Healthy New Years Resolutions!

Does anyone really keep their New Year's Resolutions? Ok, that wasn't the right question. The right question is: how long do they keep them? Most of the time, it's not very long. What is a New Year's Resolution anyways? I think it's just an excuse to set a goal with a solid start date which makes it easy to measure. I also think it's a joke. It is universally understood that New Year's Resolutions are hardly kept for very long.

This year, let's change that! Lets make some realistic goals and surpass them! The following are a couple of goals that are easy to keep and will greatly affect your weight loss! The first one I saw in Fitness Magazine.

Make your New Year's Resolution to make healthier shopping lists!

This is fantastic advice! Think about it- how hard would it be to mess that one up? If you make a resolution to eat healthier and you're sitting at home looking in the cupboards and have nothing but unhealthy choices, it will be very easy to throw your New Year's Resolution out the window.

Now when making your grocery list or shopping without one, you have healthy and unhealthy choices side by side, so there is NO EXCUSE not to buy healthy food! As everyone knows, excuses kill goals, resolutions, and diets more than anything.

Set cardio exercise goals that you KNOW you will be able to accomplish EVERY TIME you perform a particular cardio exercise.

It takes repetitive bad eating and lack of exercise to put on weight and it takes repetitive good eating and exercise to take it off. Pushing yourself during exercise after exercise until you reach your goal is great; but you know what is better? Pushing yourself each exercise and reaching your goal every time! To do this, set time or distance goals. This way, you know you can't fail. Let's say your goal is one mile. If you can only run for 10 feet this time, walk the rest as fast as you can, but keep moving until you reach one mile. Even if you are out of breath and walking slow with your hands above your head, if that's the best you can do, you're pushing your body! The next time you run, increase efficiency by running a little longer or a little faster and reducing your time.

This can also be done with time goals (which is actually a better option). Set a goal of 20 minutes of your particular cardio exercise. So what you can only run for 2 minutes. Keep moving as fast as you can for 20 minutes. If you keep at it, it's only a matter of time before you will be running the whole time.

You have to set goals that you can accomplish every time and then make your ultimate measure the efficiency of how quickly you complete your goal distance or how far you go during your goal time. Set internal goals which you hit every workout and then set an external progress goal. For example, if you run/walk 20 minutes every other day. 20 minutes is the internal goal you hit each workout. An external goal may be- "I want to run 2 miles in that 20 minutes" or "I want to be running for 75% of that 20 minutes."

When I started, I was more like- "I want to be able to run a mile." I would run as much as I could and then walk a little bit, but I should have walked until I hit that mile and then increased the distance I was running, compared to walking, with each workout. Doing burns a lot of extra calories and is a great motivator.

As I said before, excuses kill goals, and I doubt anyone could come up with a good excuse why they can't move their body for 20 minutes straight at the fastest pace possible, even if it's just walking or swinging their arms.