What's in a Resolution?

Usually by now the New Year's celebrations are just a memory and not much evidence remains of it's happenings, unfortunately this tends to include those once hopeful and optimistically made New Year's Resolutions.

According to Stephen Shapiro, author of "Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want Now"

• "Only 8% of people are always successful in achieving their resolutions. 19% achieve their resolutions every other year. 49% have infrequent success. 24%(one in four people) NEVER succeed and have failed on every resolution every year. That means that 3 out of 4 people almost never succeed."

While the diversity of resolutions range from bettering work habits to smoking cessation to dieting goals, they all usually share a common vision: improving the quality of one's life.  The first step in any of these is being able to recognize WHAT it is you want to improve upon.  As someone with a strong passion for health and fitness, I would like to address related resolutions.

Someone close to me called a few weeks after New Year's and asked me to provide her with a list of workouts she could do to continue her exciting start to her resolution to 'lose weight'.  I simply replied "No."  Understandably, she was taken aback.  I didn't leave her hanging, though, I instead talked with her in the way I talk throughout the rest of this blog.  How could I say no to someone who is seemingly off to a good start?  Because I have seen this type of situation before!  I have seen so many times the people who start "dieting" and maybe even succeed at losing some weight and abstaining from the 'bad habits' which they have decided are the culprits that lead them to their state of dissatisfaction.  But, almost as many times, I have seen the same people give in and revert back to those old habits.  Why does this happen?  Because of a hidden culprit that rarely gets recognition: the psychological aspect.

Could I have given this person a list of workouts?  Of course.  In fact I have done so in the past.  What did it accomplish?  Another call some time later for another list of workouts.  As a result, my resolution has become to no longer just hand out workouts to people and let them go do with it what they may.  Rather I have given myself a new title: Lifestyle Modification Specialist.  

"Hey, wait, you can't just wake up one day and give yourself a title like that!"  Maybe not, but I just did.  Why?  Because I feel like those who approach me do indeed want to succeed in their goals of weight loss or improved fitness.  In observing the trend of failure, I have taken it upon myself to give advice that I feel will give them the greatest chance to succeed.  

"And, what, Captain Self-Titler, might that be?"  Here it is, in two parts:

Part 1: Investigate the connotative meaning you have of food and fitness.  Connotation is defined as the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicity names or describes.  The reality is that most people have a negative one.  Remember things like: "Drop and give me 20!" or "That's it, run sprints until you can get it right!" or "As a part of your new 'diet', you will pretty much have to stop eating or drinking everything you like."  Can you see how this might present a problem?  Whether it's relating exercise with punishment or relating dieting with deprivation, neither situation ends with true fulfillment because it took doing something you hate or taking away something you love to achieve the goal.  It doesn't have to be this way.

Part 2: Learn the meaning of moderation and incorporate it into your life.  If you're like me, that may mean moderating extremes, but it still can work!  I'm going to admit something that you're not allowed to laugh at!  I have a distinct memory of playing a computer game called "The Sims" and thinking to myself, "Huh, so that's how time management works.  A little bit at a time day after day!"  Okay, once you've stopped laughing, allow me to explain.  In this game, you have a character who, upon creation, gets the Newspaper and looks for a job.  From there, the game is all about achieving success in work, life, and relationships.  You must develop the following skills: Cooking, Mechanical, Charisma, Cleaning, Body, Logic, and Creativity.  With only so much time in the day, you have to spend equal amounts of time on each of these in order to improve.  You have to sleep to have energy (6-8 hours gone); you have to work to make money and improve in your career (8 more hours gone from the day); you have to shower and use the bathroom throughout the day to keep up hygiene (1 hour); in the remaining 7ish hours you have left in the day, you have to play a musical instrument for 'Creativity' points; practice speaking in a mirror for 'Charisma' points; use the stove, microwave, or grill to eat of course, but also to gain 'Cooking' points; play chess or read books to gain 'Logic' points, socialize with friends over the phone or in person to keep morale high.  You get where I'm going with this, right?  At the time, I was teaching myself to play guitar.  I remember I would sit down for a few hours at a time and end up so frustrated that I couldn't change notes and maintain tempo or couldn't play and sing at the same time.  Weeks would pass before I picked it up again and repeated the same pattern: excitement, frustration, cessation.  I decided to try it 'The Sims way' and started playing 15 minutes or so each day regardless of how much or little I wanted to.  The result - I broke through my plateau and before I knew it I was changing notes with ease and strumming and singing fell in sync.

Whether you made a New Year's Resolution for 2009 or not, whether you've stuck to your resolution or not, try approaching it in this manner!  

Make up your mind that you will engage in some form of activity each and every day.  Take your dog for a walk, cut down some trees with a hand operated saw, play racquetball with a friend, learn how to lift weights (and erase the connotation that lifting means you'll turn into the incredible hulk), go for a hike, go on a canoe trip, ride a bike, etc.  Fitness doesn't have to mean forcing yourself to run aimlessly on a treadmill.  Make it fun!

Make up your mind that you will think more in terms of 'eating to live' rather than 'living to eat'!  Strive to eat as many of your meals with the mindset that you only get to eat so much in a day and try to make as much of that as possible have 'nutritional value'.  Love pie?  Fine, eat it!  Just remember that it possesses almost ZERO nutritional value and you are possibly missing the chance to provide your body with nutrients found in meats, vegetables, and fruits!  How 'bout instead of living to eat that piece of pie, you reward yourself with a small slice of it after you have eaten foods high in nutritional value!  

Everyone has their guilty pleasures and it is, in my opinion, unhealthy and unrealistic to say that you have to give up something you enjoy to allegedly find the satisfaction of reaching your goals.  You just have to, in the words of "South Park" - 'pwactice-a da self-discipwine!'