Nov
30

10 New Years Wellness Resolutions

Woo hoo! Have you started thinking about your wellness resolutions for 2012 yet? I have. After a year of base hits, I’m ready for a home run. Come on team, are you with me on this? With 31 days left in the year, NOW is the time to renew your commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Let’s look at your stats from 2011. Did you strikeout a few times? Are you feeling better or worse than last year? What did you do right? If you are like most people (this includes me), optimal health always seems to be just out of reach. If only you could get two or three more hours of sleep a night, train every day, and stop drinking Pork Slap Pale Ale. If only you skipped the frites with your steak and ordered some brussel sprouts instead. If only you could make do with the “tall” instead of the “trenta.” If only. Seriously, do you really need more coffee than your stomach can hold? Oh we are so close. This year we’ll get it right we say. This year we will become that idealized version of ourselves. 2012 will be the year of our total transformation when we spring back from oblivion like the sorry Oakland Athletics in Moneyball.

So what’s holding you back? The same bad decisions are made over and over again. Trust me, I’m all too familiar with this cycle of almost getting it right. Are you avoiding your trainer? Have you stopped answering his/her emails? Are you too busy? Some friends and one or two of my clients have gone into hiding until further notice. Happy to close out the season with a hangover instead of a jingle jog, another year has slipped by without any breakthroughs while gym memberships are deactivated and reactivated like light switches.

Before we know it, we’ve lost sight of the ball. Let’s not get carried away with baseball analogies and make promises we can’t keep however. Why don’t we instead try to change the way we’re thinking about these habits for a moment. Perhaps we can chisel away at the obstructions in our vision and find a path toward more optimal health?

I’ve compiled a list of the same old issues with some new ideas to help you overcome behavioral patterns that may be holding you back from making progress with your fitness goals next year. In order of importance and starting with number one, see which three of these you can view differently starting in 2012.

NUMBERS: It’s NOT about the numbers on the scale. Toss the scale out! Stop weighing yourself.
TRAINING: If you’re not training, you’re making excuses for not training. Like Nike say, just do it.
SLEEP: Go to bed at the exact same time every night for two weeks. Try it and see how you feel.
DIET: Diet is more important if you don’t get #1 through 3. Other than that, you know…fruits, veggies, local, organic. Easy on the protein.
PARTYING: What about compartmentalizing your drinking habits. Once a week? Only with certain friends? Only with certain foods?
CAFFEINE: You won’t need as much if you score fair on #3. There are excellent herbal substitutes for coffee like Teeccino and Cafix.
BEER: Yeah, I like beer too, but red wine is better. It is.
COMMITMENT: Commit to change 3 things on this list.
NOVELTY: What are you going to do when you get bored by March? Try a new sport: http://thetotalmovement.com/running-tips-for-beginners/
MEDITATION: Don’t think….especially if your thoughts are negative.

We’re not reinventing anything here, and we’re not giving anything up. We’re just aiming for a minor shift in the MO and some action. Oh, and you may have noticed that smoking is not on the list. Choosing to smoke is a serious risk to your health that requires more than a few tweaks in your program. Hmmm, hypnosis? Allen Carr? Cold turkey? If you’re not ready, it’s ok. Find a role model if you need inspiration.

Hopefully you can commit to one or two items from above for now and check back in after you see how awesome it feels to be kind to your body. It’s not a matter of hard work or denial. This is just a little road map designed to encourage you to embrace the foundations of good health. A multivitamin or another supplement may be beneficial as well. Check with your doctor on that one.

Have your friends or partner hold you accountable to your experiments with change. I’ll be hard at work on #10 myself, after I fix that cup of Cafix. As long as you’re not preparing for an Ironman in 2012, any small adjustments you make will help you to become better at managing your health in the year ahead. As the saying goes, “out with the old,” because we don’t want to BE old before it’s time.