 10 Best! list of ways to keep your New Year's Resolutions. The following is Jillian's 10 Best! list:
1. Decide what you really want: This may seem silly to consider at first, but really try to take an internal stock of what is important to you. Often times the things we spend time doing are different than the things we think are important to do. Figure out what goals are important to you for 2012.
2. Make your goals clearly definable (and reasonable): Having a goal of losing a half inch off of your waist, or committing to 2 20-minute weight training workouts a week, is a measureable and concrete goal that you can track the progress of and lay out a plan for.
3. Small steps lead to big change: This time of year, we get very excited about making change, and decide we are going to make huge, broad, sweeping changes in our lives. Then as the weeks and months tick by, we lose our energy and excitement around these changes and simply “let go”. But, if you implement small steps (ie – I will have a glass of water every morning when I get up, I will choose only salads when dining out for lunch) these accumulate large benefit without being overwhelming. They are doable.
4. Make yourself a priority: When it comes to your health and your fitness, you have to be important to you. We can often get caught up and toss our own needs aside as we get wrapped up in the daily responsibilities of our lives, but the truth is you can only be your best taking care of others/at your job if you are taking care of yourself.
5. Enjoy the process and measure progress: Life is a journey, not a destination, right? The same is true for any health and fitness goals. Simply deciding to make change is enormously powerful and you are going to learn a lot about yourself. To help support this, it is important to track your progress – think about taking measurements of your waist, taking weekly photos of yourself, tracking workouts on paper, writing lists of things you are grateful for – to help you objectively measure your progress, to motivate you to continue making those changes and to reconnect with why you wanted change in the first place.
6. Know your strengths: Maybe you have great planning and organizational skills and can deftly schedule in time to exercise, walk or plan meals. Or maybe you are a fantastic cook and can make delicious fat-burning meals that your friends and family will love. Maybe you are a writer and can blog about your experience to inspire others. What are you good at?
7. Know your triggers: We all have those “things” that can make us slide off track from our goals. It could be an issue of feeling stressed for time, for not having enough energy, or feeling like you don’t deserve it/it’s too much work. Knowing this about yourself ahead of time lets you deal with these preemptively or reframe them when they do come up.
8. Learn from setbacks: “failure” is not really failure – it is an opportunity to learn about yourself. No one has ever achieved a goal or figured something out without learning from what doesn’t work first. Through trial and error we investigate and learn what truly works for us – and what works for someone else is not necessarily what works for you.
9. Check in with yourself: Throughout this year and your journey, check back in with yourself and take stock again of your priorities and what is important to you. Have they changed? What is different? How can these lessons help you grow as a person and achieve your goals?
10. Find people with similar goals: This is not a necessity, and certainly not as important as getting your mind right, but, for example, if you know of someone who wants to exercise more or eat more veggies, maybe you could become workout buddies, or go for walks together, or have a healthy potluck once a month. By sharing your story, successes, lessons and setbacks, you can create a community around you that can help support you – because, after all, we all can relate to the ups and downs of life.
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