Christmas is over, and the New Year’s Resolutions are peering over the horizon. What will you resolve to do this year? If you are like most people, your resolution has to do with becoming more healthy.
I like the health philosophy of Leanne Ely, of Flylady.com. She calls chubbiness “body clutter,” and reminds people that just as our houses don’t get cluttered– or perfectly cleaned– in one day or one week, our bodies don’t get decluttered that fast, either.
But loving, consistent baby steps, in both areas, do work.
“Jump in where you are,” she advises, and don’t give in to those weight loss gimmicks on TV that make their living off our unhealthy forms of perfectionism, the desperate attitudes that lure us to buy in to “lose 50 pounds in 6 weeks” schemes.
Many of us do unreasonable things and pay unreasonable amounts of money to try to lose weight fast. Then our weight either stays on, gets heavier, or yo-yos due to the unreasonable diet plans.
It’s not that they promise the truly impossible; it’s that the results they promise are rarely typical for most people.
The ads even say so, in small print, in tiny voices, somewhere in their infomercials and advertisements: Results Not Typical. We who throw down our cash for a bunch of promises are foolish. What the ads promise is possible only for those people who dramatically change their lifestyles to make the diet programs their top life’s priority.
I like Flylady’s BabyStep approach to body clutter and house clutter. She emphasises that “knowledge and awareness make for wisdom.” She says, “jump in where you are,” and “take baby steps.”
In their book,”Body Clutter,” Leanne Ely and Marla Ciley liken fad diets to “stash and dash” house cleaning. We who stash clutter closets or under beds find that the clutter comes back to haunt us because we haven’t dealt with the habits that create clutter; we just stash it away momentarily.
The authors describe our denial (if I don’t get on the scale, my weight gain isn’t real), our unhealthy perfectionism (now I’ve eaten that cookie, so I might as well eat the whole package), and self-soothing (because I’ve had a bad day, I deserve treats).
Cilley and Ely give three advisory points:
- Stock the shelves with health food.
- Don’t be a “martyr.” Skipping meals or undereating is a set up for overeating later, or snacking throughout the day.
- Get one “million-dollar” outfit. Don’t not buy new clothes until you reach your target weight. Find ways to feel good about yourself now.
We can make tiny course corrections to can change our eventual health-destination. Why not practice?
Rather than dramatically cutting our portion sizes, why not leaving one or two bites of food on the plate, rather than cleaning it, today? Rather than promise ourselves that we will run five miles a day, why not call a friend and take a walk twice a week? Rather than violently throwing all the leftover Christmas fudge in the trash, why not freeze it, to get it out of sight? Rather than baking and sharing so many baked goods to neighbors next year, and inhaling too much cookie dough in the process, why not give a bowl of nuts, or a bag of soaps, or a nice card next year? Rather than decide to be a vegetarian forever, starting January first, why not find and serve just one meatless recipe per week?
Baby steps are more gentle, more embraceable, and more likely to remain with us than dramatic overhauls.
And we don’t have to be the ones financing all the hyped up “lose weight fast” ads, this year.
Also make sure to fill out the form at the top of the page to find discount health insurance. The form lets you compare insurance plan from different insurers. Trust me comparing health insurance is the first trick to saving money.
