5 Healthy New Year’s Resolutions And How To Keep Them

The start of a new year is just around the bend. As with any new start, it is always good to briefly review the year past, assess and plan for the year ahead. And the most common way to do that would be to set New Year’s resolutions for oneself.  While it is common and sometimes too easy to list one’s resolutions, it is also too common to find oneself not fulfilling one or any of these resolutions.

Because health and wellness should always be a personal priority, here are five healthy New Year’s resolutions to consider and tips on how to keep them.

1. Lose weight

After the holiday parties and the pounds that come with it, most people usually resolve to lose some if not all of the weight they gained during the holidays. According to an article in Huffington Post, the key to losing weight is to set a real number and timeline for achieving weight loss.

Aside from keeping a reliable scale around, weight loss usually involves regular exercise and consistent healthy eating. Rather than be stressed about how much calories one loses, the article recommends that one focuses on goals that are doable such setting regular exercise days and duration and adjusting one’s food choices that are low in sugar and salt, in “appropriate portions.”

2. Exercise more

When it comes to getting more exercise in one’s routine, one should not fall trap to the usual thinking of “all or nothing.” If you keep on waiting for a full 30 minutes in your life to be freed up so that you can exercise, you will never start exercising. Start by squeezing in ten minutes a day, preferably in the morning, and gradually increase it to 15 minutes, then 30 minutes.

Another factor in keeping to your exercise routine is relying on a workout that does not require an expensive gym membership, fancy equipment and accessories. Brisk walking and jogging are examples. One may also check out the many exercise videos available on YouTube.

3. Cut Stress from your life

While exercising can help reduce stress, there are other ways to minimize the impact of stress in one’s life. According to an article in Health.com, de-stressing is as important as getting enough exercise and eating healthy. Having a close circle of family and friends that one can regularly get in touch with helps reduce stress. Another way is to find time, no matter how little, to do something that one enjoys, such as reading, listening to music and taking a break from life.

4. Cut back on alcohol or quit smoking

You may have had your share of binging on alcohol during the holidays. Or you may have had too many sticks to smoke as well. This coming New Year, it is time to consider cutting back on alcohol intake or totally quitting that very unhealthy habit of smoking.

The more difficult resolution to achieve is to kick the smoking habit, and not one formula applies for all. Stopping all at once or what they call the “cold turkey” approach works for some, while others may find that looking for other sources of nicotine will work better for them.

5. Get adequate sleep

A lot of scientific studies have shown the benefits of adequate sleep and rest on one’s health. By resolving to get more sleep in the coming year, this means adjusting one’s habits especially those that impact on one’s sleep. This may mean making sure that one is productive during work hours, so that work does not extend to late at night. Adequate sleep does not only refer to night sleep, but it also refers to taking short energy-boosting naps during appropriate times of the day.

For more about the benefits of sleep, check out a Pilipinas Popcorn article about the benefits of sleep here.