Resolutions to Lose Weight Gone Bust?
What to Do Now!

©All articles are copyright of Dr. Susan Mitchell and Practicalories, Inc. and cannot be reprinted or used without permission. To obtain permission, please contact Dr. Mitchell.

Have you totally blown your New Year’s resolutions? Did you make too many resolutions and was your list just overwhelming?

We go into a new year with a lot of hope, dreams and ideas for what we want to do and weight loss is almost always on that list of ‘to dos’ for so many people. What happens many times is this--you say to yourself, “I’m going to lose 30 pounds this year”. But you really have no idea ‘how’ you plan to do this although it sure sounds good.

Then the New Year starts jammed packed with work and life. Weight loss seems to go down the tubes. In fact, your attempt never even got started. So let’s get real…what works in the real world? What can you do?

1. Set realistic goals:1 goal at a time until it becomes habit (give it 30 days)

2. Easy workable goals:

(a) Cut 100 calories each day from what you eat or burn it through exercise (you’ll lose 10 pounds this year if you do nothing else)

(b) According to Eating Well Magazine, here are easy ways to burn 100 calories:

1. Bike 10 minutes
2. Swim laps 12 minutes
3. Hike 16 minutes
4. Dance 18 minutes
5. Garden 18 minutes
6. Walk 20 minutes
7. Weight train 27 minutes

(c) Try a pedometer: 2000 steps=one mile…work up to 10,000 steps a day or five miles
(d) Watch how much liquid you drink with calories. Liquids make up about 20% of the diet. Of this 20%, sugar sweetened tea and soft drinks account for about 18 ounces a day--hmmm that’s about 100 calories per small 8 ounce can so 200 calories a day from soda or close to 1/2 a pound per week (3500 calories per pound). You do the math…it’s not pretty.