Health Resolutions you can achieve, Part 1....

Today's Post: Monday, 1-4-2010

a) Since I value self-improvement and have a ways to go on some things, I read a few articles about New Year’s Resolutions to see if I could learn any tips that might help me on my two main resolutions.

Wow !! I am so glad I did.

I learned something incredibly valuable I had no clue was so.

At least according to the stories I read it’s true.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Caroline Zinko quoted research saying that 40 % of the people who set resolutions actually were still on track to achieve them 6 months later!

And, another article said that 65% of the people made at least some progress towards their goals in their resolutions. That includes the 40 % who basically succeed and another 25% of all the people who set resolutions who get at least some progress out of doing so.

This is about five times better than I thought was the case because of all the bad jokes about people who don’t get anywhere at all with their resolutions.

b) I already knew that you are more likely to achieve goals if you:

Write them down.

Have a deadline or target date by when you plan to achieve them.

Pick only the one, two, or three most important goals to work on.

And, perhaps most important of all, you make a list of things you can for sure do that will make your goal more likely to happen or even happen for sure –
AND, begin doing the items on your list within two or three days of writing them all down.

You actually have no direct control over achieving your goal. But you do have absolutely direct control over whether or not you take the steps to achieve it.

Part one, today’s post, is about Fat Loss. (Part two in our next post I plan for tomorrow is about other ways to improve your health.)

This one is the most popular resolution by far.

Losing weight, or more accurately and more useful, losing fat, is NOT easy.

Until recently the success rate in losing excess fat and keeping it off was been ridiculously low.

But, we are beginning to know how to both lose fat AND keep it off completely after it’s lost.

Unfortunately, that’s a fight I have yet to win completely myself.

I lost 30 pounds of fat and then had to reverse half the causes &, as might be expected, I gained 14 pounds of it back.

Even worse, I managed to regain almost all the two inches I lost off my waist.

So, my health resolution for 2010 is to lose back the 14 pounds using methods I can then continue indefinitely AND to lose FOUR or more inches off my waist by actually losing about 32 pounds of fat and gaining 18 pounds of muscle.

I have a large list of things to begin now or begin by mid-April when I’ll have a bit more money to spend on them.

Since I made that resolution, I’ve already begun doing two of the things on my list. And, I’ve researched many of the ones I’ll begin later in the year.

1. I’ve recently had a very bad case of the middle of the night munchies – for at least the last five years or more! So even though some of the things have been lower in calories and higher in fiber, this clearly has helped keep me fatter than I should be.

So, I began to simply go back to bed anyway when I woke up hungry. That’s occasionally obnoxious but by eating a bit more with dinner I was doing it. Then I ate just a little bit just once one night -- & my acid reflux which had gotten a bit better, immediately got much worse.

That tends to mess up the restfulness of my sleep as much as being hungry does. Ah Ha! I said to myself.

Since I will be hassled anyway at night whether from waking up hungry or acid reflux and NOT eating when I feel hungry at night is keeping me fat so why NOT use the method that is better for my health AND will help me lose the 14 pounds and 32 pounds of fat?

So far, this has worked & I’ve not eaten at night since.

As long as the extra I eat at dinner is mostly nonstarchy vegetables this one by itself may lose me 7 to 14 pounds of fat towards my goal.

2. Many people who do jumping rope have sharply lowered their fasting glucose and HBA1C blood sugar readings and, even better, lost inches off their waist measurements!

And, even though I’ve hardly any remaining time to exercise, I realized that jumping rope for just 4 to 8 minutes the three days I get home from work earlier and once on Sundays would get me in far better shape if I build up gradually and use the interval cardio style recommended by Dr. Al Sears in his PACE method.

Doing this will burn an extra 400 to 600 calories a week directly. And, according to some sources, it will also cause me to burn another 400 to 1500 calories a week late in the evening when my body is recovering.

It will also, I believe, add 9 pounds of the muscle I want to gain -- in my jumping muscles in my legs and buttocks.

This one also has the potential to lose from 5 to 25 pounds of fat & remove from an inch to 4 inches from my waist by itself.

This one I’ve not yet begun doing. But I have found two places in our house where I may have enough room to do it & the rope I can use initially to try it. If it works at all with that bit of badly suited rope, I’ll then invest the $25 to $35 dollars to get a good jump rope.

And, if jumping rope inside simply takes up more space than we have available, I’ll buy and use an Urban Rebounder that costs more like $150 or $160. That may take a few weeks longer to buy, but since this is a major step towards my goal, I WILL get it done!

By half way through the year, I’ll be adding that 800 to 1950 calories of exercise to each of my weeks. I already average 900 calories a week of strength training and interval cardio in a few minutes each morning. And, I burn about 600 calories a week walking mostly during my commute. So I’ll go from about 1500 calories a week to 2300 to 3450 calories a week burned by my exercises.

3. It was in the recent news that people trying to lose weight (or eat more vegetables for health reasons) did well by drinking just 2 glasses a day of low sodium V8. The people who drank the V8 lost about a quarter pound a month more than the people who did not.

Guess what? !! In a year of 52 weeks a quarter pound a month of extra fat loss is 13 pounds.

That’s almost all my 14 pounds on the scale that I want to lose and nearly half the 32 pound fat loss I intend to achieve!

I can DO that!

The big cans of low sodium V8 don’t cost much. So I’ll start with those.

Then, because of the potential health harm of the BPA in the lining of cans, when I can afford it, I’ll switch to Virgin Mary drinks made with unsalted tomato juice that I can buy in bottles.

As you can see, I’ve just begun my list of about 14 things I plan to do to reach my goal. I may not have direct control over my fat. But I can and will add those 14 things!

Then, I simply plan to keep doing them all.

I believe that if I hit my fat with 14 things each one of which might cause me to lose from 5 to 14 pounds of fat – from each one, I’ll reach my two key goals.

So, some of them won’t work. Some of them I may not be able to keep doing. But I believe the combination is virtually guaranteed to do the job.