New Year, New Rear

We have all fallen prey to the idea of New Year, New Rear! Get that butt in gear and work on yourself is the message. It's a loud message and most of us have heard the thunderous and insistent call of the New Year's Resolution. We accept the idea of resolutions like we accept that the Earth is round. And just like the Earth, after the debachery of the holidays, many of us feel a little round too after the fun and food of the holidays. New Year means we need to start adulting again and pay attention to the details of life, health and wellness.

I have been in health and fitness for about 12 years now and I can honestly say it was not my intention to become a group fitness instructor and personal trainer as my life's passion. In my 20's and most of my 30's, I had not discovered the amazing benefits of exercise, good nutrition and mindful awareness of my body. I was living a life as a young mom and doing my best just to get through the days. Between the demands of a full time job, three young kids and an husband who traveled for work quite a bit, my life revolved around convenient food, late nights and finishing my kids snacks and anything else that passed in front of me. I was about 125lbs over weight by the time I realized how much I had ignored my own wellness. I had seen a doctor and was told I was very close to needing high blood pressure and cholesterol meds to offset my current health issues. I was scared and for the first time, focused on my body as it related to me and my future. As fear and concern set in, New Year seemed like a good time to make a change and resolve to be more careful with the way I was treating myself. Why not start January 1st?

Like so many others, I set out to create a plan of more mindful eating and creating time for myself to exercise. My plan was aggressive and as I look back on those days, I realize now I was missing the point of focusing on myself. What I had actually created was a way to torture myself with food and fitness. Sound familiar?

So that first day of the year, I laced up my new sneakers, put on my coat and set out to walk. I had not exposed my body to constant movement for quite some time but I really believed it was like riding a bike. How hard could it be to walk a decent distance? One foot in from of the other seemed very doable and almost embarrassingly easy. It would have been easy for the younger more in shape me but in my late 30's, unaccostomed to exercise of any kind and much heavier than I had ever been all conspired to teach me a very hard lesson. I had set the bar too high because I was completely out of touch with where I was and where I needed to go. That was my first mistake. The walk didn't go well as you probably have already surmised and I came home after about 4 blocks feeling tired and defeated. Negative self talk can be a cruel and ugly part of failed New Year's Resolutions. The inner dialogue that continued for days after that first failed attempt was awful.

As I smarted from the walking experience, I tried to focus on the other side of my resolution pinwheel which focused on food and nutrition. Again, I set the bar very high and based my decisions on an abundance of misinformation. If lots of food helped me gain weight then little to no food should help me lose it right? Wrong. Focusing on cutting calories was the second mistake I made and I hurled headlong into a world of deprivation and denial. So far New Year's had turned into a spiral of bad decisions, misinformation and misery. How was I not succeeding at this?

At some point, you can guess that I gave up as most people do about mid February. A very high percentage of people "fail" to follow through on their goals past that point. We tend to blame it on lack of motivation, condemn ourselves internally and continue on our familiar and comfortable path again. It has become a cycle and there really is a way off the hamster wheel of resolutions and disappointment.

What I finally learned created a future of health and wellness I am so thankful for today. It is actually a much more simple equation than we like to accept. Here is a little bit of advice from someone who has been in your shoes.

Small steps create big adventures! Yes, small steps can actually take you to great heights and beautiful places within yourself and the world! One day I was lamenting that I couldn't walk very far and someone gave me some very simple but profound advice. He said, "Just put one foot in front of the other and stop focusing on the distance." It brought to mind the idea of enjoying the journey and not focusing on the destination. Once I took my focus off "winning" and started to focus on "enjoying", it was a powerful shift in my path. As long as I got out and did it, I was winning. Creating a dynamic where I had to complete a specific goal every day or week created a negative place of pass/fail or win/lose with myself. How could I fail or lose if my goal was just to put my sneakers on and get up and out the door. If I walked a mile, I had done it. If I walked a few blocks, I had still done it. The whole focus became doing something positive for myself and not focusing on "doing it right". There is no right or wrong in self discovery and growth.

If this new mindset worked with exercise, maybe it would work with my bad relationship with food as well. I had tried to cut everything out that I perceived as bad. I had taken myself down to a very low 1200 calories and because I lacked basic nutritional knowledge, I had cut out most protein and fats. Deprivation was my plan and it was creating a very cranky middle aged mom. It was time to introduce the idea that small changes create big results to my nutrition as well! This one was harder but as I began to accept that it didnt have to happen all at once and deprivation was not the answer, things began to improve. I started with one meal. Breakfast. How could I improve that one meal? Well, I hardly ate breakfast for one. When I did, it was generally very high in the sugar and bad carb categories. So, what if I began eating a couple of eggs and oatmeal? That was something I could start to do and it wouldn't be too hard to make that happen. A small change that created big results! Introducing a healthy alternative at breakfast and realizing that I had it in me to make changes and stick with them was a huge victory in the road to consistency. After all, isn't consistency and balance the goal for all of us? This new personal discovery lead to more small changes in my eating habits and improved my relationship with food.

A quick note about motivation. We like to think we will wake up January 1st with motivation shooting from our fingertips. We hope that we will get a burst of motivational energy and focus and it will all fall into place. The truth? Motivation is a by-product of action. Once you begin to move in the a positive direction, you feel great about the movement. That movement forward begins to build momentum in your habits and focus and motivation is born of this positive movement. You must move to get motivated. It's a tough reality but the truth. Accept it and accept that with small changes and positive self talk, you can create the motivation you were hoping would just materialize. It's within you but you have to do the work to bring it out! Forget motivation as you begin and just focus on movement!

Since we find ourselves in the month of resolutions, you may be finding yourself beginning to stumble a bit on your journey toward your goals. Take a look at your goals first. Are they actually achievable based on your current mindset, schedule, financials and support system? Remember, your goal is to build consistency through small habits that leave you feeling successful. If your goals are too large based on your current reality, scale them back. You can always create the next set of goals to keep you moving forward but it doesn't all have to happen in the next 4 weeks. Time is on your side here as you navigate toward the pictures on your vision board. Set checkpoints along your way that you know you can reach. If you were traveling, you wouldn't try to drive 23 hours a day and rest for an hour. You would set a realistic schedule that would make the journey both manageable and enjoyable. Now do that for your New Year's resolutions. Perhaps the first goal is to put on your sneakers and walk around the block 3 nights a week after dinner. Awesome! Dinner might be the meal you decide to make changes to that fit with your lifestyle. Maybe before that walk, you decide to sit down at the table with a healthier version of a dish you enjoy and mindfully eat the meal to reignite your relationship with food? What a great way to start!

The truth is that small habits begin to create a positive place for change to grow and establish itself in your life. Before you realize, those few seedlings of small changes you planted will grow into beautiful habits. Those habits will create momentum for more change and so it goes. The first steps are small. The first steps are scary. Change is hard. Change can even be painful. Comfort is a human desire. But comfort feeds complacency. Comfort whispers lies and and makes promises it never keeps. Small habits born of mindful decisions and your current reality are the key to shifting what feels comfortable. And if you work very hard, comfort begins to feel uncomfortable and change begins to feel natural. Small changes help you reimagine how you define comfort in your life. Comfort can look like being open to new ways to exist in your world as a healthier, stronger version of yourself!

I'm 52 and happy to have found a path that I enjoy following that leads me to a more fierce version of myself. I have reached a place where I accept and look forward to trying new things to help build a more powerful me. I believe in you and your ability to implement small changes that will create big results in your life. If you don't believe in yourself just yet, take my word for it. You are greatness and with a little effort, you will begin to see that New Year's resolutions can be a great place to start and build a future of growth and personal achievement! Now go take that first small step!