By focusing our New Year’s resolutions and efforts on the “outcomes” (e.g., losing weight, getting organized) we often rush into the behaviors that we hope will get us there. But, it is the BEHAVIORS THEMSELVES that determine our ultimate success and our ability to persevere over time.
We should think about the behaviors that are essential to achieving our desired goals and choose one to focus on at the beginning of this important endeavor. It is important to understand that changing eating habits and becoming more physically active are VERY different behaviors and should be treated as such. The conventional approach to lose weight suggests focusing on both diet and exercise concurrently. If your goal is to lose as much weight as you can quickly starting to diet and exercise at the same time will get you the best results. But if your goal is to achieve a fairly large weight loss goal and/or you want to SUSTAIN the weight you lose, think about a different approach.
Changing your eating habits and learning how to make exercise a regular and consistent part of your life at the same time is very challenging. Eating and exercise each have their own “tasks” and “rules” associated with them. Both require distinct discipline, and have associations with separate sets of emotions (often negative). Think about how likely it is that we can learn how to integrate these two very distinct behaviors into our lives so we can sustain them both over time? You know if your previous efforts to initiate diet and exercising at the same time have worked for you long-term. If they have, continue to do it. If they haven’t, why not try a different approach?