The Weighty Issue of Reassessing New Year’s Resolutions
‘Tis the season for resolutions. It seems you can’t walk into a gym without being bombarded by a flood of people or a restaurant without someone calculating calories to stay in line with their New Year’s goals. In reality, people really don’t even think twice about it, in fact our resolutions are often the topic of casual conversation over a salad with low-fat dressing, because this tradition is so engrained in our DNA.
Now I will admit that I have been just as guilty as the next person about obsessing about my New Year’s Resolutions so hardcore that inevitably, believe it or not, I eventually lose steam. Sound familiar? It should because this is the way that the bulk of Americans function almost systematically starting January 1. In fact, gyms count on it; most gyms make the bulk of their money on memberships in January. Traditionally a large number of these enthusiasts usually start tapering off around late February to early March, minus the core group of solid regulars, and gyms still have you within a year contract or at least have your start up fee.
Here’s another enlightening bit of information for you to chew on. A recent article in NY Times called “The Fat Trap” featured some eye-opening new research that goes into the details of just why those crash diets never tend to work. It even takes it one step further, stating that not only do they not work, you are actually establishing a platform to regain all the weight you have lost and then some.
According to the article here is why: While researchers have known for decades that the body undergoes various metabolic and hormonal changes while it’s losing weight, a full year after significant weight loss, the men and women included in the study remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone, ” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.
According to Dr. Proietto, the physician who conducted this study, “What we see here is a coordinated defense mechanism with multiple components all directed toward making us put on weight.” “This, I think, explains the high failure rate in obesity treatment.”
Pretty scary stuff isn’t it? With all the blunt-force trauma that an individual is putting their body though at one time trying to frantically reach their short-term goals, most people aren’t considering how they are deterring their overall mission in the long run. So this basically gets me to the point of this blog. Upon considering my New Year’s Resolution for 2012, I actually decided to re-align my thoughts vs. taking considerable actions.
Now I am certainly not going to say that having a goal and working towards overall health is a bad thing. Au contraire. I, personally, am just going to try to keep in mind that “slow and steady usually wins the race.” Sure we all love to drop 6 sizes in a month and make a trip to the store to buy a whole new petite wardrobe. But try to remember the inverse, when you dropped all that weight in the past and it gradually started to creep back. All of a sudden, you can’t fit into all the nice clothes you just bought, and you slide back into this trend of trying to cover up your “perceived flaws”- further damaging your self esteem and sense of worth. This is not healthy.
Now consider the antithesis; think of how good you feel when you aren’t killing yourself and restraining your actions but instead make small tweaks here and there. Without even realizing it, you are gradually starting to fit your clothes better. Your sense of triumph far exceeds the feeling your “shock treatment” would provide, because you get to keep working towards your goals while being proud of the progress you’re making all along. You are far less tempted to just gorge on food or stop working out altogether from exhaustion, because you are not making drastic changes to your lifestyle. You are simply working out at your own pace, at your convenience and also simply being more conscience of what you are feeding your body.
A wise person once told me that we as people, spend far too much of our lives criticizing ourselves. Seriously, we are never going to look better than we look now, so do we really want to look back on the majority of our lives and realize how displeased we were with ourselves?
So I’ve decided that I am not technically going to set a New Year’s Resolution this year, but rather an “overall life goal”. My goal this year is to be happy with who I am at this point in time. Would I like to be healthier? Yes. Are there things I would like to change about myself? Of course. But I am not going to waste any more of my valuable time holding myself back due to societal notions and killing myself for something that is fleeting. So my goal will be a mental exercise, which I think will be no less difficult.
