Unrealized resolutions are the source of anxiety, guilt and depression come December. Then we often react irrationally, eating more, exercising less widening the chasm between healthy lifestyles and hapless self indulgence.The vicious cycle continues, year after year. Unless you revolt against traditional, and doomed to fail, resolving.
In ’07, break the cycle with some understated revolutions. Be stealth, don’t tackle Mount Everest, be the Eveready bunny. Learn the basics of healthy mind-body hygiene and adapt principles to your circumstances. Setting reasonable goals and take baby steps. Be a tortoise, not a hare.
My goals this year?
- Reduce body weight by 5%, and hold it!
- Reduce trouser size by 2 inches.
- Limit any-snack days to 3/week. Other days are snack-free.
- Spend 10 minutes twice daily doing something non-essential, non-goal oriented, requiring quiet time. Bible surfing and yoga-style abdominal breathing fill the bill.
- Wean to one cup of coffee daily.
- Adjust portion sizes.
Like you, I would like to look like Mr. (or Miss, if your of the female persuasion) Universe, but first I want to look something approaching my thirties. But let’s think about it. You didn’t go from there to here in a year. Why assume you can climb the down escalator (which really does seem to go faster) so easily? Setting realistic goals should be an overarching “revolution”.
So how do we get there, without drugs, divorce or despondency? If you do nothing else this year commit the following to your brains’ permanent hard drive:
Exercise is non-negotiable.
This isn’t my quote, but the oft discredited late Dr. Robert Atkins’, and this line appears in the not so fine print buried in his website. American culture is hypersensitized to diets as the yellow brick road to weight loss. But researchers know that no matter how you choose to eat in a proven diet program (as long as it isn’t the ‘Eat-All-You-Want-What-You-Want-Plan’), you’ll lose weight in the short term. But at most 3% of folks keep off the weight long term, and uniformly it’s the exercise that separates the men from the boys.
Of course, you can attain synergy by combining strength training with aerobics, emphasizing processed carb reduction, and reducing stress by meditating, praying or simply actively releasing muscles while abdominal breathing in a quiet place.
You see, like a puzzle of many small pieces, healthy living is interconnected and web-like; each component contributes to and derives from the whole precisely because of its connections to others. So it is that exercise reduces stress and insulin resistance, stress reduction lowers fat building and depression-promoting cortisol and promotes appetite suppression, all of which conspire to make exercise easier and more pleasing, and the vicious cycle seems a lot less formidable!
So go forth with optimism and resolve to evolve….slowly, purposefully and remembering that the turtle wins the race…eventually.
