This year, make a New Year’s plan to help achieve your resolution; don’t just talk about your resolution, write it down! Setting goals is a great tactic for sticking to a plan and is preferred by many health coaches as a means to a permanent change.
In the world of health and wellness, SMART goals are most frequently used for clients looking to make a permanent change to improve their health and wellness. SMART simply stands for Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic and Time-bound. By making your goals specific and time-bound, the probability of you achieving that goal increases. It is important to also be realistic about your goals, each SMART goal is one baby step in the direction of change and one big step towards healthy living.
You can also kick last year’s juice cleanse to the curb and ring in this New Year with a refrigerator cleanse. While juice cleanses can result in short-term weight loss, cleansing under the pretense of relieving the body of toxins, is merely a trend in today’s world. Save money, time, and hunger pains by restocking your refrigerator with ready-to-eat healthy foods. Make your refrigerator look like the garden you want your foods to come from. Your refrigerator should be filled with a variety of vibrant-colored, fresh produce; buy produce frequently as it loses nutritional value with each passing day.
Another colorful snack or meal is a pre-prepped smoothie. For a quick meal on the go, prepare all of the smoothie ingredients in the container you plan on drinking from and blend before you go. Smoothies are a great way to utilize the entire food source and gain the majority of the foods’ nutrients. Research has shown that smoothies are a better alternative to juicing because smoothies maintain the soluble fiber, which is lost in the juicing process, and is crucial for controlling hunger and maintaining the balance of nutrient levels in the body. It is important to drink a smoothie, and even a juice, within 30 minutes of processing; after that point the nutritional value of the produce starts to diminish and the sugar content starts to increase.
These tips along with frequent workouts at the Darien YMCA should help you to kick start your journey to the most successful New Year’s Resolution yet!