I've always hated New Year’s resolutions, so I did something about it

I don’t really like New Year’s resolutions. They’ve always seemed to me like dares to out yourself as a failure who isn’t capable of keeping commitments. However this year I did make a 2016 New Year’s Day resolution, except I made it back in May of 2015. This is a long post so bear with me.

I'm 45 years old, married for 22 years to an amazing woman and have three teenage boys. I started gaining weight after we had our first son. Over the years it kept creeping up until this past year when I found myself 60 pounds overweight. I had other health issues starting to creep up as well. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes 1 ½ years ago. I was on medications for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. This May I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, waking up 60-70 times every hour according to the test.

Every New Year’s day I would think about how I wanted to be healthier, but refused to make the resolution because I didn’t want to have it fade away as the year moved forward and feel like I’d failed. This meant that I never made any changes. However, this May I was truly concerned for my long term health and decided I’d had enough and that I would get to New Year’s Day of 2016 with some sort of progress.

I always felt like conditions were never “right” for me to make the decision to get healthier. I would always get overwhelmed with the big picture of needing to lose 60 pounds, and all the setbacks and challenges that I would face to make it happen. To overcome this mindset I decided to do what I’ve learned in my professional career when tackling large complex projects, and that is to answer the question “what is the very next step that needs to be taken”. So I decided that my very next step would be to find an app to track what I ate and start tracking.

I found myfitnesspal and started to track everything I ate. I set a target to lose 1 ½ pounds per week with a daily calorie target to make that happen. Approaching it this way was a game changer for me because it gave me the tools to make good decisions throughout the day. I didn’t make a huge change in the type of food I ate, but making decisions about what to eat based on how many calories I was “spending” helped me make better choices. I also started working out in July to improve my cardiovascular health.

It wasn’t a linear process, but I was always committed to moving forward no matter what kind of setbacks I had. It also wasn’t a diet. I find diets to be too depriving. If I really wanted to eat something I ate it, I just made sure to track it and adjust my day accordingly. This Christmas I ate cookies, fudge, and all sorts of goodies and gained 7 pounds. However, I didn’t feel guilty about it like I’d failed at my “diet”. I knew after Christmas I would continue the process that’s worked for me and I’ve lost 4 of those pounds already.

So up to this point I’ve lost 50 pounds (the picture attached is from May and from Christmas), my Hemoglobin A1C is now no longer in the diabetic range, my cholesterol is now in the normal range and I’m off my blood pressure medication. I now weigh what I weighed when I first got married and I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.



I only post this hoping to be an encouragement to you if you’ve struggled with resolutions regarding health in the past. I encourage you to not put it off to tomorrow or next week. Decide what your very next step is and take it now. Then keep taking the very next step toward your goals.

Happy New Year, and I wish you well as we begin 2016.