Top Five Tips to Make Your New Year's Resolution Stick

(December, 2008) The following strategies can help you keep your New Year's diet resolution this year:

• Pick a start date for your diet and commit to it. The first three days of any diet are key. Make sure your first three days have nothing planned that might interefere with your diet (i.e. a business trip, vacation, party, etc.). If you get a "quick start" and stick to your program exactly for the first three days, the rest of the week and beyond will be easier.
• Tell your friends and family about your diet. Their understanding and support can go a long way. Also, find someone to go on a diet with you. The support and accountability you provide each other will help both of you.
• Set up your "food environments" so that high calorie foods are less accessible. Relying solely on will power and self-control to avoid high calorie foods does not work for many dieters because it requires that you make frequent decisions not to eat. For example, if you tend to eat whole bags of chipw when they are around, then not keeping them in your house is almost certainly your best bet for not eating them. In fact, you will probably find it easier to pass up the chips in the grocery store when you are shopping than to fight the urge to eat them once they are in your house.
• Stock your kitchen (and office) with a wide variety of low-fat, low-calorie foods that are readily accessible, such as fruits, vegetables (fresh, frozen, or canned), and non-caloric beverages.
• Commit to physical activity. Every time you move your body, you burn calories. HMR recommends building up to 2,000 calories or more of physical activity each week. Walking is the perfect exercise! For more details on how many calories you can burn by walking, and other physical activity ideas, go to HMR's Walk-o-Meter™.

Despite your good intentions, if you do fall off your diet at some point, don't get discouraged and decide that the rest of the day "doesn't matter" and eat even more foods off your diet. This can turn a day off your diet into a week off! Keep in mind that one day is not enough to stop you from losing weight. The most important thing to do when you break your diet is to respond with another positive weight-loss behavior as soon as possible, for example quickly eating a piece of fruit to get your diet back on track.