Resolving to Keep Your Health Goals

Every year immediately following January 1st, gym memberships climb and supplements goon sale for the many people that make the New Year’s resolution to get healthy. Whether this is you (or it was you and by mid-January you have already shifted your resolve), here are some helpful tips in setting realistic resolutions and keeping them.

• Be specific. General goals like “get fit” or “eat healthy” are so non-specific that achieving them becomes next to impossible. If your goal is to get in shape, decide on the number of minutes each week you want to be active. Or if you would like to shift your eating habits, make the goal of drinking a certain amount of water each day or start a food diary to track your calories.
• Be realistic. If your heart rate hasn’t increased from exercise in years, resolving to workout every day may set you up to fail. Start with three days a week and increase as the year unfolds. Additionally, being gluten-free, sugar-free, alcohol-free, and dairy-free are incredible goals, but try tackling one at a time, instead of everything at once.
• Allow yourself some grace. Yes, the goal of making a resolution is to keep it. But ifyou fall off the wagon, there is no reason you can’t jump back on and continue your health journey. Resolutions are not “all or nothing”.
• Set and celebrate milestones. Resolving to do something for a full year can be overwhelming. To make your goals more attainable, set weekly or monthly checkpoints to give yourself short-term victories.Eat the elephant one bite at a time.

January 1st is always a new beginning. But it is not too late to make your health the priority of the new year. Follow these tips to help attain your health goals. And if joint pain is keeping you from being active, let OHKC help by making an appointment today. Call (816) 561-3003 to make an appointment at one of our three convenient clinic locations.