January is here, and you find yourself face to face with the desire for a healthier you in the New Year.  Should you attempt yet another resolution? Is it worth it to set yourself up for what has been inevitable disappointment in the past? No way! Not this year! It’s time to get things straight so you can be kind to your mind and body in a realistic, sustainable way.

How to Commit to a Healthier You in the New Year

Since only about 10 percent of New Year’s resolutions are ever actually achieved, it’s time to scrap that concept right off the bat. Instead, make a commitment to yourself, and come up with a realistic, sustainable plan. This sounds daunting, but it’s actually quite straightforward.

It begins with a promise.  Promise yourself that you will honor yourself with a commitment to a healthier you in the New Year.  Come up with a list of reasons you want to achieve that goal. Don’t just think about the list.  This is an important promise.  It’s something that needs to be written down with a pen on paper. Some reasons you might be doing this include:

• For overall wellness
• To reduce the risk of certain illnesses or conditions
• To reduce the symptoms of illnesses or conditions you already have
• To promote longevity
• To support your mental wellness
• To help control your body weight
• To achieve a specific fitness goal (such as running a half marathon, for example)

Those are only a small number of the potential reasons you are aiming to become a healthier you in the New Year. Once you have your list, rewrite it in order of priority, with the most important reason right at the top.  No matter what that most important reason might be, make it the one you know will really drive you. Then, place that list somewhere that you’ll be able to see it. You’ll be looking at it on occasion as a reminder and motivator!

Create a Plan to Become a Healthier You in the New Year

For most of us, a goal to become a healthier you in the New Year involves improvements to what we eat and how physically active we are. Those can be some big changes, so it’s best to break them down into much more gradual steps so we can ease into them at a healthy pace. As each new step becomes a regular habit, we can add a new one. This is the key to sustainability.

Here are some more steps to help you become a healthier you in the New Year.

1 – Set Big and Small Goals

Large goals are great. However, it’s the small ones that will get you there.  Yes, you might want to be able to run a marathon at some point. However, it all starts with heading out to walk every day, before you can jog, then run for minute intervals at a time.  If you overwhelm yourself with one massive goal, it will come to feel far away, unattainable, and you won’t have the gradual path to get there. Set your big goals but break them down into smaller ones that you can build toward – and celebrate – along the way.

2 – Be Realistic

Sure, you may know that you want to lose 25 pounds, but is it really realistic to want to do it in one month? Not at all! For one thing, that’s not even a healthy rate of weight loss. No doctor would tell you that it’s a good way to focus on a healthier you in the new year. Instead, consider your real everyday life, the things that are important to you, what you enjoy, and what influences will affect your ability to stick to certain changes.  From there, you can start to organize your goals and the steps to achieving them.  You can plan ahead to avoid issues that would cause you to skip workouts or other types of sabotage to your strategy.

3 – Be Flexible

Your plan to achieve your goals is absolutely great and extremely necessary, but remember that you need to be flexible too. If something isn’t working, don’t stick to it just because you said you were going to. Have a look at exactly why it’s not working, then adjust it so that it will better work with your reality and your target.

4 – Be Patient and Kind to Yourself

Part of becoming a healthier you in the new year is to learn to be patient with your progress and kind to yourself.  Give yourself some understanding. Remember that you are a human being, and that perfection is never a healthy goal for any of us. Instead, we do our best, acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them, and keep going. Some progress will be fast, and some will be slow. Failures will happen. None of them requires us to give up. Be patient, be kind to yourself, and keep going.

Ready to Be a Healthier You in the New Year?

It’s time to get started!  Check out the next step in this program with the SHAREFIT Guide to a Healthier You in the New Year: Ditching Bad Habits. It’s time to say goodbye to those habits that have been holding you back, so you can move forward toward your goals!