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Hello again and happy new year!
I hope you had safe, happy, and healthy holidays!
A new year always brings with it a chance to start anew, to double down on health goals or to set new ones to achieve.
So this newsletter shares a couple of articles on how to set resolutions you can keep.
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Here’s to a healthy and prosperous new year!
To your health,
Yasmine S. Ali, MD
Weekly Heart-Health News: The Highlights
My Take:
One of the keys to being successful at achieving your goals is to break them down into smaller, more specific objectives. For instance, instead of making a resolution to “eat healthier,” which is broad and vague, pick one healthy eating habit you’d like to adopt—and then break that down further.
For example, “eat healthier” becomes “eat more fruit,” which in turn becomes “eat at least one piece of fruit with every meal.”
Eat healthier—>eat more fruit—>eat at least one piece of fruit with every meal.
You’re much more likely to be successful (and much less likely to give up) if you set a simple objective like that last step (“eat at least one piece of fruit with every meal”), and then focus all your energy on doing just that. Nothing else; just that very last, small step.
There’s a reason, after all, for the Chinese proverb that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”!
This article has several more examples and tips for you—it’s well worth the read!
My Take:
And if you needed more advice on where and how to start with making resolutions you can keep, this article from the American Psychological Association is a short but good one.
You’ll notice a similarity: the APA experts also recommend that you start small.
So, are you among those who set New Year’s Resolutions at the beginning of each year? This year, I began thinking of them less as “resolutions,” which sounds intimidating and tiring, and more as “promises to myself.”
Here’s one of mine, and how I broke it down:
Do more yoga—>do yoga every week—>do yoga at least twice a week—>do neck yoga for 20 minutes once a week and back-care yoga for 20 minutes once a week
As I build my yoga practice, I will increase and get even more specific. For example, once I get to where I am doing yoga twice a week for at least a month, I’ll see if I can increase it to 3 times a week, adding in strengthening yoga to my routine. And eventually I’ll get to the point where I can do it 6 days a week. And maybe I’ll even accomplish my ultimate goal, which is to do sun salutations every day and yoga stretches every evening/night. But if I try to start with that ultimate goal, I will be setting myself up for failure and will probably give up entirely, while feeling bad and guilty about it as well. (I know this, because I tried that before, and failed spectacularly!)
Accountability is another important part of setting yourself up for success in achieving your goals. So I’m going to check in with you from time to time and let you know how I’m doing with achieving my yoga goal this year.
If you have a goal, resolution, or promise you’d like to share, please do so! Just reply directly to this email.
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The healthy eating pattern that can save you hundreds of dollars
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