I love New Year’s resolutions!
It’s a great time of the year, the first of the year, where you get to set a goal of things that you’re gonna do differently so I love New Year’s resolutions!
What I don’t love about them is when we set these unrealistic goals, or unrealistic expectations, or resolutions of things we’re gonna stop doing when we had a struggle the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years doing them.
And so in this article, I really wanna talk about New Year’s resolutions and some tips that you can put into your life so that you can accomplish them.
So we’re talking about New Year’s resolutions and whether our New Year’s Resolution is a “Smart” one?
Well, my answer to that is “YES”!, but also “Maybe”.
Because when I think about saying that, YES, it’s smart, I think anytime you’re trying to set a goal, any time, time you’re trying to do something different, you’re trying to enhance the quality of your life or whatever, I think it’s always a good thing.
But I don’t think it’s a good thing when you set these unrealistic New Year’s resolutions.
Where you say you’ve been smoking a pack a day of cigarettes for 20 years, and you’re like, I’m gonna quit smoking in January.
That’s a pretty big goal considering that your body may be addicted to nicotine.
And so I think a more realistic expectation, a realistic goal would be, I am gonna quit smoking this year, and I’m gonna start with, instead of smoking an entire pack of day.
I’m gonna go down to 20 cigarettes in January and then I’m gonna go down to 10 and then I’m going down to five.
And then as you’re setting these goals, you’re also putting other things in place, for example, you used to smoke a pack a day.
And now you’re going, “How do I make sure I get my fix or whatever”
You may get a patch and or you may get the gum, or you may get both.
And you’re finding yourself chewing more and smoking less.
And next thing you know, you look at the end of the day, they’re still six cigarettes in the pack.
Well, that’s huge because you normally would have smoked all six of those.
And then you’re just introducing these little things.
And by the time December gets here, you’re like, “I don’t even feel like smoking anymore”
Does that make sense?
And so it’s like someone who says, I’m gonna lose a hundred pounds this year.
A hundred pounds is amazing!
And that’s awesome!
But it’s like what is it that I can put in place to help me lose a hundred pounds this year?
Now it’s not just joining the gym, although I think you should join the gym, but it’s also like it is you actually learning about food and nutrition.
Learning about things like, “I normally don’t have any green foods at all, or even buy them. Let me start by actually buying green foods and let me start by getting recipes on how to make great broccoli, and how to make great quinoa”
Or whatever it is so that you can get your grains, greens and all that type of stuff in.
So again, I absolutely love New Year’s resolutions.
I love that people set them.
I think it’s great!
You know, it always upsets me when people at the gym complain about somebody being on their favorite treadmill.
I’m like, “so you’re telling me that you want your favorite treadmill, but you, you can’t support this person who has decided to come to the gym for the first time in their lives”
You should be encouraging them and supporting them versus being mad that your favorite class is full, or your favorite treadmill is occupied.
It’s like, “get over yourself”
I can’t stand that!
Because it’s like, it’s very selfish, self-centered, and it’s just inconsiderate.
I can go on a whole tangent about all that, but we won’t. I digress!
But my short answer to, “Do I think that New Year’s resolutions are smart?”
I absolutely do.
I just don’t think that it is smart to set unrealistic goals.
Like if you didn’t lose one pound last year, why don’t we go for 30 this year?
Why don’t we do something like that?
Why don’t we go for like, I may not lose 30 pounds this year, but what I wanna do is I wanna eat more green foods with my meals.
And then make that your goal.
And then, because like for me, I remember many years ago I was super fit.
I would be running in the snow, push ups in the snow, all those things. I was killing it!
And then one day I was running and I hurt my knee and so I just was not.
I never got back into it cause I just got hurt and it was just painful and all the things.
So then I went to divorce, lost a bunch of weight, gained a bunch of weight and all that.
And then I developed this nerve condition, which we’re working on right now, and it just made my muscles kind of weak.
And to lift weights was very painful.
And even to brisk walk to get exercise was painful because my arms and all that shoulders and stuff move.
But you know, a year ago I said to myself, I’d rather be in pain and also moving my body, or what if moving my body would cause me to actually have less pain?
I decided that I would start going to the gym at my apartment complex.
And so I came down to the gym one day and I was just looking at the treadmill and said, “oh my God, this is gonna be so painful”
My body’s gonna hurt so much, and all the things.
And I got on the treadmill and it did hurt.
After two minutes, it was hurting and I wanted to stop.
I had to just push myself to go 10 minutes, just to walk 10 minutes.
Not fast, not at an incline, just in general!
And I did 10 minutes, and then I got off and I kept doing that for a little while, and all I had was 10 minutes.
And so then I said, “all right, I’m ready to try to do 20!”
And so then I just started getting myself to 20 minutes on the treadmill.
Then I switched to the elliptical machine because I wanted to be able to move my shoulders and my arms and all that too because a whole body in motion stays in motion.
So I started doing 10 minutes on the elliptical, and then it was 20 minutes on the elliptical.
And then finally I said, “okay, I’m gonna go back to the treadmill and I’m gonna focus on doing 20 minutes and then an incline of 0.5”
And this has been like a whole process.
But I also had in my mind that was just like, this is gonna hurt.
This is gonna be painful.
I had all the things that were going on and I just kept going.
And so now I’m at 30 minutes on the treadmill a little bit faster at an incline of one, not 0.5.
And then I said, “okay, now I’ve gotta get back to lifting weights because I’m not getting any younger and our bodies need muscle and all that type of stuff”
And so I said, “all right, I cannot go back to the way I used to lift weights. I’ve gotta start small!”
The first day I grabbed five pound weights and was like, “this is too heavy!”
And so then I grabbed 2.5 and I said, “all right, we’re gonna do some simple exercises with my arms and do that”
It hurt, it was painful, but I said, “we’re gonna just keep going!”
And so then I just kept going and kept going.
I’m still only at 2.5, but I’m doing a little bit more and pushing myself a little bit more.
And so I’m not necessarily saying to myself, I want the arms that I had when I was 25.
I am working on adding these things to my life to make my life better, to ultimately get to me, to my goal of the amount of pounds lost and what have you.
And that is helping me to not beat myself up when I’m not doing whatever, when I’m not looking like whatever!
And so the same thing goes for you.
If you are setting New Year’s resolutions,I want you to go for big ones, but you gotta put yourself, you gotta put a plan in place.
Otherwise it’s just unrealistic, it’s unattainable and you’re looking at that like you think you can do it.
On the inside of your screaming, there’s no way “I’m gonna do that”, and that’s not what I want for you!
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