New Year's resolutions?? Not for me!
I’ve always found new year's resolutions a bit strange, mine have usually been to lose weight, but starting a weight loss regime on 1st January is just bonkers!! There’s so still much Christmas food left, I mean it’s impossible to go on a “diet” when you’ve still got half of your Hotel Chocolat Father Christmas to be eaten, and there’s a huge wedge of blue cheese in the fridge. I’m not saying don’t make plans to get healthy, or to lose weight (though I don’t diet anymore), but how about perhaps thinking of the first few days of January as the “soft launch” to January. And while we’re thinking about it, January is a miserable month, everyone is skint, it’s cold, grey and miserable and that’s just going to make everything even harder!! So, let's think of January as the “soft launch” to 2019.
Make a start on those goals you’ve set yourself, but don’t go in all guns blazing, you’re more than likely setting yourself up for failure. Don’t go from not exercising to saying that you’re going to go to the gym 5 times a week. Use January to try different types of exercise to find the one you enjoy. And if you’re planning on eating a bit healthier in 2019 use January to find the best plan that fits in with your lifestyle. Then by the time February comes around, you will have made progress with your goals and will be ready up the ante.
One of the things that helped me lose six and a half stone, and keep it off, was counting calories, part and a large part of that included meal planning. Before I’d do my grocery shopping for the week I’d sit down and work out what to have for lunch and dinner each day (breakfast is pretty much always the same thing, so no need to plan that). This took all of the guesswork out of what I’d be eating, which was especially handy when I came home exhausted from work.
Now that I’ve lost the weight, I still plan my meals for the week - after all this has been a lifestyle change, and it’s something I’ll continue to do. This works for me, I had been overweight for the majority of my life, I lost weight before, but put it back on again (which is why I don’t go on diets), this is the first time I’ve kept the weight off! If you’ve tried some of the various diet plans out there, and just ended up putting the weight back on like I did, maybe this is the year to try something different, you never know, this could be the thing that works for you like it did for me.
