So here we are…four days into the new year.  Had you made any big resolutions for the year?  Have they already fallen by the wayside or are you still on track?

I saw a meme last week that summed up how I felt about resolutions for a really long time, I couldn’t find it to share here but it was something along the lines of – all of my new year’s resolutions require a level of dedication and ambition that I have not once in my life exhibited.

Why do we think that while we’ve been eating take-out and drive thru 8x a week and supplementing those trips with microwave dinners, breakfast pastries and buckets of coffee and wine, that, magically, on January 1st, while likely nursing an epic hangover from both alcohol and copious amounts of food, that we are going to be motivated to suddenly take up a grueling exercise routine and become the queens and kings of healthy meal prep??

Now don’t get me wrong…I believe people are absolutely capable of doing anything they set their minds to.  That we can all do things we once said would have been impossible for us.  But the chances that we are going to suddenly take up exercise 6 days a week and give up drive-thru, caffeine and alcohol overnight…well sorry but, for most of us, that is a set up to fail.

But not because we lack willpower (as I’ve talked about before) or ambition or self-control or because we just aren’t good/strong enough…it’s because that isn’t the best way to make lasting changes.  Lasting changes happen by making small, manageable and sustainable changes over time.  It isn’t rocket science.  It isn’t magic.  It’s actually pretty boring…and that’s why people don’t love it.  It isn’t big or flashy or exciting.  Slowly upping your water intake or starting with walking down your driveway and back doesn’t seem like a big deal.  You’re not going to break the internet posting about how you’re implementing 10 minutes of movement to your day or committing to one of your snacks being fruit instead of a pop tart…but flashy or not, those are the types of changes that you can stick with, and those are the ones that become solid foundations for building bigger changes on.

Sometimes yes, we need to rip the band-aid off and just do something, but even when you want to go cold turkey – often it’s easier to start tapering down first.  At one point I was trying to figure out what foods were causing me gastrointestinal distress and was preparing to do an elimination diet. One of the things I had to give up was caffeine, which I had been drinking by the bucketful almost every single day since I was about 14 years old.  I knew from experience with the flu or fasting for surgery that without a dose of caffeine within a certain number hours of waking up that I would be racked with a headache that would make focusing on anything other than the inside of my eyelids impossible and that the pain would weaken my resolve to follow through on the process – and I knew that even though it was going to be temporarily very restrictive that I needed to do this to figure out what was going on with me.  So for the two weeks before I began I started cutting back on caffeine each day until the day before I started the diet when I had only two sips of coffee in the bottom of my mug – basically two little shot glasses worth of coffee.  I still felt the impact of no caffeine at all the next few days, but I know it was largely a combination of that and eliminating sugar and meat and dairy all at once as well.  

Same idea when I quit smoking…I had a target date set and over the course of the weeks leading up to that I tried to reduce the amount I was smoking to make it mentally easier on myself…but once I had eliminated the cigarettes I couldn’t have anymore.  They aren’t the type of thing you have “in moderation”…and that’s the difference between addictive substances like cigarettes, drugs and alcohol and lifestyle things, like food and exercise and television and waking up early and going to bed at a certain time.  All the lifestyle things we HAVE to learn to do in moderation if we want them to stick…for most of us just never eating sugar again is NOT a sustainable plan.  Going to bed at 10pm every single night is not going to be possible.  NEVER grabbing drive-thru when we’re on the run isn’t realistic.  And NEVER missing a workout is unlikely.

And that is why the problem with the resolutions isn’t us – it’s the resolutions themselves.  It’s the lofty goals that we hang some sort of morality on.  It’s the all-or-nothing mentality of worthiness…if I eat nothing but salad I am successful but if I eat a cookie I am a failure.  It’s the comparisons to others – if other people can do it, then I can too, and if I can’t then there’s something wrong with me.  

It’s creating resolutions for ourselves to look and act nothing at all like the selves that we actually are.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t make resolutions…if you want to, and it resonates with you as a positive and motivating thing then you absolutely should embrace it and do it wholeheartedly.  But instead of making those resolutions earth shattering commitments to being an unrecognizable version of yourself, why not commit to small changes that you can build on?  Why not highlight the areas you are already progressing in and commit to another little step forward?  Here’s a few things I consider when I make a resolution:

  1. Whenever possible my resolutions focus on ADDING something to my life instead of taking it away.  We’ve created so many labels for things and attached moral values to them that our default is to want to give up “bad” food or “negative” things – but instead why not think of something positive that you can add.  If you want to eat better, don’t immediately say “no more donuts for breakfast”, instead leave the donut BUT commit to adding in some fruit and nuts, or a big glass of water first thing when you wake up…master that new habit, make sure it becomes a solid part of the routine that is done consistently and then add another healthy food.  Eventually you start to crowd out the “bad” stuff and you also don’t need to suffer and feel bad about it.
  2. Is what I want a realistic next step from what I’ve been doing?  If you haven’t been active in years, don’t cook pretty much ever, work 60 hours a week and have no fitness equipment – your resolution to grow a poppin’ booty in your basement and give up take-out entirely is not realistic…but committing to trying to make one new recipe every week and walking daily with the intention to start some jogging intervals and be able to run a 5K in 8-12 months, is attainable and something you can build on when you’ve completed it.
  3. Is it authentic to me?  The bottom line is I love fitness and nutrition.  But some people who I see regularly at the gym, who come and do workouts four or more times a week and are strong and dedicated, still are not passionate about it.  They do it because they know they should and the group classes are the most enjoyable way to get it done…but even after years of doing it, they don’t love it.  They don’t want to push harder, find new ways to challenge themselves, take up running, or biking or mountain climbing and they don’t focus on changes to their physique.  They are happy with what they are doing and that is all they’re interested in doing.  Guess what?  It is absolutely awesome that in spite of being pretty indifferent to exercise that they’ve gotten themselves into a routine at all. And if they let social media and magazines and movies make them feel like that wasn’t enough, that if they work out four times per week they should have visible abs and 18% body fat, then really they’re just going to topple the whole house of cards.  I took up fitness and fell in love with it…not everyone does…and not everyone NEEDS to workout every single day or lose weight or change how they eat.  So setting a goal for the new year based on fitness or physique or food for MANY people is not true to them.  For me setting an intention to get into body building would not be authentic to me because that level of restriction and physique focus is NOT who I am or what I am about.

My resolutions this year – to increase my muscle mass, to complete a list of books and courses I have been dragging my feet on for a while now, to run a marathon (if I can do it in person), and to set a better structure to my day-to-day time so that I don’t always feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants.

If you did make a resolution – and aren’t feeling aligned with it – Let. It. Go.  The absolute most surefire way to make yourself feel like a complete and utter failure in life is to live in a way that is not true to you; to judge your worth based on someone else’s metrics.  Make a new one today – who cares if it’s January 4th…or for that matter, if it’s February 15th, or June 20th or November 1st…if TODAY you have a resolution that feels right FOR YOU. Then set it and go for it and just know that I am over here rooting for you.

You got this.