It’s that time of year again…
Yes it’s that time of the year again when everyone starts making New Years resolutions. The question is will you stick to it?
The usual New Years resolutions tend to be:
‘I want to lose weight’
‘I want to drink less alcohol’
‘I want to exercise more’
‘I want to eat healthier’
What do I need to do to successfully achieve my goal in 2018?
Most of us make these resolutions but fail to make a plan to ensure they become achieved. With any resolution first of all ask yourself, what do I need to do to successfully achieve my goal in 2018? Then you should begin to think of an action plan.
For instance, if your New Years resolution is to ‘eat healthier’, ask yourself what do you really mean by this and how can I realistically achieve this? Would you like to eat better quality food, reduce the quantity or make better choices?
Make a plan…
Here’s a scenario, your resolution is to ‘remove sugar out of your diet’, so you do, completely. However, a few days later you’re already craving the sweet stuff, you give into temptation and your resolution is now a distant memory. The other option would be to make a plan.
First of all, think about making your resolution specific and consider if you want to remove the sugar completely and what types of sugar you want to remove. So your resolution now becomes ‘I want to remove refined/processed sugars out of my diet i.e. chocolate bars, sweets, cakes etc.
Write a food diary?
Next we need to consider how is this going to be Measurable? To do this we need to consider writing a food diary to monitor how much sugar we are currently consuming. Once we do this, we can then keep a track of what refined sugar we are consuming to help us gradually cut the sugar out.
Then we need to realistically discover if these goals are attainable. If you’ve said that you want to completely get rid of the sugar from your diet we need to consider events where we might slip up. Birthday parties, Christmas, Easter holidays and days where you may crave the sweet stuff. It may be difficult to pass on a slice of cake at your own birthday party when everyone else is, so you may want to reconsider totally cutting the refined sugar on these type of occasions. And for everyday, Lo Han Guo is a perfect alternative for that sweet craving fix whilst also gaining positive health benefits.
Consider how relevant this goal is to you?
We then need to consider how relevant this goal is to you. Start thinking as to why this is your goal. Is it to help boost energy levels? Get rid of those nasty migraines? Trying to lose some weight? Only you can really know how relevant your resolution is so begin to really think about this.
And finally, time. Going ‘cold turkey’ can be a bad idea as we will get urges to break our resolution. By gradually cutting sugar out of the diet you are more likely to succeed. So make a plan as to how much you want to reduce your sugar intake each week. A food diary is a good idea to monitor this.
It’s all about learning to adapt and making little life changes to make a resolution become a reality. Before the end of this year why don’t you set aside 15 minutes writing down your resolutions to make them become a reality.
And if your goal is to eat healthier, reduce sugar, lose weight or something along those lines, keep an eye out for new recipes on our website/youtube channel which can help you achieve these resolutions.
Good luck with your resolutions and have a healthy and happy 2018!
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