New Year's Resolutions to Lose Weight - Why Do We Do It to Ourselves?
It’s the day after Christmas and you are hungry. You go into the kitchen and pile your plate high with leftovers. When you’re finished, you stare contemplatively at the countertop full of cookies, candies, cakes and pies and decide to go with one of each.
Why not? It’s the holidays and everyone knows that holiday calories don’t count (except they do and your jeans have been trying to tell you that since Thanksgiving). Besides, you have to eat all of these goodies by December 31st because come New Year’s Day, you will be jumping on that get-fit train. You’re really going to stick with it this time. You’ve got a new fad diet waiting in the wings for you, and there it will wait until January 1st.
This is the New Year’s resolution tale you have become all too familiar with. That first day of the New Year rolls around and you toss all the cakes and cookies, head out to buy some cute new workout clothes and sign up for big change at the local gym. You stop at the store on the way home and load up on all the foods outlined on your new weight loss plan. You are gung-ho. Nothing is going to sway you from success this time. Week one: you’re eating as much chicken and fish as your body can handle and going to the gym every single day. Five pounds gone; you’re feeling pretty proud. Week two: you’re still eating chicken but the fish has to go. You’ve been to the gym four days this week. A three pound weight loss still has you feeling pretty good. Maybe you’ll reward yourself with a small ice cream cone on the way home.
Week three is going OK, but you had pasta for dinner last night and you sampled some of your handiwork while baking for your kid’s upcoming bake sale. You only made it to the gym twice this week because you had a couple of appointments and after-school activities and, well, life. You had life. And here’s where the proverbial wheels start coming off the wagon. All the little missteps turn into a big backslide and before you know it, you’ve gained seven pounds. You know you need to find a simple weight loss program that will work. You need something that you can incorporate into your everyday life that still allows you to have a life. But right now you’re just too exhausted to worry about it so maybe next week.
Sound familiar? This is the story of struggle that many of us face every January. New Year’s resolutions to lose weight often lead to feelings of guilt and shame when they are unsuccessful. By making a choice one meal at a time to eat the right thing, you will start living a healthy lifestyle program that will make future New Year’s resolutions (to lose weight, anyway) a thing of the past!