As we ring in the New Year, many of us set New Year weight loss resolutions or health goals for a happier and healthier 2025. But how can we turn these resolutions into long-term success?
Why New Year Weight Loss Resolutions Often Fail
One of the problems with New Year’s resolutions is that many of us seek quick fixes and rapid results. A former co-worker Susie, decided to give up coffee and caffeine as her New Year’s resolution. She had no real plan. After two days of massive headaches, Susie resumed her regular coffee habit. She was a little disappointed in herself. What a contrast to a colleague Tom, who helped Sarah, his wife, reduce her caffeine intake gradually and successfully by replacing part of her regular coffee each day with decaffeinated coffee. By the end of the week Sarah was free from her caffeinated coffee habit. Tom and Sarah had a plan and it worked.
There’s a better way to approach New Year weight loss resolutions—one that goes beyond fleeting wishes to create lasting changes through commitment and a practical plan. Let’s look at how to turn a wish for greater happiness and health into a daily commitment to self-care that you act on and get positive results.
Similarly to Susie’s example, most New Year’s resolutions to lose weight result in disappointment. The problem is that we expect rapid results from diets that don’t last and actually set us back.
Tiny Changes: The Secret to Lasting Weight Loss Success
Achieving success with your New Year weight loss resolutions is possible by starting small and building momentum. Here’s how tiny habit changes made a difference for Janet. These results are possible with tiny lifestyle habit changes that allow you to take care of yourself and others in your life without guilt or self-doubt. We show you how by bringing you an excerpt from the chapter on Expectations from my new book, Happy Life at a Healthy Weight: Creating a Shame Free Healthy Relationship with Food.
What does it mean to make tiny changes, and how do they make a difference? When Janet first called me, she told me she wanted to lose forty pounds so she could feel better, have more energy and confidence, and be in better shape. She wanted to see her grandchildren grow up and see what they would become and what their future holds. She didn’t have a lot of confidence that she could lose weight, and she was afraid to fail. She had an unhelpful pattern of skipping breakfast, and sometimes she skipped lunch too, eating her first meal at dinner. Then she might grab ice cream and eat it late at night. She knew she was an emotional eater. She also had pre-diabetes.
From our partnership together, Janet made a series of tiny changes. She began by using an app to record her food intake and became much more aware of what she was eating. Then she started eating a small breakfast as a second tiny habit change. Her confidence grew as she successfully added other tiny changes over the months. She ate a small lunch each day, reined in her emotional eating, and took a three mile walk with her husband Steve on most days. Janet and Steve had become accountability partners for each other along the way. These tiny changes added up to greater confidence, and that compounded over the months. Janet created a healthier eating pattern, is in better shape, and she’s lost forty pounds, having reached her intended goal weight. More than two years later, she continues these tiny changes to this day with confidence and a belief in her ability to lose this weight and keep it off one tiny action at a time.
Take Action on Your New Year Weight Loss Goals Today
Click here for our last blog post about how to balance time and energy this holiday season, so you don’t deplete myself with people pleasing.
How to get started now?
Kick off your New Year weight loss resolutions by taking my interactive quiz: Top Inner Roadblocks to Weight Loss Success. Identify what’s holding you back and begin 2025 with confidence!
Wishing you Happy Holidays this season!
With love and joy,
Kay
Kay Loughrey, MPH, RDN, LDN Transformational Speaker, Breakthrough Coach, Nutritionist-Dietitian
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