New Year’s goals you actually reach....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 1-3-2013

Health and fat loss resolutions are some of the most common that people make this time of year.

Last Friday, 12-28-2012, we posted on ways to get started exercising or to keep exercising or both.

This time we are posting on strategies to make your New Year’s resolutions into New Year’s goals you actually reach.

Part of it is the way you approach it and part of it is specific strategies others have found to work.

1.  The more you approach it as a realistic optimist the more likely you are to achieve your New Year’s goals.

I found an article with the title “Why it’s smart to be optimistic” and placed it where I see it the title 3 times each week I do my leg exercises right next to it.

If you are optimistic, you know good things you have and that more good things can happen and that you can make some of them happen.

So you feel better and are nicer for other people to be around.

Pessimists do the reverse so they often feel bad and are grouchy and not fun to be around.

Of even more importance, people who are optimistic try things to make good things happen.  And, since some of those things do happen successfully because of it, more good things do happen for optimists!

A pessimist notes that most people who set New Year’s resolutions fail to reach them and sets none.

An unrealistic optimist makes “it would sure be nice if” New Year’s resolutions and never starts on them or gives up on them by February or March.

A realistic optimist already has good things they are trying to make happen they have already  been working on and sets New Year’s goals to achieve them or make progress on them.  They noticed that some people with such New Year’s resolutions or goals DO get them achieved!

Then, instead of saying I will achieve these New Year’s goals.  They say & do as the self help author Noah St John suggests with his afformations idea and ask themselves WHY will I achieve these New Year’s goals?

To answer that, they have to limit how many goals they will work on. 

And then they have to notice or remember or find out what obstacles they need to overcome to achieve or make progress on their New Year’s goals.

Then they have to find some solutions or possible solutions and try some and keep doing the ones that work.

Key quote from David Kirchoff, Weight Watchers CEO from a Huffington Post article:

"There is too much emphasis placed on this notion of will-power and discipline and not enough on establishing healthy habits. The difference between healthy habits and discipline is that a habit is something you don't have to think about doing. You do something enough, you're disciplined about it, and you put in the time. Eventually you don't have to think about it. It's routine."

A separate article says that this can take from 3 to 12 weeks.

But the good news is that if you once find a solution that works and do it until it’s routine it gives you great follow through and superb results.

He suggests finding 3 specific things to do or try at first.  That way, you get a LOT more leverage than listing 12 things you never do.

My experience:

1.  I’ve also successfully used listing as many things that might help I was sure I could do and began doing them.  Most of them I still do.  And, I’ve kept off 8 of the 17 pounds I lost.

This year, I think I’ve found two main strategies that I think will help me re-lose the 9 pounds on the scale that I gained back.

One I’ve already tested to work and am doing it as I write this. 

It’s pedaling the recumbent bike I have as my “chair” in front of my computer screen at my desk.  The first few weeks I did it at all I lost 5 pounds.  And the first week I did it above my goal for total time for the week I lost a pound instead of gaining one.

The new strategy I just thought of today is to try eating apple pectin by stirring some into water instead of part of the after dinner snacks I’ve been eating most evenings.  The apple pectin has no sugary carbs at all and virtually no calories but will help me stop being hungry. 

My suspicion is that will lose me about a pound a week until I’m back at my goal weight.

Those two combined I’m confident will do the job on the scale. I just need to follow through until they become habits.

Because I also have too much fat still on my belly, I’m also trying a fat loss supplement.  The two I tried first failed.  The one I’m trying now does something likely to cause fat loss so I’m giving it more time and effort before I decide if it works or not.

And, I also plan to try a new way to remove fat in specific places.  That one too I checked out the ingredients of to see if it was even possible it might work.  It passed. 

And, I’m continuing to do more on strength training to add a bit of muscle instead losing it as people to who don’t exercise.  That’s been going well.

So as you can see, to reach my goal of losing back the 7 pounds I am over my goal weight, I’m continuing to do the things that lost me 17 pounds initially. And, I’m adding two things I have reason to expect to do the job of removing the extra 7 pounds.

And, to get a shot at reaching my hoped for goal of losing 4 inches or more off my waist too, I’m continuing the strategies that should help some and trying the two strategies that might help a lot to see if they work during 2013.

B.  Last year I wrote and published a Kindle book on overcoming stage fright. And I did two things to make it more salable. 

I did that by simply working on that project on Mondays and Wednesdays which are the days I don’t write this blog.

By continuing that practice I expect to reach my two financial New Year’s goals.  Too get regular and ongoing sales of the book I already wrote and raise $60,000 early this year on a crowd funding site.

The sales I expect to get.  And, though I’m concerned about raising enough of the $60,000 target to do the jobs I’m raising it to do, I’m already putting in regular extra effort on Mondays and Wednesday’s and as I see opportunities for it during the rest of the week.

Jim Collins has it right in his new book!

The key to achievement (and reaching New Year’s goals) is to do regular work on the things you know do the job for you, the “20 mile march” he calls it, each day. 

And keep trying new things that might work but at low cost and then only expand the ones that did work. He calls that “firing bullets.”

(See Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen (Oct 11, 2011) on Amazon.com .)

If you do those two things with New Year’s goals you have, you will likely achieve most or all of them!