Try this acronym: HOPE: Have One Perfect Effort. Just for today, get your workout in. Have a perfect effort with your eating and snacking today. Don’t think about the rest of your life, just think about your one perfect effort for today.
- Make rules for yourself and hold yourself accountable on your refrigerator. Do you have problems with late night snacking? Make a rule that you can’t eat anything after 7:00, and put a piece of paper on your refrigerator that says “Food Eaten After 7:00 – February.” You can eat whatever you want after 7:00, but you have to write it all down on that piece of paper. Even if it’s 5 M&Ms, write it down. If going cold turkey on after-dinner snacks is a horrifying proposition, make a rule that you will only eat fruits and veggies after dinner, then next month try cutting off all p.m. snacks. This trick also works well for the office donuts and your coworker’s candy bowl that you can’t seem to avoid. You can eat that stuff, but you have to write it down. After a while, you just don’t want to write one more thing on that piece of paper, so you quit eating all the things you know you shouldn’t eat.
- Make a work-out agreement with a like-minded friend. Do you and your friends complain about how you just can’t make it to the gym? Agree that if you both make all of your workouts, you get to have a treat. My agreement is with a coworker, and if we complete 4 workouts per week we meet in the break room for candy bars on Friday. Sometimes, when I am not motivated to go to the gym for myself, I do it so she can get her Snickers bar. The other part of our agreement is that we can’t have candy bars any other time except Friday. You don’t have to work out together for this agreement to work.
- Limit restaurant eating. Allow a certain amount of eating out per month. I only get an expensive calorie-laden coffee drink once per week, pizza once per month, and fast food twice per month. Once I have used them up, that’s it for me, so I use them carefully. Your budget will also benefit from this rule.
It feels like a lot of rules, but really, any goal you make will have action that you must take, so this is really just an action plan for health.
Leave a Reply