By all means write the long list but the first tip is to prioritize and circle out one or two that are most serious and most urgent.
The second tip is to make a goal, e.g. I want to do a 20-minute walk every day.
The third step is to define the time, e.g. I want to try and walk every day for 3 months or for the next one year.
This must be put on record in black and white. Keep a planner on your desk or wall and mark off whether you have kept your commitment in the day or not.
Reward yourself and compete only with yourself. It’s not how regular you are as compared to your spouse or brother or friend but how regular with yourself, e.g. 6 days out of 7 or 29 days out of 30, etc.
From the health point of view or for fitness, the greatest commitment one has to make is to walk and drink plenty of water. Both these factors help to keep your basal metabolic rate up and they are actually the two biggest controlling factors in regulating your weight. A good metabolic rate and keeping your weight within limits protects you against hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and various other diseases.
Try to make a commitment to walk 20-30 minutes daily and drink 2-3 litres of water daily. Mark this off on your planner and start with trying to keep it going for one week,three weeks, one month, three months and through the whole year. If you fail don’t give up but mark it on the planner as not done for that day and continue. Reward yourself when you achieve your targets. However, never let the reward be a food item. Let it be new shoes, socks, track pants, a sweat shirt, a movie, or a book.
The second thing to work on is your diet. One of the most negative things that people do thinking they are helping themselves to keep trim is to skip meals to compensate for some wrong food they have eaten. The result is that you lower your metabolism and this in fact results in your body gaining weight very easily.
Try to make a resolution this New Year to eat every meal—breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day and let them be balanced meals. Mark this too on your planner and reward yourself as you go along.
Slowly you will see that you don’t crave wrong foods like fried snacks and sweets so much as before and you will develop self-control when tempted to eat fatty food. Avoid these as far as possible and if you must eat it, indulge as rarely as possible or in minimum quantities. If you do all the above and totally avoid fried and sweets for one month you could lose 2-3 kgs a month.
So plan, set goals and record your progress with your New Year resolutions.
Wish you a very happy, healthy, and blessed new year!
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