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Take Your New Year’s Resolutions Seriously- They Could Save Your Life!

(Courtney Carpenter, MS) -- Every year -  during its last few weeks -  millions of Americans eagerly declare New Year’s resolutions. Regardless of our results in previous years, we will rededicate ourselves to losing weight, getting “in shape,” or quitting smoking. Unfortunately, the reason these show up in our national top 10 every year is because each year most of us fail to achieve them. The reasons we fail are not that remarkable. Various counselors, bloggers and other speculators say we expect to fail, we don’t define our goals reasonably or simply that we do not follow through, some beyond January and few beyond June. However, surely every year some do succeed, right? Of course, and this year you can be among them.

If you are resolving to loose weight this year, I suggest that rather than resolve to loose “X” pounds in 2010, focus on specific issues that have kept you from loosing weight in the past. If you are not quite sure you know why you have been failing, perhaps your resolution should be to see a nutritionist in order to define what you need to work on. Other common focal points include these:

Eat meals regularly, rather than haphazardly: when we do, we keep our bodies out of starvation mode and encourage them to burn the calories we eat.

Eat more vegetables at lunch and at dinner: high water content vegetables, cooked and raw, deliver fiber to help us feel full and balance blood sugar as well as phytonutrients, including flavonoids and polyphenols, widely acknowledged to provide anti-aging and anti-cancer benefits.

Make and take your lunch to work or school one more day a week than you do now: One of the best ways to improve what you eat is to put it together yourself. If you need a little encouragement, look at the nutrition facts on the websites of your favorite restaurants.  Did you know that the flour tortilla wrap at Chipotle has 290 calories and 670mg of sodium (source: http://www.chipotle.com/ChipotleNutrition.pdf)? How about Chick-fil-a’s Chicken Caesar Cool Wrap®? It weighs in at 460 calories with a whopping 1520 mg of sodium (source: http://www.chick-fil-a.com/#nutritiondata)!

Keep a food diary and don’t leave out the bad days: According to a study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in the National Institutes of Health and published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in August 2009, people who kept a food diary at least 6 days a week lost twice as much weight as those who only kept the diary one day a week or less, when asked to follow the same diet and go to weekly group meetings. You can find free templates online by Googling “food diary” and if you need one for your iPhone or Blackberry, just add that to your query, because they are out there.

Perhaps, you have slayed the diet dragon, but still can’t seem to find the time to exercise on a regular basis. Chances are you already belong to a gym that you don’t go to or have exercise equipment in your home that you do not use. Beyond the obvious, what is the cost of not exercising? One third of the United States population is obese, meaning over-fat, including roughly 17% of children between 6 and 21 years old (http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/PDFs/stat904z.pdf). Lack of exercise is a determining factor in how our bodies deal with the calories we consume. If we exercise regularly we burn more calories during and after than a sedentary individual and we train our bodies to manage blood sugar more effectively.  Aerobic activity strengthens the heart, encourages flexibility of our arteries and helps reduce resting heart rate as the body learns that just walking around isn’t the most taxing thing we will be doing regularly. Here are just a few ideas for how you can get started and stay on course.

If you have health problems, get a check up with your physician and ask directly about what you can and cannot do: Whether your problem is bad knees or heart disease you should know your limits. Although you may be disappointed with your initial restrictions, if you stick with your exercise regimen you will be able to do more over time. Personal trainers will always require clearance from your primary care physician, so it makes a great first step to improving your fitness level.

If you already belong to a gym, but don’t go regularly, go for a visit: Ask for a consultation with a personal trainer, collect the schedules for classes you are interested in attending and find out if there are special facilities like a women-only gym that you can take advantage of. Since you are paying that membership fee each month, calculate the dollars per day that you spend whether you go or not. For instance, an individual membership costs on average $55 per month. That’s hardly enough to buy a cup of coffee each day, but if you consider that active adults stay more mentally active, miss less work and need to buy less prescription medicine, it is one of the best investments you can make.

Schedule your exercise just as you do other important appointments, such as going to the doctor or dentist: Let’s face it, no one just comes up with spare time to go exercise with any regularity. If you are not exercising at all currently, try scheduling a half hour of exercise just once a week. Schedule extra time for changing clothes and showering, since this is part of the program, so you will not run short of time and get yourself into trouble. If you go to the gym, but not as often as you like, resolve to schedule an extra trip to the gym once more each week than what you do currently. Once you get that entrained schedule yet another regular visit until you achieve your goals.

If you exercise regularly, but have failed to meet your fitness goals it’s clearly time to do something differently: Everyone knows that classic definition of crazy, “Doing the same thing over again and expecting different results,” however many of us are proving just that because we are just going through the motions when it comes to our exercise program. Whether you are exercising at home, outdoors or at a gym you have to build your exercise regimen as you get stronger and you have to mix it up. Otherwise, you are likely to compensate by rationalizing the effectiveness of your activity level against your appetite, your age and other factors…you can fill in the blank!

Finally, it is no secret that smokers need to quit. The National Institute of Drug Abuse advances these statistics. “Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States. Between 1964 and 2004, cigarette smoking caused an estimated 12 million deaths, including 4.1 million deaths from cancer, 5.5 million deaths from cardiovascular diseases, 1.1 million deaths from respiratory diseases, and 94,000 infant deaths related to mothers smoking during pregnancy” (http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/tobacco.html). Smokefree.gov offers guides to help you quit and some very motivating statistics. Chances are good that you will need all the help you can get, so perhaps you will resolve to do one or more of the following to change your life for the better once and for all.

Call your insurance company about covered smoking cessation methods or check with your health insurance adviser through your job: You may have some out of pocket expense, but I can guarantee that it will be cheaper than buying cigarettes.

Ask your doctor about prescription drugs that you may be able to take to help you quit smoking: These drugs are certainly not for everyone, but if you have tried without success to quit, you owe it to yourself and your family to consider all your options. Natural products may also have value, but it has been my experience that people who smoke more than a pack a day do not benefit greatly from these milder options.

Put the money you would normally spend on cigarettes aside for at least one year and do something special with it at the end of 12 months: Just one pack a day at $5 a pack adds up to $1825 in one year. That’s more than just chump change in anyone’s book!

I know that you will be on you way to success if you couch your resolution in positive language and rededicate yourself to your task each week as we move through the new year.