New Year's Resolutions...None For Me Thanks

How many times have you made a New Year's resolution (or several) on January 1 only to completely give up on it, or them, by January 31? I have been guilty of that for most of my life but I'm taking a different approach this year. I decided to identify three areas in my life where I want to make changes. I then set some incremental goals under each category to support those areas of change.

Want to know what my categories are? If not, you can stop reading now, but if you want to know, here they come.

I want to make changes in my health, my business and my home. It's unrealistic for me to think that I can make several sustainable changes all at one time so I have broken these categories into steps that I'll take over the course of several weeks or months. 

Here are some examples. I mentioned in a recent post that when I was diagnosed with cancer I lost 135 pounds. Unfortunately, I've gained some of that weight back so one of my health goals is to lose the weight I regained. Following is how I plan to do that:

• get to sleep each night by 11:00
• get up each morning at 5:00 to go to the gym at least 5 days per week
• make low carbohydrate selections for my food
• use portion control with my food
• do not eat anything at least 3 hours before bed
• drink at least half my weight in ounces of water per day

This is how it's going so far. I have not been too vigilant about getting to sleep on time which makes it tough to get up on time. Unfortunately, I injured my foot a few months ago and am in physical therapy for that. I've used my sore foot as my excuse for not exercising but that ends this weekend. I'll be going to the gym whether I go to sleep on time or not. I can take a nap during the day if I need to.

My food choices have been of a much higher quality than before. I've maintained a pretty healthy eating program for several years but my portions and late night eating were not the best. I have also noticed if I eat too many carbs, even good ones, I don't feel well. So I have cut way down on grains. I get most of my carbs from veggies, fruit, beans, nuts and seeds.

I have been eating dinner around 5:00PM and nothing after that. I have, and my bladder can attest, been drinking more than half my body weight in ounces of water daily. By eating dinner early and nothing after, and by drinking copious amounts of water, I feel much lighter already and my energy is higher. I can't wait to see it go even higher when I start exercising again. 

By breaking this goal into steps, I feel successful even though I am not meeting all of them yet. The other goals around moving my business forward and decluttering my home are in the "baby steps" stage but I'm getting there. 

This is the year I will meet or exceed the goals I set at the beginning. When I look back on 2019, I'll know I was a success. I hope you will be too.