Keeping Weight Loss Resolutions – The Beginning

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again..the time for resolutions. The time for change. Did you make resolutions again this year? If so, do you think you will be able to keep them?

If you don’t, you are in good company. Resolutions are very hard to keep. In fact, over 70% of people fail stick to their resolutions, according to a recent study.

SUCCESS...OR NOT

Instead of focusing on the negatives – like how many people cannot keep their resolutions – let’s focus on the positive. How many people are successful? And of those that are, how do they do it?

People who are able to commit to a resolution are no different from you or I. What makes them able to do what we often can’t is that they plan. They break their "project" down into smaller steps and develop a course of action to achieve those steps. They don’t just look at the final end result with no idea of how to get there…that, my friends, is a recipe for failure.

Breaking things down into smaller, more manageable steps is how I was finally able to lose 80 pounds myself. I had tried – year after year – to “start on New Year’s” or “start on Monday.” Unfortunately, with no clear plan other than to burn more calories than I took it, I always failed. And I hated myself for it.

23 YEARS OF FAILURE

So how did I finally manage to lose weight? I actually started with just one step: Walking my kids to school. My goal at that point was not to lose weight – it was simply to become healthier. I had given up on weight loss, because in my own eyes I was a complete failure at it. I had a 23 year track record of that failure, all documented by notations and “new beginnings” on a wall calendar. I even had wishful weekly “goal weights” written on that calendar – and every week they were scratched off and begun again.

Until I changed my approach.

My new method? For about three weeks the only change I made in my life was walking my children to school three days a week – two miles round trip. That was all. And it was the beginning.

To be continued…

>START NOW. Implement a simple walking program with the goal of just…walking. Don’t focus on weight loss. Just walk, 3-5 days a week. Exercise is good for so much more than weight loss. Just do it..and post a comment to tell me about your progress.