What are your New Year's resolutions?

I hope you had a great holiday weekend! My Christmas turned out really well even though I didn't get to go to Wisconsin to celebrate with my family. I went to Morton's Steakhouse with a couple friends and got to enjoy a delicious filet and lobster tail meal! Unfortunately, I ended up getting sick towards the end of last week and am still not feeling very well. My family in Wisconsin all ended up with some type of stomach bug though, so I guess it kind of worked out that I didn't go there. I think I'd much rather have this cold! It's so hard to believe that 2016 is almost over! I am ready for 2017! What about you? Have you decided on your New Year's resolutions yet? What about how you will stick to them? I wanted to share some tips that I give my clients about goal setting.

1. Write them down. This way you can look at them and keep track of your progress. Or, it's always fun to look back at them at the end of the year to see if you've achieved them or not. If you can, keeping them somewhere that you will see them frequently will be a constant reminder of what you are trying to achieve.

2. Ask yourself why you want to achieve your goals, and write that down too. That way you will know what it is about that goal that makes it important to you, which will be another constant reminder. It's so easy to start the year out right, but as time goes on and we get busy, it's so common to forget about our goals.

3. Write your goals in SMART format (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound). That way you will know the what, why and how of your goals, when you want to achieve them by, and how you will measure your success.

4. Break your goals into smaller pieces. You can have one big goal, but if you break it into smaller goals, it won't be so overwhelming and will make it easier to achieve. For example, instead of saying that you will lose 25 pounds this year, you can say that you will lose 2 pounds per month, which seems much more doable.

5. Finally, figure out what action steps you are going to do to reach your goals, and write those down too. If your goal is to lose weight, do you plan to go to the gym, only eat out once a week, start eating more vegetables, or drink more water? Deciding on exactly what you are going to do to get there and writing that down also will also be helpful.

I hope this helps. If your goal is to eat a cleaner diet or if you are thinking about trying a cleanse, I will be offering a group 5 day cleanse for beginners later in January. I will have more information on that in an upcoming newsletter. I will also still be offering my 14 day cleanse (launching soon), and am still offering my Weight Loss Jumpstart and Get Your Body Back programs. If you are interested in either of those, you can click on the links for more information!