Gary Keller couldn’t have been more spot on when he wrote in The ONE Thing that there’s no way to be your best if you don’t take care of your physical health. Many of us have the best intentions to live a healthy lifestyle, but that’s often easier said than done.
New Year’s is a perfect example. Staying fit and healthy is the number one resolution (37 percent) named, followed closely by losing weight (32 percent). However, just a week into January nearly a quarter of people abandon their resolution. Three months into the year that number jumps to 50 percent. By the six-month mark only 46 percent of people are still on track while the majority have fallen back into their less-than-healthy habits.
But there’s a silver lining. The people who maintain their healthy habits for six months are 10 times more likely to stick with them for the long-haul compared to those who let their resolution slide.The difference is that those people in the 46 percent stuck with their resolution long enough to create new, healthy habits.
With the holidays already upon us, now is the time to get recommitted to your weight loss goals and tolivea healthier lifestyle. No matter what shape you’re in or how busy you are, these three habits can help you get back on track to being fit by the end of the year.
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Check in Regularly With an Accountability Partner
There’s no easier way to increase your odds of success than by recruiting an accountability partner. Sharing your goals with another person and having them hold you accountable dramatically increases the chance you’ll stick with your goals. It can also make things a lot more fun.
But it’s not enough to appoint an accountability partner. The American Society of Training and Development found that if you have an accountability partner, your probability of reaching a goal is 65 percent. If you schedule regular accountability appointments the probability jumps to 95 percent.
That’s exactly what Peggy Delano did after she signed up for our first Time Blocking Mastery Course. After realizing her ONE Thing was improving her physical health and losing weight, Peggy decided to go for broke and made her co-workers and Facebook friends her accountability partners. Every day she would post her actual measurements on Facebook, and on Fridays she would even upload a video for all to see.
Knowing that others were paying attention and giving her encouragement helped Peggy stick with her new healthy habits. Ultimately, Peggy lost 20 pounds in six weeks!
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Plan Your Meals
Meal planning is like time blocking for your diet. Planning out each meal in advance helps you make better choices and stick to a pre-determined weekly menu of healthy food. In short, having a plan laid out gives you more control over what and when you eat.
Instead of making food choices each day based on what’s available or easy, you’ll have everything you need to eat healthy. Sit down at the end or beginning of the week to decide what you’re going to have for each meal and snack. The goal is to create a weekly menu as well as a grocery list.
If you’re trying to stay within a certain calorie count, leveraging an app like MyFitnessPal can help. The app provides nutritional breakdowns for a huge list of foods. You can also scan the barcodes of food packages to collect and store the nutritional info.
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Morning Stretches
How we start our morning often sets the tone for the entire day. If you only have five minutes to spare, make a short stretch session part of your regular morning routine.
There are so many benefits to stretching:
- It’s low impact, which means people of all physical fitness levels can do it.
- Stretching helps keep muscles and joints more limber so there’s less risk of injury.
- It also improves range of motion.
- Muscle tension and fatigue can be relieved with stretching.
- Stretching calms the mind. Focus on your breathing and it can double as a meditation session.
- Blood flow is increased when you stretch. This helps deliver more oxygen and nutrients throughout the body.
- Increased blood flow from stretching helps boost energy levels.
Stretching is good for your mental and physical health, extremely easy to do and can get you ready to take on the day. It’s amazing what a difference a few minutes of stretching can make.
Have you stuck to your healthy resolutions? Share your story on our Facebook page to help others stay motivated to hit their own goals.