How do you stay motivated?  What is your secret?  Please share your ideas with us.

Most individuals are ready to make changes when a new year arrives.   They are motivated and start out with plenty of enthusiasm.  Yet, unfortunately, as February arrives many have lost their motivation and have slipped back to their old routines and habits.  Are you one of those individuals?  What is the difference between those that continue to stay motivated and those that slowly regress to old habits?  Here are a few guidelines for staying motivated so that you can achieve your goals:

1) Engage in positive self-talk every day. Begin when you stand in front of the mirror getting ready for your day.  Choose one positive statement to say about yourself each morning.  It may be the same or different each morning.  Try, “I am proud of my body because it allows me to be physically active or _________________.” or “I like my body and I am working to become healthier by eating 1 fruit each day.”  or “I feel great about myself when I make healthy food choices at lunch.”

2) Make realistic, attainable and specific goals such as, “I will increase my fiber by eating at least 1/2 cup of fruits or vegetables at breakfast, lunch and dinner.” or “I will walk my dog for 30 minutes,  3 times each week after work.”  Write these goals down and post your list where it is easily visible.

3) Be flexible! Know that certain circumstances are out of your control.  So, give yourself a break when things don’t go as planned and learn from these experiences.  Perhaps being more prepared would enable you to have a little more control.   For example, keep healthy nonperishable snacks in your car or pocketbook so you have no excuse for skipping a meal or eating unhealthy foods when you are stuck in traffic, have to rush to pick-up your children or don’t have time for a meal.  Try dried fruit and nuts, granola bar (Z-bar, Luna bar, Lara bar, Kashi varietes, a;nd Nature Valley granola bars are a few suggestions), or all natural peanut butter pretzel or cracker sandwiches.

4)  When events occur that are out of your control, make the best out of a negative situation.  In other words, be creative with a possible solutions.  For instance, do you have a backup plan if it rains when you want to walk outside?  Perhaps you have a favorite exercise DVD that you enjoy.  What do you do when you are unexpectedly invited out to dinner?  Maybe you suggest a restaurant you know where you can order and enjoy healthier options.  Or, because you know that you do not want to turn down your favorite dish of cheesy Fettuccine Alfredo, you decide ahead of time that you will bring home half of your entree, order a side salad and skip dessert.

5) Build a support network that includes your spouse, family, friends, and health care team.  Let them know how they can best support you in your desire to achieve your health goals.  You may ask someone to go for a walk or run with you each week, help you cook healthier meals at home, or ask him/her to not ask you if you want dessert so that you don’t feel pressured to have it when you are satisfied with out it.

Now you have the tools to succeed at accomplishing your goals because you know how to stay motivated!  Share your thoughts and experienced in how you have achieved your goals.

Rewarding yourself by relaxing and rejuvenating your mind and body is of the utmost importance especially in today’s fast paced world.  We always seem to be going somewhere, doing  something or thinking about our next project.  Give yourself permission to take a break after you have achieved a particular task or goal.  Many of us do not reward ourselves and our bodies for all we do.  Everyone needs to rest.  For instance, athletes follow training schedules that include rest days.  Rest days help the body to restore, reduce the risk of injury and allow the body (think muscles and tendons) to heal from difficult training sessions.

Planning time to relax and rest either by yourself or with others is important for both your mind and body.  Doing at least one thing for yourself every day or week will help you to:

1) stay grounded,

2) reduce your stress level, and

3) enable you to give to others because in order to take care of others you must first take care of yourself.

One great way to ensure that you are taking time to relax and rest is to reward yourself when you accomplish a certain number of small tasks or have achieved one of your goals.  Here are a few suggestions for how you can relax, rest and take care of yourself:

Every time you complete a task on your to-do list or accomplish a goal put a certain amount of money (10 cents – $1) in a jar.  When you have collected enough money treat yourself to a massage, a facial, a manicure or pedicure, a new book to read for pleasure, a new outfit, a night out with your spouse or friends, or a new exercise DVD or CD.

If you’d prefer not to spend any money be creative with ways to relax such as, reading (utilize your local library), taking a bath, watching your favorite TV show, going for a walk or run with your spouse or a friend, hiking with your family, going for a bike ride, scrap booking, and more.  Find ways to relax and reap the benefits of caring for yourself.  You will feel less stressed, have more energy to take care of daily tasks and others, have a more positive outlook on life, and have a greater ability to solve problems as they arise.

Nutrition Tip: Find non-food related ways to reward yourself and your family. Do something fun and active such as bowling, bike riding, hiking, or swimming.  Give each other foot or back massages.  Have a family game night or an arts-and-craft afternoon.  Make a homemade card or note to congratulate others for a job well-done.  Have a family book club night where everyone reads their favorite book out loud.  There a numerous possibilities for rewarding yourself and children (if, you are a parent) without food.  Be creative and have fun!

How do you reward yourself?  Let others know how you relax and rejuvenate.  We can all use suggestions.

Do you notice the small positive lifestyle changes you have made since the beginning of 2010?  It may be that you are now parking further away from the store when doing errands so you can walk a few more steps or that you have reduced your intake of regular soda to three, 12-oz cans per week or it may be that you are now enjoying at least 1/2 cup of vegetables each day.  If you haven’t taken the time to notice the small changes you have made then you also haven’t congratulated yourself for a job well-done.  Each change (no matter how small) is an accomplish or a miracle worth celebrating!

Acknowledging your achievements is key to helping you continue to make positive lifestyle changes.  Become aware of the goals you have achieved by making a list of your accomplishments.  You may be surprised at how many changes you have made or it may be motivation for you to begin making a few more small lifestyle changes in order to optimize your health.  Be proud of the goals you have achieved by displaying your “Accomplishment List” where you can easily see it every day.

Marveling at the successes you have made is wonderful motivation and helps you to realize the differences these changes have made in how you feel and see yourself (as a successful individual who has accomplished goals to optimize your health).  This view allows you to reward yourself for your hard work and to see the changes you have made rather than dwell on those that you have yet to accomplish.  It puts you in a positive mind-set and helps you view the world from the “glass is half full” perspective.

Each change that you make towards optimizing your health whether it is eating healthier, moving more or working on reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke each week, add up to make HUGE differences in how you feel and in your health.  View each accomplish as a miracle and you will most likely find that your mood is more upbeat, you have a more positive outlook and you have greater motivation to tackle other goals or wishes on your goal or wish list.

Nutrition Tip: Small dietary changes can make a HUGE difference. Here are a few examples:

1) Switching from regular butter to whipped butter saves you 50 calories and 3.5  grams of saturated fat (the heart unhealthy fat) per tablespoon.

2) Using a light butter substitute such as Lite Smart Balance instead of regular butter reduces your caloric intake by 55 calories and your saturated fat intake by 5.5 grams per 1 tablespoon.

3) Switching from 1 cup of orange juice to 1 fresh orange reduces the calories by 25 calories and increases the fiber by 4.3 grams (which helps to keep you feeling full.  If you were to enjoy 1 cup of orange sections instead of orange juice for a week you would save a total of 175 calories and add an additional 30 grams of fiber to your diet.  This would enable you to lose 2.5 pounds in 12  months without making any other changes!

4) Making your own oatmeal either in the microwave or on the stove rather than using an instant oatmeal package will reduce your sugar intake by 3 tsp and increase your fiber and protein intake by 1 gram.  Make your own naturally sweetened oatmeal by following the below recipe.

Fruit Sweetened Oatmeal

1/2 cup Old Fashioned or Quick Cooking Oats

1 cup nonfat or 1% milk

1/2 ripe banana (mashed) or 1/3 cup all-natural unsweetened applesauce

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

1 Tbsp. chopped walnuts or pecans or milled ground flax seed or wheat germ or 2 tsp. nut butter (optional)

Add fresh fruit to oatmeal after cooking such as berries or additional banana slices.

Approximate calories without nuts: 450 calories

Protein: 13 grams

Fiber: 4 – 6 grams

Calcium: 300 mg

Potassium with banana: 200 mg

Follow directions on package for cooking.

What changes have you  made since January?  Share your successes and receive encouragement or share a barrier to reaching a goal you would like to achieve and ask others for advice or suggestions.

Are you a friend to yourself?  Make a list of why you are grateful for your body.  Thanking your body is vital to your health and ability to achieve your wishes or goals.  You must first learn to love, respect and honor yourself before you are able to truly take care of your body and mind by making time to prepare and enjoy nutritious foods, being physically active, getting adequate sleep and relaxing.

Friendship is about balance — both giving and receiving.  Give to yourself first by taking care of yourself in order to  give and take care of others.  Do not feel that you are selfless when you schedule time to exercise, practice yoga or tai chi, make plans to hang  out with friends, or simply make time for yourself to sleep in one day a week, take a bath, or read a good book.  By balancing soul-nurturing activities with your everyday activities you create a friendship with yourself.  This will enable you to feel less stressed, be better able to handle challenging or stressful situations, give you more energy, and allow you to give your time and undivided attention to others.

A friendship requires time, commitment and caring.  Remember this as you begin or continue to develop a friendship with yourself.  Schedule time each week to work on your friendship with yourself and you will find that it helps to strengthen your friendships with others.  Being a friend to yourself also improves your self-esteem and self-confidence both of which are vital to realizing your goals in life.  Practice being a friend to yourself by finding ways to nourish your body and mind.

Nutrition Tip: Honor your body by aiming to enjoy at least one fresh fruit each day.  To help you do this, plan ahead by buying fruit that will last at least a week in the refrigerator such as apples, citrus fruit and grapes.  Another  great way to ensure that you always have fruit available is to purchase frozen berries with no syrup to keep in your freezer.  Add frozen or thawed berries to yogurt, Greek yogurt, oatmeal, oat bran, cereal, cottage cheese,  or enjoy plain.  The possibilities are endless!  Bring easily portable fruit to work, school or while doing errands for a great low-calorie, high fiber and tasty snack.  Try a banana, orange, apple, plum, or pear.

Help yourself achieve your goals by being a healthy role model to your spouse, children, grandchildren, friends and co-workers.  Strive to “talk-the-talk” and “walk-the-walk.”

If you wish your children would eat healthier examine what you eat.  Are you preparing a vegetable at dinner but not eating it?  Do you tell your children they must go out and play but aren’t physically active yourself?  In order to live a healthy lifestyle you must do what you preach to others.  Ask yourself if you currently encourage a friend or loved one to eat healthier or exercise more?  Is this because you feel guilty that you’re not eating as healthy as you would like  or not being as active as you would like?  Is your guilt causing you to push others?  If so, work to change your unhealthy habits and lead by example rather than by pushing others to do what you’re currently not doing.

One of the best ways to succeed at reaching a goal is to ask another individual to join you.  Form a walking group at lunch, challenge your spouse to see who can prepare the best tasting and healthiest dinner, ask your children to ride their bikes or go for a walk with you, or try a new way of preparing a vegetable to help you and your family enjoy it.

Setting a healthy example is powerful and can have a ripple affect on your loved ones because they see that you are making time to take care of your health.  Share with them how you feel after you succeed at making healthy changes.  Your actions are powerful.  Explore just how powerful they are by making one lifestyle change this week and see what happens.

Nutrition Tip: Try a new way of preparing vegetables.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Cut-up a green or red pepper, an onion, 4 large peeled carrots, and 2 potatoes (washed with skins on).  Mix together in a glass baking dish.  Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and mix to coat all vegetables.  Sprinkle with 1/4 – 1/2 tsp. garlic powder, 1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper and 1 – 1 1/2 tsp. of your favorite herb such as ground rosemary or thyme.  Bake for 40 – 60 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes.  Bake until tender and golden.  Enjoy.

-Isaac Newton, physicist

Do you feel you lack motivation?  Share your wishes with a spouse, friend or family member.   Ask them to be soundboard, offer suggestions on how you might achieve them, and/or help you decide when you plan to achieve them.  This makes you are accountable to someone else.

Next, decide whether you require professional assistance to achieve your goals.  Do you have adequate and accurate information to achieve your goals?  Are you looking to reach a healthy weight, lower your cholesterol or overcome food issues?  If you’ve tried different diets and have been unsuccessful at losing weight or maintaining weight lose, perhaps it is time to team up with a  registered dietitian, counselor who specializes in disordered eating or eating disorders, and/or a physician.  He or she has the education and knowledge to work with you to achieve your health goals.  Sometimes asking for assistance can be challenging because we all want to believe (at some level) that we can do it all — we believe that we don’t need help.  This thought process is incorrect.  Asking for help and accepting assistance can often be the missing link to achieving your goals because it invites in a new and different perspective and way of examining past behaviors and thoughts.  It can also be extremely motivating and rewarding to work with others to achieve your goals.  By simply talking to someone else and using them as a sounding board can help you to overcome an obstacle, find new motivation, new resources and new strategies to achieve your goals.

So, take the plunge and ask for assistance from a trusted individual.  You’ll be glad you did!

Nutrition Tip: To find a registered dietitian visit http://www.eatright.org and, in the upper right hand corner, click on the button entitled, “Find a Registered Dietitian” or go to FitNutrition, LLC to learn more about the nutrition services that I offer.

If it is to be, it is up to me. - Author Unknown

Are you working to achieve your wishes or goals for 2010 or have you gradually begun to let other responsibilities get in the way?  Achieving your goals or wishes is up to you – no one can do it for you.   Why and how you decide to achieve your goals can mean the difference between victory and failure.  The desire to achieve your goals must come from within and match your personal values.  This is key to helping you stay motivated.

If you’re finding it challenging to take the steps or make the changes necessary to reach your goals, re-evaluate them and question why you want to achieve them.  Did you decide to achieve these particular goals for yourself or for someone else?  Are they consistent with your values?  Will working to reach these wishes bring you self-fulfillment and joy as you strive to improve who you are or will they make you engage in self-criticism?  As you take a closer look at your goals and why you want to achieve them make sure that the road leading to each one will be a positive journey.

For instance, here are two different ways to look at a similar goal.  The first individual wants to lose weight because she feels she doesn’t look good at her current weight.   She has been finding it difficult to stick to her “new diet” and therefore, constantly feels guilty and angry at herself.  Why is she having trouble with her goal?  First, she has decided to make weight lose her goal.  Weight loss is not a  goal. Weight loss is the result of making healthy lifestyle changes.  Second, she put herself on a “diet” rather than making gradual lifestyle changes.  Therefore, she feels deprived.  Her goal to lose weight has become a source of negative energy and has led to self-criticism and feelings of guilt.

The second individual would also like to lose weight because he knows that reaching a healthy weight will increase his health.  However, he doesn’t have a “magic” weight that he would like to reach.  Instead, he has a weight range that he knows is appropriate for him after talking with his doctor and a registered dietitian.  Additionally, and most most importantly, his goal is not to lose weight.  His goals are centered around lifestyle changes such as eating until he is comfortably full one meal each day, walking 30 minutes 4 times each week, weight lifting 3 times weekly, eating one fresh fruit daily, and 1 cup of vegetables each day.  These are just a few of the goals he has set for himself.   Each lifestyle change that he makes and maintains for more than a week makes him feel proud which motivates  him to work to achieve his next wish on his list.    This individual is learning to take care of his health and hence, himself.

To achieve your goals make sure that you are pursuing them for the right reasons and that the experience of reaching them will be one of personal growth and self-care.

- William Osler, Canadian physician

Setbacks or slip ups are a way of life.  Learn from each one.  Rather than viewing each one as a roadblock see it as a small bump in the road, one that will make you wiser and stronger by learning how to bypass it.  In other words, “Reacting is an emotional reflex.  Response requires thought” (Gail Pursell Elliot).  Learning to analyze what caused you to behave a certain way will help you devise a plan so that you can decrease the chances that it will occur again.

Begin my analyzing the situation.  What happened that resulted in your behavior or reaction to a situation?  Did something or someone influence your behavior?

For example, let’s say that you ate past the feeling of comfortable fullness.  This made you feel guilty and angry at yourself.  Therefore, you would like to minimize the number of times that this occurs.  Begin by asking yourself a few questions such as:

What was I feeling while I was eating?  Was I ravenous before eating?  Do I occasionally tend to let myself get too hungry before fueling my body?  What causes this to happen?   Was I eating too fast because I was ravenous or pressed for time?  Did I not allow myself to take time to check in with my body to see how the food felt in your stomach?  Was I eating from emotion — was I  sad, tired, angry, stressed, lonely, frustrated?  If so, what caused these feelings?

By evaluating your negative food experiences you can develop strategies to help you reduce these uncomfortable occurrences and enhance your health and well-being.  Work to learn from these experiences rather than berating yourself.  Having  a different attitude is the first step to achieving your wishes.

Nutrition Tip: To help slow down your eating, put down your utensil or sip water between bites.  Engage in conversation, chew slowly, enjoy the entire eating experience by making time to sit down and enjoy both your  meals and snacks so that you are not rushed.

Experiment with how to accomplish each step on your wish ladder.  Approaching each step as an experiment allows you to determine the best way to accomplish each one.  What works best for you will not be the solution for everyone.  Viewing something as an experiment enables you to try it for a short time, evaluate it, determine if you would benefit from doing it differently or if it works the first way you tried it.
As you work on your wish list be flexible and revise it as you learn what works and doesn’t work for you.  Your goal is to make each new healthy lifestyle change a habit.  This will take patience, perseverance and the willingness to experiment.  Stay curious and you will be surprised by how much you learn about yourself.

Nutrition Tip: Eat mindfully by paying close attention to the appearance, aroma, taste, and feel of your food.  Slow down and enjoy the food.  Eating mindfully will enable you to determine when you are comfortably full and should stop eating.

To help you develop a plan to fulfill your wish, make a wish ladder.  Do this by writing your wish at the top of a piece of paper.  Starting the bottom of the paper number and describe each step that is necessary in order for you achieve your wish.  Next to each step write a realistic time frame in which you will work to accomplish this step.  For example, you wish to have more energy in the afternoon.  You realize that your energy is low in the afternoon because you either do not eat a snack or if you do, you purchase a candy bar from the vending machine.  Your wish ladder may look something like this:

Wish: Increase my energy in the afternoon. (After achieving the first step, move onto the next step.  Some steps may be completed simultaneously.)  Scroll down to step #1 and then scroll up to see how you might accomplish this wish.

7. Each Monday, schedule 10 – 15 minutes during my work day to enjoy my snack by putting it on my computer calendar. (Try this for 1 additional week.)

6. Prepare my snack after cleaning up from dinner 5x each week.

5. Check in with how I am doing accomplishing each step.  Make any necessary adjustments.  (You may find that you would prefer to prepare your snack in the morning when you prepare your breakfast.)

4. Every Monday, schedule 10 – 15 minutes during my work day to enjoy my snack by putting it on my computer calendar.  (1 week, see if this works).

3. Three times each week, prepare my snack for the next day after cleaning up from dinner. (Try this for 1 week to see if it is doable or if I need to adjust when I prepare  my snack.)

2. Go grocery shopping for these foods every Tuesday after work. (complete in 1 week and continue to go shopping every week).

1. Make a list of snacks I can easily bring to work. (complete in 1 week)

If you’re stuck and are finding it challenging to figure out what steps to take to achieve your goal, think about discussing your wish with someone you trust and will support you.  He or she may be able to give you a different perspective or simply be a sounding board for you.  If you aren’t comfortable asking for guidance, try writing about your wish.  This can help you look at the situation from a different perspective.  Visualize the situation from a different angle and see if that helps you to develop a strategy to accomplish your wish.  If you meditate or practice yoga or deep breathing, think about your wish before your practice and then when your practice finishes focus again on the wish.  You may now be able to determine what steps are necessary to satisfy your wish.

Have fun creating your first wish ladder!