Beat New Year resolutions

Get creative with your health goals for 2019. You can start slow, but you should start now

December 10, 2018 02:19 pm | Updated 02:19 pm IST

Getty Images/iStockphoto

Getty Images/iStockphoto

It’s that time of the year. We canter towards the end of this one and into the next one, riding on Christmas and New Year festivities. Families get together to celebrate, feast and perhaps travel out to fun or exotic destinations. Many of us take stock of our lives and set targets for the coming year, shifting health goals to the new year, promising to achieve them in the coming months. A new year, a new start. January is everybody’s favourite time to make resolutions.

While it’s good to have targets, there are still a number of days left to this year. The sense of shifting action to a future date can lull you into indulging in excesses now, reassured by the thought that everything will be set right next month. Perhaps you are already in ‘making up’ mode, having fun eating and drinking now, thinking that ‘control’ is on the agenda for the next year. It’s a common trap: convincing ourselves that’s it’s justified to go overboard now, since we’ll have to experience some deprivation later anyhow, in the name of discipline.

Could you be behaving like a hoarder, anticipating such a future? It’s amusing to see this mentality around health goals being viewed as some sort of impending drought and famine about to befall and the need to stock up the body with food and drinks. Are you reading this and smiling? Be honest. You must have behaved this way at some stage in life, or known people displaying these traits.

You do realise that the more you ‘stock up’ or ‘make up’ now, the harder it will be to get on track with health goals? There will be that much more weight and those many more inches to lose, to get those muscles toned and working, that belly flatter and those arms and hips firmer. If you haven’t been able to address these so far, could you not be setting yourself up for an even greater effort, physically and mentally, to tackle the same goals? Would you not be increasing your chances of giving up at the magnitude of this effort and setting yourself up for another round of non-deliverance? Why do that to yourself?!

Start now, start slow. Ease into your health goals for next year by making minor tweaks already!

Checks and balances

* Watch what you eat. With a Christmas meal, a New Year party, and a holiday coming up, be mindful of what you consume in the days leading up to them. Cut down on calorie-dense food and drinks and spare them for select days. Avoid buffets where you can. Be conscious of food choices. Even on festivities, remember you don’t have to eat everything on the table in the same quantity.

* Start with fitter choices of moving around. Park your car further away in parking spots to walk more. Chuck the lift. Use stairs, if not all the way, then at least up some floors. Push your shopping trolleys yourself. Don’t just dump them close to your car after unloading. Push them back to a spot as close to where you picked them up from. You’ll also be doing your fellow shoppers a good deed. Pack

Pack a frisbee, tennis ball, hoopla, skipping rope and easy-to-carry outdoor play items for your holiday. Use them to design fun challenges. Playing hopscotch, pithoo , kho kho and kabaddi with all family members is a fun reason to move. If there is a trampoline at the resort, get on it! Bounce your way to fun. It’s a great workout too. Don’t pack the kids off to play on their own. Be a big kid and join them.

Get creative. You’ll love it and so will your body. End the year on a high of a different kind.

Vani B Pahwa is an ACE-certified Personal Trainer, a certified Cancer Exercise Specialist, a Master Rehab Trainer, a Functional Movement, Barefoot Training Specialist, BarefootRX Rehab Specialist, Foot & Gait Analyst, and a BOSU Personal Trainer. She is also a Mohiniyattam dancer

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.