New Year’s Resolutions Starting Early?

I was at my gym this morning (the day after Christmas) and it was packed!! That doesn’t normally happen until the day after New Year’s. Usually, the first three weeks of January at my YMCA (and probably gyms all over the United States) are awful — no parking, overcrowded childcare, waits for treadmills, etc. Then around Jan. 21, it goes back to normal. So I’m wondering if people are making their New Year’s resolutions early.

Speaking of resolutions, quoters of statistics often say that a full 30 percent of New Year’s resolutions are broken by the end of January. This article says that less than 30 percent of New Year’s resolutions ever achieve success. If the waning crowds at my YMCA in late January are any indication, these numbers are probably pretty accurate.

So what can you do to make your New Year’s resolution stick? I’ve put a few links at the end of this post to some articles that I think are worth reading on this topic. Last year, I took a friend’s advice and made some SMART goals, which I wrote about here. I don’t think the approach worked any better for me, but I’m going to try it again this year. I really, really, really need to incorporate some strength training/toning into my exercise routine. I run ALOT because I love it. It’s my “drug of choice.” But I keep getting flabbier and flabbier. Running doesn’t tone and it doesn’t make you stronger — it simply burns calories and gets those endorphins flowing.

My husband, teen and I also are doing a weight-loss challenge. I won’t share any numbers, but each of us is trying to lose 5 percent of our body weight. The first one to the goal gets a $50 mall gift card, paid for by the other two. We’re still working out the details of this challenge, but I’m hoping we can keep each other accountable.

I will say this — my most successful New Year’s resolutions have been the ones that I’ve really thought through and written down IN DETAIL. That’s linked to the whole SMART goals thing, and I neglected to do that last year. So, before January 1, I’m going to write down the details regarding how I’m going to go about achieving my New Year’s resolutions this year. How about you?

Additional New Year’s resolutions articles/posts:

Article 1

Article 2

1,067 Miles

One thousand sixty-seven miles is the approximate distance from my home in St. Louis, MO to Sarasota, Florida. It’s a little further from my home to New York City and it’s just under the distance from my home to Ontario, Canada. It’s also exactly the number of miles I ran/jogged in 2008.

I run/jog for exercise and I do it almost every day. In fact, I ran/jogged all but 72 days in 2008.  (I say run/jog because sometimes I’m running and sometimes I’m jogging – it just depends on the day). As you can probably tell, I kept a rather detailed exercise log in 2008. And I love running/jogging. It’s easily my favorite form of exercise. If I’m not training for a distance event, I run between three miles and six miles each day. You get that feeling of “cardio accomplishment” faster with running or jogging than you do with most other forms of exercise, and I feel like I get more bang for my buck, so to speak. I can run for 30 minutes and really feel like I’ve done something, but I have to do other things, like aerobics or walking, a lot longer to get the same feeling. I’m not what you would call a patient person.

So here’s the problem: although I was very committed to my exercise routine in 2008, and although I lost all my “baby” weight (via Weight Watchers) and am back into all my clothes, I’m probably flabbier than I’ve ever been except when pregnant. I’m at least less toned than I’ve ever been. Running/jogging is just not a toning type of exercise. It takes and helps keep the weight off, but it doesn’t keep the back-fat away, nor does it tone the arms or abs.  And as I get older, I find myself limping to the bathroom in the morning and becoming less and less flexible. Thus, my New Year’s resolutions:

• Incorporate strength training into my exercise routine 2-3 times per week
• Incorporate yoga and/or pilates into my exercise routine once per week
• Continue running and train for the 2009 Chicago marathon
• Keep my new (used, but new to me) Honda Odyssey clean by vacuuming and wiping down the inside every Friday and washing the outside every other time I fill up. (I know - this has nothing to do with exercise, but it is a resolution of mine).

I wanted to write this post and have it up by New Year’s Day, but I’m actually glad I didn’t because my friend, former co-worker and fellow blogger Marijean of STLWorkingMom.com wrote a great post about making SMART goals versus resolutions. Smart is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reasonable and Time-bound. After reading her post on SMART goals, I tried to write my resolutions like SMART goals. I think I did so.

There. Now it’s all in writing and it’s way more public than any of my resolutions have been in previous years. So far, I’ve kept to all four of them (the yoga class starts this Thursday). But, it’s only Jan. 3. 

On another note: I’m secretly, selfishly hoping most of the “newbies” at my YMCA start falling off their resolution wagons soon because the crowds at MY Y are a pain and I expect they will be even worse this week. And I KNOW that’s a bad thing for me to wish for, because the increased numbers are good for the Y, and exercise is good for everyone, but I can’t help it.