How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution

It’s 2010.

The new year brings out all the New Year’s resolutions. People who regularly workout hate this time of year. The gyms are overcrowded, every machine is in use, and every dumbbell rests in someone else’s hands. For those of you in this category: suck it up! Most of these resolution-ites will be out of there in 6 weeks. But the ones that stick with it are making a better world for themselves as well as you. A healthier population means lowered health care costs, smaller crowds at doctors offices and hospitals, and maybe even less of those annoying infomercials for diet pills that never work.

If you are one of those who have made a fitness-related New Year’s resolution, congratulations! You are taking steps to a better, healthier, and more active you. Many people make healthy New Year’s resolutions. Unfortunately,  few people keep them. How can you avoid being one of these in the latter category? Below are 5 ways to make sure your New Year’s resolution will last in 2010:

1. Start Slow -Look, you aren’t going to see drastic improvements in the first 4 weeks. So why over-commit yourself? Set up small goals, such as how many times per week you absolutely will work out. If you start with 1 day a week, perhaps you’ll soon realize you could commit to a second day. Consistently following through on a small commitment will always be better than setting a big-picture goal that you never finish.

2. Have an accountability partner - It’s easy to say you will go to the gym 3 days a week at 5:00 a.m. Crawling from beneath the covers when the alarm goes off is altogether a different story. Knowing that someone is waiting for you at the gym will make you much more likely to follow through on your commitment. Otherwise, you let someone down, and who wants to do that?

3.  Don’t start a completely new diet - This goes back to the first suggestion. Rather than making a goal to never again eat anything remotely unhealthy, start with cutting out one or two bad foods. For instance, you could cut out fried foods. Even if you love fried foods, you’ll likely notice after 2 weeks that they didn’t taste that good anyway. The same could be done with carbonated beverage - or at least on the days you workout. Here again, making small changes may lead to bigger ones. The important thing to do is start some sort of change with which you can live.

4.  Avoid peak hours at the gym - Face it, early mornings are going to be busy for a while. So are lunch hours and after hours. Try taking your lunch early and get in the gym by no later than 11 a.m. Or, work an extra hour at the office and get to the gym just as the crowd begins to die down. Either way, you’ll find more room to breathe and less equipment to wipe off after Sweaty McSweaterson.

5. Reframe your resolution - Why did you have to wait until two digits changed to alter your lifestyle? For now, that’s fine - it’s either do it now or keep on waiting. But before we get to next year, resolve to not wait until the next New Year’s to make a change for a healthier life. Calendars are in a continuous state of change - you should be too. Don’t let a year, month, or day decide when you will be more healthy - YOU decide how healthy you will be each day, month, and year.