my journey

How to stick to a weight loss (or any other) New Year’s resolution, according to my sister Kate, who actually keeps her New Year’s goals every single year. Kate has maintained her weight loss and been at her goal weight for 3 years now, but she was kicking ass on her New Year’s goals long before then.

1. Your change must be specific and measurable

If you go into the new year telling yourself “I want to lose weight”, yes, it’s a goal, and yes it’s technically measurable, but it’s not incredibly specific. Kate’s advice on this one is to focus on the input rather than the output. Weight loss is the result of a specific input. How do you plan to lose weight? This is a low-carb blog, so I will give some specific examples:

- Do you plan to stay under 20g total carbs per day? Then you will also need to resolve to track at least somewhat to keep that goal in check. 

- Do you plan to stick to a specific list of foods? For example, staying LCHF, Paleo, Atkins ‘72 Induction, daily, regardless of the number of carbs you consume? You may want to keep a list of on-plan foods on hand in case you run out of ideas. 

- Do you plan to have cheat days, or commit to no cheats? When? Outline these for yourself. Be honest with yourself: if you seem to “fall off the rails” and one cheat day becomes a whole cheat week, you may want to consider not allowing cheat days for yourself, says Kate.

This way, the goal is to commit to changing the habit, which will then lead to the desired output, the weight loss. 

2. Write it down

Write your goal down somewhere where you will see it daily. You can do any of these, or all four of them, or make your own, as long as you can remind yourself of your goals daily. 

- Tape a copy of your goals to your bathroom mirror

- Put a copy in your wallet

- Take a screenshot of your goals and make it your desktop background

- Make a pop-up action item on your phone with your goals daily, that you have to acknowledge before it will clear out

Kate also recommends keeping a personal journal and jotting down notes about your day. Not just your thoughts on your fitness/weight loss journey, but on how your entire day went. Were you emotional? Bored? Restless? Anxious? Did you do something fun and exciting? How did you feel about it? Did you really kick that day’s ass and everything went great? Write it down, and you will be able to start seeing patterns. Kate writes in her journal daily and has for years, and now she is able to look back and see patterns in her own behavior. It is also therapeutic to put your thoughts into words.

3. Tell someone

Tell a friend or family member your goal. You are more likely to stick with it if someone else knows. If you’ve made your goal many, many times and have had trouble sticking to it in the past, and your confidant knows this, ask them to lend you an ear when you’re thinking about giving up your goal. Ask them to be there for you.

4. Track your progress 

Kate has several recommendations for this, all of which she has used.

- Keep a chart or simple tracker in your journal to show what days you’ve stuck to your goal

- Keep an actual physical chart on a wall in your bedroom if you want it to be kept private, or your living room/kitchen if you want your goals to be public to your family/room mates

- Use an online tracker. There are so many different ways of doing this, including HabitRPG, Joe’s Goals, MyPlate, MyFitnessPal, or even making yourself a simple Word document to keep track.

5. Don’t plan to fail

This piece is what diverges from most advice on how to keep a New Year’s Goal, but Kate is the only person I’ve ever seen achieve her New Year’s goals without fail each year, so here goes:

Do not start your year off with a back-up plan. For example, don’t start your year off telling yourself, “I will be on plan every single day. But if I’m not, I will only cheat on holidays and also only when I really really feel like it.”

She goes all-in and tells herself that if she doesn’t make her goal as she has outlined it, then she has failed. And she will have to accept that failure and move on from it. And Kate doesn’t want to fail, so she does a few things to set herself up for success:

- She thinks very hard about what her goal will be. Is it reasonable for the entire year? You can make your goal anything you want, so think hard about how it’s worded. 

- She thinks about what the pitfalls are going to be, and when times are going to be toughest. Kate has recognized in the past that she has trouble sticking to her way of eating when her boyfriend stays with us for an entire weekend, so she plans ahead on what she’ll be eating to ensure that she is not caught off guard. What are your pitfalls? Holidays? Parties? Happy hour? Emotionally bad days?

- She sets a start date for her goal, usually January 1st, and she pumps herself up mentally. 

Now, Kate hasn’t failed a goal in several years. However, if you do happen to not stick to your goal for the year, pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and move on! So you didn’t make your New Year’s goal because you slipped one day? Get right back on the next day! It’s so much more satisfying to say, “I kept my promise to myself 364 days this year. That’s amazing!” than to say that you were really really good on your goal until March, but then you just threw the whole plan out the window.