New Year, New You?

With the new year approaching, it’s about that time where we start to make New Years Resolutions. I for one am a fan of making New Year Resolutions as it’s a way to self-assess potential things about us that need improvement and taking the time to brainstorm ideas to start addressing this.

Most of the time, a resolution has something to do with getting healthier, which I’m a huge supporter of as I think your health and wellness are the most valuable things you can invest in.

If we’re anything alike, when you hear “New Years Resolution” you instantly think of all those people that flood the gyms in January and eventually trail off in the next month or two. Where many of these resolutions go wrong is placing too much emphasis on a quick fix and not enough emphasis on behavior changes.

In a world where technology has made it possible to do things at the tap of a screen, it’s easy to get caught up in believing that lifestyle changes can be accomplished in the same fashion. Sure, dramatically changing your eating habits, starting a fad diet, working out every day for a month, journaling/ reading every day, cooking every day, or studying something new every day can quickly change your life, but is this really something you can sustain for a full year, or even yet, the rest of your life?

When it comes to making meaningful changes to your life, the focus should instead be placed on improving your habits and behaviors.

Habits and behaviors drive your actions.

If you have terrible eating habits that you never address, you’ll only be able to hold onto that diet for so long before reverting to your old ways of eating.

With changes in your habits and behaviors, you’re facilitating a change in your lifestyle that can last many years.

Rather than going from 0-100 in your resolution, instead consider taking baby steps.

An analogy to this would be quitting smoking. Even if you aren’t a smoker, you know the hardest way to break that habit is the “cold turkey” approach. Other than utilizing addiction mitigating agents, many people will instead slowly transition away from smoking by gradually reducing their cigarette use over the course of days to weeks. Although this takes more time compared to those who have been successful with the cold turkey approach, it also dampens the “growing pains” of a new lifestyle and makes breaking the habit much more bearable and sustainable.  

By slowly introducing these New Year behavior changes into your routine, it will be much easier to keep true to your resolution for the duration of the year, and hopefully further into the future.

Consider two scenarios with the resolution of improving a diet and exercising more. In scenario 1 you jump headfirst into working out every day of the week and starting a super restrictive diet full of foods you don’t typically eat. In scenario 2, you workout 2-3x/ week and slowly start to change your diet by eliminating junk food and slowly introducing foods you wouldn’t typically eat (probably vegetables if we’re being honest with ourselves).

With scenario 1, you’ll likely start to notice changes in your body composition much sooner, but the chances of this being something you can sustain for the rest of the year are pretty low. Comparing this to scenario two, the same changes in body composition may take longer for you to notice but your ability to maintain this new diet and exercising lifestyle will be dramatically increased and the results will only compound from there.

Small actions over time can lead to big rewards in the future.

You don’t save up for your 401k in a month, you do it in small chunks over the years.

Changing your habits and behaviors, and eventually your lifestyle, happens the same way!

If you’ll be taking on a big new resolution for 2024, I commend you for having the courage to even consider this. Hopefully now you’ll have a better idea of how to approach this resolution, so you don’t become another one of those people that give up after a few months.

If your journey to becoming a healthier and fitter version of yourself is hindered by pain or injury, I welcome you to sign up for a free phone consultation with a Doctor of Physical Therapy here and get the help you need to change your lifestyle for the better!