HEALTH & FITNESS
healthy resolutions
you can keep! By AMANDA MARRAZZO
It’s that fickle time of year again. Yet another January arrives and we realize that we dropped the ball on last year’s resolutions to de-stress, lose a few pounds or live a healthier lifestyle. Area experts offered to help with a few suggestions to make and keep those New Year’s resolutions for 2014. David Bauer, therapist, life coach, personal trainer and owner of Integrated Fitness in St. Charles, says it's better to set specific, measurable and realistically attainable goals rather than making general, broad stroke declarations. It’s also important to have a specific timeline set to reach those goals in order to measure your success. One common New Year’s Resolution is to live a healthier lifestyle, says Bauer. But to keep that resolution one must be specific with their resolve. “The mistake people make every year is they ... say ‘I want to get healthy’ and that’s too general,” says Bauer. For example he says to pledge, “I want to lower
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my cholesterol or I want to lose ten pounds, walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You are more likely to be successful if more specific in your resolution, and the goal has to have real meaning to you.” He says it takes more than just your doctor saying you need to lose weight. “You have to have your heart into it a little bit,” he says. When making resolutions be sure they are sustainable goals that can be built upon. A resolution to lose weight is good, he says, but when resolving to be more healthy, work out more often and lose weight, be specific and “more performance oriented.” “Say, ‘I will lift weights three times a week and do cardio two days a week,’ ” Bauer explains. “Individual, daily goals you can do all year long and create sub-goals within those goals, (make) stackable goals.” Set specific, reachable workout goals in increments. For example, he says, shoot to do 50 pushups then after reaching 50 shoot for 75 and work your way up to that goal and so on.
Set short goals on each workout day. One day set out to run on the treadmill at a higher incline or for a longer period of time. Switch up your routine within your weekly set workout. Instead of running on the treadmill on one of your set cardio days for 30 minutes, take in a spin class, still working toward your specific goal of getting in more cardio but mixing it up a bit to do so. Adding in variety will help you stay on track to reach your goal of living a healthier life style, says Bauer. Other common new year’s goals Bauer hears of in his life coach practice include spending more time with family, finding romance, being more engaged with friendships, reaching financial goals, enriching personal development such as taking classes at a community college, and finding time to read more. Each is just about time management, he says. Being with your family or at work or being busy with other activities all depends on how one chooses to spend their time. Any one of those goals, if important enough to you, can be achieved by restructuring how you live your life. It’s all about choices, he says.
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