Keeping Your New Years Resolution

Keeping your New Year's resolution can be easy or hard. It all depends on your attitude about it. To start off being vague will make it hard for you to be successful. Having well defined goals is important in keeping your resolution. Making small incremental changes in your lifestyle help you reach your goal and keep the weight off. Remember, you did not put it all on in a day, so you can not take it all off in a day.

Goals

Start by making your goal successful. Most people put on some extra pounds during the holidays. Make your first goal to lose that weight that you put on during the holidays. You might want to make your goal to lose the ten pounds that you gained over the holidays.

Make your goals achievable. Set your goal at losing a pound a week. That means that you have to expend 3500 calories more a week or consume 3500 calories less a week. That mens 500 fewer calories a day. You can easily find ways to burn those 500 calories or not eat those 500 calories. It can be a combination of things that will help you to lose the weight.

Being concrete about your goal is great, but being concrete about how to achieve it is important also. Look at ways that you can reduce the weight without depriving yourself. You might want to look at reducing your consumption of soda. This is good on several fronts. It will help you lose weight, it is easily controllable, is good for your teeth, and saves you money.

Exercise

Besides cutting back on empty calories from sodas, you can increase your calories burned by exercising daily. Increasing your caloric expenditure is a great way to lose weight without starving yourself. You can start out with walking and later if you want you can add strength training to your routine.

Increasing your muscle mass is a good way to burn calories. The muscle mass that you have the more calories that you burn. Joining a gym is a great way to get access to the equipment as well as getting some free professional advice on how to build up your muscle mass. Just remember that you can not work a muscle everyday. You need to let it rest and recover. Building muscle mass will be in addition to your regular exercise routine.

Make small changes to your lifestyle that will result in you achieving your goal. You might want to take the stairs instead of the elevator or walk to the restaurant for lunch. Any easy way that you can increase calories burned you should take advantage of.

Proper Nutrition

Eating properly is important in reaching your goal You want to eat healthy foods that are low in calories and high in mass so that you will feel full and not hungry. Whole grain products as well as fresh fruits and vegetables are good for this. Just do not make it a very rigid diet. The more variety that you can fit into it the more likely you will be to stick with it. Do not cut back on your calories too much. It is better to cut out things like soft drinks and deserts instead of real food that is full of nutrients. When going for that second serving, wait ten to twenty minutes and see if you still want it. You probably will not want it. Saving you calories.

An easy way to get to your desired weight is to find out what you should eat for your desired weight, and eat that amount.

In Conclusion

In sum, remember, to set yourself small achievable goals and to set a new goal after achieving that goal. You might want to lose ten pounds by the middle of March. Then after that, you might want to get a goal of losing another ten pounds by May 30th. Or you might start out with walking a mile every day by the end of the month. After that, you might want to increase the distance that you walk to 2.5 miles by the end of next month. Maybe to five miles a day by the end of the following month. Walking burns one hundred calories a mile. Walking five miles a day will burn a pound of a week. Increase your muscle mass to help lose the weight faster. At the same time eat just what you should eat for your desired weight everyday. Reduce unnecessary calories from sodas and deserts.

Finally keep track of your success and reward yourself with a non food reward when you have reached a goal.