Around New Year’s, goals to lose weight and get skinny are in abundance. Losing weight can be good. Finding yourself is even better. As an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, I have found that success in health and fitness resolutions lasts when goals are centered around things you do, rather than things you don’t do. As you make healthy resolutions, the most important step you can take is recognizing your value and learning to love your whole self. These tips that follow will produce and maintain results.

 

Make healthy resolutions

• Rather than saying you are going to eat better and exercise in 2016, break it down into a more manageable time frame. Have a scheduled weekly meeting with yourself. Failure is bound to happen, so rather than giving up on the rest of the year in February, resolve every week to try again. Be okay with starting again and again. Even if you only have success one day a week, every week, you’ll have 4X as many days of success than if you give up on your yearlong goal in February.

• Make desserts. Seriously though. Chances are you get a sweet tooth, so instead of binge eating a pan of brownies, have healthy desserts already made so you gravitate toward those instead. Click here for 5 healthy dessert recipes that taste delicious. Making and eating healthy desserts in moderation will help you be healthier and won’t make you feel guilty when you do have a treat.

• Rather than trying to eat raw kale and hating it, find ways to add veggies to foods you already eat and know you like. For example, spinach. It’s one of my favorite health foods. It doesn’t have an overwhelming flavor, so it can easily be added to many different dishes. Spinach also is an excellent source of fiber, iron, calcium, and various vitamins. Add spinach to omelettes/scrambled eggs, pasta sauce, rice dishes, burritos, wraps, sandwiches, and even pizza. It can either be cooked into what you’re making or added raw at the end. Zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, and mushrooms are other veggies that can be added to almost any meal you already love. Just have fun with it and add veggies when you can.

• Drink more water. Not only does water have zero calories and makes you feel fuller, it also helps with digestion, headaches, nutrition transportation, maintenance of body temperature, skin moisture, and cleansing. If you’re a soda drinker, tapering from soda to water can be the best health decision you make this year. A couple ways to trick yourself into drinking more: always carry a water bottle with you and drink using a straw. In addition to drinking water when you’re thirsty, you’ll find yourself drinking water when you’re bored. And with the straw, you’ll drink more water in less time. Bottoms up!

• Exercise can be a hard pill to swallow for some people. If that’s the case with you, find and participate in exercise you actually like. Walk, bike, run, yoga, jump rope, hike, do an exercise video, climb stairs, or do whatever it is that you enjoy and feel confident doing. As your confidence, energy, and health increases, you’ll find the motivation to branch out and try new things. For now, doing something you like will help you workout more often, for longer periods of time, and at greater intensities.

• Invest in clothes you feel confident in now. This applies to both everyday clothes and exercise clothes. Don’t wait until you lose weight. Feeling beautiful/handsome, sexy, and confident now will help get you to the size you want to be faster because confidence will propel you into more healthy choices.

• Most importantly, know you are already beautiful because you are. Take time to really find your beauty. Not only are you physically beautiful, you also have attractive character traits and talents that are unique to you. Leverage the inner and outer beauty you already have while you develop yourself over the next year. As you learn to love yourself and make peace with yourself, you’ll find that you are your best ally. And with yourself you can do anything!

I wish you all the best in your goals this year! By following these tips you can make healthy resolutions and keep them. You will achieve your ideal and love doing it.

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