Day Twenty-Nine: Resolutions

So New Year’s is all about behavior change, and as we learned yesterday some wacky superstitions about bringing good luck to your house.

I love goal setting. I usually have lists of long term and short term goals with milestones and time tables to accomplish them. Most of these goals are career related and super manageable. Some of my goals however, fall in the big wishes like magically figure out how to pay off my student loans 5 years early or figure out how to get onto someone’s top 30 under 30 list in the next 21 months.

New Year’s Eve goal setting or resolution making is fantastic because it is all about personal success. It drives me crazy that there is never a treadmill available at my gym and that Weight Watchers gets sooo crowded and so boring, but I love January because everyone is trying to make themselves better.

There is a pretty popular framework for setting goals or making resolutions that says that your goal should be:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-bound

A lot of New Year’s resolutions fail mid-month because they do not meet one of those key criteria. Also while making resolutions keep a couple of things in mind. Why are you setting this goal? What do you hope to gain? Is your winning outcome worth more to you than that stop at Starbucks, that pack of smokes, or that Jagger Bomb? If not you may have a hard time sticking to your goal long term.

You may also want to think about how you will deal with the void created by your new goal. If you are quitting anything you are leaving a hole in your life that needs to be filled to maintain satisfaction. When I quit snacking after dinner I made hundreds of Origami flowers to keep my hands and mind busy. One of my friends quit smoking and started gardening…or picking every single piece of crab grass out of the back yard by hand. Filling a behavior you are quitting with increased activity is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. You are filling the void while getting a nice little hit of serotonin, and if your resolution has anything to do with health or weight loss then getting active can super charge your efforts.

Create check points with rewards. What is going to motivate you to stick with your goal? Checking in with yourself weekly or monthly will help develop accountability. Rewards will make your efforts seem worth it in the short term while you are waiting for the long term pay off. Remember if your goal is health/weight loss related your reward should not be food. Using food as a reward for good behavior can forge an unhealthy relationship with tasty treats.

With all of that being said…I have decided on a fairly ridiculous resolution. I am going to quit eating processed sugar/sugar substitutes and consuming caffeine until Valentine ’s Day.  I have recently gone a little bit nuts with my sugar free energy drink habit…so Rockstar and I are breaking up. I think all of the fake sugar has lead to hard core craving of the real stuff because the vegan cookies I baked this week would have normally been no big deal for me, but for some reason I was like a crack-head looking for a chocolate chip fix.

So there we have it-

Specific

No caffeine, no diet soda/energy drinks, no cookies, no candy, no soy ice cream, no crappy sugary food. I am not going to go totally nuts with the sugar thing, I know that sugar is an ingredient in a lot of stuff…I am just trying to avoid sweet treats.

Measurable

For me no means no. A lot of people suggest weaning off of sugar and caffeine, but I know myself and know that it has to be like ripping off a band-aid. Lucky Allison gets to deal with my hooker-face for the next week, but we will both be better because of it.

Attainable

I am completely capable of quitting sugar and caffeine. I have quit both before although never at the same time. I usually use one to help get over the other, but hell I am awesome I can do anything. I know people who have quit real drugs…I am going to make sugar my bitch.  I am also going to try to up my activity. I have been slacking on working out because my schedule has been super inconsistent. I want to get my tail back to the gym to get through the detox craziness.

Relevant

For me my weight loss has stalled and I get killer headaches if I don’t get enough caffeine. I would like to be a normal happy human and think that quitting sweets and caffeine will do that for me. Weight loss is so important to me and I see both as contributing factors in preventing me from meeting my bigger goals.

Time-based

Realistically this cannot be a yearlong goal for me. I am admitting that now to not set myself up for failure later in the year. I want to feel like I can eat whatever I want when I am in India in March, and will probably want to selectively use caffeine to get through the jet lag. I know that most habits can be created or broken in 30 days, so I figure staying sugar and caffeine free for six weeks couldn’t hurt. At that point I will reevaluate, and hopefully won’t want sugar or caffeine again…we’ll see.

Most goal setting guides also suggest writing down and publicly announcing your goals so here you go…after my Swedish Fish at midnight this girl is going sugar and caffeine free!

What is your resolution? How are you going to make sure it sticks?