Most of us have tried a New Year's resolution at some point in our life, but we likely didn't stick to it. After a few weeks, the resolution is usually abandoned, and we returned back to our old habits that we formally recognized were not so good for us.

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But rather than a resolution, Roberta Anding, a nutrition expert at Baylor College of Medicine, recommends focusing on a reset of our lives with more realistic decisions.

Realistic Expectations

A reset differs from a resolution in that you reset how you do something, rather than trying to completely eliminated from your life even though you want it in your life.

This is the psychological factor that has many people fail their resolutions, because they are in an internal conflict trying to completely remove something that they don't really want to remove from their life. This is an incredibly difficult motivational barrier to change our actions when we part of us doesn't really want to give up what we know is better for us to give up.

We set a resolution were always looking at a specific date, January 1st of that year. But when we set a resolution based on a start date, that means there is an implicit end date as well.

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However, if you think about most people's purpose in adopting a New Year's resolution to change something about their lives, we're mostly doing changes related to improving a healthy lifestyle.

At this point it should be clear that we need to drastically reevaluate how we set ourselves up to succeed, or set ourselves up to fail. The internal psychological framing of our decisions and how we will actualize those decisions, is an important factor.

Portion, not Elimination

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Instead of trying to completely eliminate something, such as never eating something again, try to focus on what you can reasonably expect yourself to do. You can more reasonably expect yourself to eat 1/5th of the serving you normally did, or cut it down even more. This allows you to actualize a goal in three more reasonable expectations when we factor in the psychological turmoil we are in when we try to give up something completely despite still holding on to a deep desire to have it.

Anding points out that the amount we eat should be the initial focus, rather than demonizing food entirely. She points out to frame the reset as:

"I'm going to have this food that I absolutely love, but when I have it, it's going to have to be in a moderate amount."

If you enjoy eating pasta, or other carbs, going completely carbon free is not very reasonable given how much you enjoy them. And if you do reduce your carbs, eat your protein and vegetable first and save your starch for last, which promotes the chance of less carbs being consumed. But don't confuse fruits and vegetables with other carbs. Natural sugars are not the same as other sugars or processed carbohydrates like is found in pasta.

Change is Hard

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This is about giving yourself a more realistic and reasonable expectation and demand upon yourself to change. Change is very hard, and the more drastic that the contrast of change is, and the more requirements imposes upon us, the more difficult it is to actualize through a sustained repetition of behavior.

If food isn't where you have an issue changing your lifestyle habits, then maybe you can try to incorporate additional physical activity or exercise into your daily routine. Finding just 10 minutes each day is a place to start while you can increase your time each day as you progress.

Change is possible, and change is often a very good thing for us. Many people don't like change, it takes effort, time and energy, it's a hard road as opposed to simply doing nothing to change. Change has great psychological barriers to it. The worst position you can be in life is to deny the possibility or the need for change, and think that everything about yourself or the world is just fine the way it is.

Easy Changes to Adopt

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Key changes to make to your lifestyle, that are very reasonable and can be done immediately, are:

• Prioritize what you put on your plate, and how much you put there. It's true that fresh fruits and vegetables are best, but don't avoid or miss out on eating them just because you don't have fresh produce available. Frozen and canned food is extremely convenient as an easy way for you to prepare food and shift your lifestyle.
• Get rid of sugar outside of natural foods. Especially those sugar injected drinks. If you want calories for energy, get them from your food by chewing it, not simply drinking the sugar into. Since we're talking about portion size at first to accommodate a change in your behavior and psychological framework, start by switching out one sugary drink a day, and then increase until you only have one sugary drink a day. And eventually you can get to the point where you don't have any unnatural sugars in anything you drink, or eat.

Quick Fix Fixation

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If you think you can do some "quick fix" for a short duration of time as a temporary resolution, it likely won't work. Most people do not want to put in the time, energy, effort, dedication, determination and persistence to follow through on lifestyle changes. So many people are looking for the next fad diet, or some detox substance that will purge the "wickedness" from their body.

But detox is our only one part of rebooting your body to get back onto a healthy lifestyle. If all you're interested in is a quick fix or bypass to reach a goal, then you're not really that interested in arriving at that goal through more dedication and motivation to achieve it.

Let go of the idea that you're going to get some magical quickfix to improve your health conditions. You need to actually change your lifestyle in order to receive lifestyle improvements. Effort is required.

The focus is to adopt modifications to your behavior that you can psychologically accept and motivate yourself towards more easily and hold onto these changes, rather than revert backwards because it was too difficult for you to do at first.

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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References:

• In 2017, focus on reset rather than resolution

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@krnel
2016-12-28, 9:30am