It’s only the second day of January, and already the airwaves are full of advertisements for diets, gym memberships, and exercise equipment. I can only imagine how crowded the gyms will be this week, and how many new memberships the commercial diet centers will get. Flash forward to February, and how many people will still be committed to their New Year’s resolutions? Not very many, I’d bet.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever tried in order to lose weight? Maybe you tried the all-cabbage-soup diet, or drank something nasty in the name of a cleanse. Maybe you did Biggest-Loser-level workouts. As for me, the craziest diet I was ever on was the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, where I ate no breakfast, had a salad for lunch, and then ate literally whatever I wanted for an hour at dinner time. What a weird way to fuel my body.
Probably my craziest workout routine took place two summers ago, when I decided I would do super intense double workouts nearly every day for a month, just to see what would happen. I wore a heart rate monitor so I could calculate my calorie burn, and I was averaging around 800 calories a day burned off with workouts. I must have been shedding weight like crazy, right? Nope. After a month of that, I was exhausted – and down about 4 pounds. Definitely not worth the effort, or sustainable in the long run.
The kicker is, you’re better off developing moderate healthy habits that you can sustain over the course of your life. Eat more fruits and veggies. Drink lots of water. Move your body in pleasure, heart-pumping ways most days of the week. You don’t have to – and you shouldn’t – go to extremes.
Instead of bullying yourself into going to the gym or starting a new low-whatever diet today, why not make it your goal to adopt a new healthy habit every week this month? Think how good you’ll feel in February, when you’re still incorporating those habits into your everyday life!
