Three Steps to Make Your Resolution Easier This Year

By , Resolving to solving resolution confusion
We’ve come to that time of the year again where everyone and their brother set a new weight loss or fitness resolution for the new year. And we’re just a few weeks away from that time of the year when nearly everyone and their sister gives up on those same resolutions and settle back into old habits. For so many people, this cycle of commitment and giving up happens every year, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

We know it’s possible to make New Year’s resolutions you’ll keep because we’ve been helping our members make changes that stick since 2001—and we’ve learned a learned a little about what works along the way. If we had to pick one thing as the key to making resolutions stick, it’s this: start small, and be consistent. Bite off more than you can chew and you’ll choke on your resolution; start with small bites and you’ll finish what’s on your (well-portioned) plate.

Some of our members know this already because they’ve made changes in the past and stuck with them. Instead of saying “I’ll lose 50 pounds this year,” to yourself, try making resolutions around the actions that will help you lose that weight. Commit to working out for just 10 minutes a day. Promise yourself you’ll track your nutrition and fitness intently. Dedicate to learning at least one, new thing about diet and fitness and the effect it has on your body.

We know this can be difficult. If making positive life changes were easy, everyone would do it. That’s why we developed a way to make this process a little easier, a way to help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions: SparkPeople Premium.

By no means do you have to use Premium to knock your resolutions out of the park this year, but let me explain why Premium makes it so much easier to make your resolutions part of your daily habits. Follow these three steps and you’ll be shocked at how much easier your goals feel are this new year:

Resolution #1: Exercise 10 Minutes per Day, Every Day


We’ve been talking about the benefits of 10 minutes of exercise per day for years and years. It’s one of our founding concepts because we know consistent, small changes really do add up in the long run. Our newest addition to Premium—coach-led workouts—tackles this idea head-on. With this new tool, you can select a workout routine that will help you achieve a specific goal. Each routine has directions from one of our coaches, GIF demonstrations of how you’re supposed to do each exercise to maximize results and the ability to jam to your favorite tunes during the workout.

The best part? You can set the duration of your workout to be 30 minutes, 20 minutes, or (you guessed it) 10 minutes! Premium acts as a helping hand, taking the guesswork out of how you’re going to get your 10 minutes in each day.

Resolution #2: Dedicate Yourself to Learning One, New Thing About Your Health Everyday


Living a happier, healthier lifestyle is the result of making small, positive changes over time. The only way you can make those changes is by broadening your horizons and learning something new. That’s why we’ve made articles, blogs, recipes and videos so central to SparkPeople; we know if we can pass on healthy advice to our members, they can take this knowledge and use it to make healthy changes in their lives. But we also know that sometimes some of our members finish an article and still have questions.

With Premium, you can use our Email a Coach feature and shoot any question you have on your mind to our very own coaches, via email. Heck, if you time it right and ask the right question, you might even get an answer from the coach who wrote the piece you had a question about!


Resolution #3: Track Your Nutrition and Fitness


Almost all of our members already know how to do this one, and we make it easy. In fact, our nutrition tracker is one of the elements on our site—and in our app—you use most. You use it because it works and we all know that by gaining a better understanding of what we eat, we are more likely to make healthy changes to our habits that change our whole outlook on life.

But when you think about it, it’s not just the tracking that helps you reach your goals—it’s also the exploration of what you’ve tracked and the knowledge you’ve gained from that exploration. If you know yourself better, you can know which changes you can make and the ramifications they can have on your overall wellness. And that’s why Advanced Reporting will be your new, best friend. Get deep insights into not only what you eat, but how balanced your nutrition is. Chart the goals you set for yourself against the reality of what you’ve tracked and you’ll see places you can improve right away.

SparkPeople offers you the tools you need to make positive life changes this January, into the rest of your life; Premium makes the toolbox a little bigger. Give it a try for two weeks, FREE by clicking on the button below.