So… How are those New Year Resolutions going?
It’s May now, surely we should be on top of the world with our better, healthier selves? We all know the story. Midnight December 31st 2013 rolls around, and we are full of bold, optimistic and ambitious promises to make 2014 THE year to get it together. Exercise more. Eat better. Save money. Drink more water. Give up smoking. Party less. Study more. Learn to like green tea. Jump on the kale bandwagon. And, come January 2nd (because obviously Jan 1st is spent with a sore head and is a totally justifiable junk food day), we begin all our promises. ALL of them. It’s exhausting, and just like 2013, and 2012, and so on, we give up several days in. Or a few weeks if you’ve done REALLY well.
It’s the same story for everyone, no matter how unique you are, or how much you really meant it. Life happens, the world keeps turning, and we slip back into bad habits. On the one hand, as a fitness instructor, this is great news for me. It means a couple of times a year I get an influx of clients desperate to fit the dress (or bulk up to pull off those red chinos for the boys). On the other hand, as a Masters student in Public Health, it’s frustrating to see that cycle of starting and then falling off the wagon continuing. Especially since it really is quite simple to make long-lasting life changes.
That’s right. Simple. Long-lasting. Life changes. And YOU can make them. The secret? Just work on one small change each month.
Do them one at a time. It takes around about 30 days to either create a new (healthy) habit or to break a (bad) habit. If you truly want to make some changes, then putting more focus into ONE thing will yield more permanent results. Handily enough, 30 days is also a month. So, without further ado, here is your easy-peasy guide to gently surviving the rest of this year, making sustainable changes (let’s call them ‘tweaks’) to your lifestyle, so that come 31st December, you won’t be needing to make ANY New Year Resolutions at all. Except for maybe starting a swear jar. Oh, and calling your mum a little bit more.
Carrie Skinner, MPH student at UCC, and owner at www.carrieskinnerfitness.com