Can you believe it? 2022 is mere weeks away. A new year is fast approaching and as customary I know many of us have not fulfilled some of the planned resolutions for the current year, myself included.
However, a new year beckons and with it comes new challenges. So I am challenging you readers to write down your health and fitness resolutions for 2022 and try as much as possible to get them done.
You can simply start off with sleeping more, eating less sugary or processed foods and working out. These three health and fitness resolutions can go a long way, trust me.
1. Sleep — I used to pride myself on not needing much sleep. But that was a bad habit and one that’s hard to break as well. Lack of sleep can see you finding it hard to complete simple tasks, forget things, and live your day in a cloud. Do whatever you can to steal a few more hours each day of restful sleep: no tossing and turning or multiple toilet breaks. Before you go to bed, take some magnesium. Stop drinking water after 8 pm; that will help to eliminate trips to the toilet.
2. Eating less sugar and processed foods — I believe that once we use sugar and processed foods to cope with something in our lives, it can turn into a destructive habit. Processed foods may have the initial fun and comforting feeling, but after a while, your mood and energy start to spiral downward. Then you feel the need to eat even more. It’s easier to devour that food rather than understand why you are eating it. If you can talk to yourself and find out what’s happening in your environment to trigger this, that will be the first step towards addressing it. Changing a habit takes a bit of an effort to begin the change – but it’s well worth it. I promise you, after a few weeks of doing it, it will no longer be hard. I go months without sugar without a bother.
3. Exercise — I know that sometimes exercise is challenging. You’re tired, worn out or too busy. But let me fill you in on a secret. Exercise helps to boost your energy level and makes you feel and look better. Initially, it will be difficult to get out of bed or drag yourself from your home or office to the gym. However, once you get there, start and finish your workout; I guarantee you will be glad it happened. Once you start pushing through that excuse barrier of ‘not to exercise’, you will move through it and never look back. Again, this habit sounds easy. I’ve been training for over 15 years and the thought of not exercising never crosses my mind. If you want to cultivate the same kind of habit, you too must start from the bottom and work your way towards the top. The bottom means initially making it easy for you to exercise and then talking yourself into it. This must happen every single time until it’s engraved in your mind. Then, you don’t even need to think about it anymore; your body does what it’s supposed to do.
Get out your pens and pads, or tablets and computers or your phones – whatever you write with — and make an early start to setting yourself some new, or updated goals.
