Are Your New Year’s Resolutions Smart or Stupid?

It’s the first week of 2010, so one of the things really like to talk about are their New year’s resolutions. According to Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist who has tracked 3,000 people’s resolutions, 88% will fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions.

After 7 days of talking to people about what their New Year’s resolutions are I’m surprised that the success rate is even 12%.  They way most people approach making resolutions makes them seem destined to fail.  But, that does NOT have to be your fate.

5 Ways To Go From Stupid to Smart

#1.  What Are You Even Talking About?

I’ve talked to 20 or so people this week about what their resolutions are, and they ALL have failed this first test.

Most people’s resolutions are incredibly vague statements like:  “Write more letters,” “get in shape,” or “go to church more.”  When I ask, “well, what does ‘get in shape’ mean?”

I get answers like, “work out more,” “eat better,” or the classic, “I don’t know.”

If you cannot define what it means to be successful, then you can never actually be successful.  Your resolutions need to contain meaningful and specific information that defines what success is and what success is not.

For “get into shape” that could be ANYTHING – it could be bench pressing 250 pounds, it could be getting back into your size 6 dress, or anything else.  What is it to you?

For something like “work out more”, if you worked out once in 2009, will you be happy if you workout twice in 2010?  Or, like for most people, will you simply tell yourself that you should be working out more no matter how often you workout so that you always feel bad about what you are doing and then give up.

The S in SMART is for SPECIFIC:  If you can’t define it, then you won’t achieve it.

#2.  How Much Do You Want?

Again you need further information about what something like “workout more” means.  Are you going to workout three days per week?  Four days per week?

What constitutes a workout?  Do you have a specific program for success?  Is it one hour of random stuff in the gym?

You must have an objective (read “numerical”) way of determining if you have or have not succeeded.

The M in SMART is for MEASUREABLE:  If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, and you’ll never know if you are improving it for sure or not.

#3.  Is This In Your Control?

This is for resolutions like “I’m going to get my fat husband in shape.”  You can’t do that.

You can ask.  You can share your concern.  You can be supportive by throwing out all the junk and cooking better for yourself.  (My dad dropped 20lbs by accident this year just because my mom became a much better low-carb cook.)  BUT, you cannot make anyone (other than your children or employees) do anything that they don’t to do.

The A in SMART is ATTAINABLE

#4. Will You Pay That Much For It?

“I won’t eat any junk food in 2010” is something that somebody could actually do IF they defined what “junk food” was (you need a thorough working definition), and IF they had a good enough reason to follow through.

In reality, for most people, the above is destined to fail because it’s probably not worth it.  That goal is focused on behavior – the “price” to be paid, and not on the benefit.

If you weigh 300 pounds right now and you want to get down to 200, in the pursuit of that goal you might go one year without eating junk because you are so excited about being able to sit on a plane without the seat belt extender, getting rid of your ridiculously loud snoring, or no longer having people’s kids point at you  in shopping malls.

The goals and resolutions with the most juice behind them are OUTCOME oriented – they focus on the payoff, not the price.  If you know that you are working towards something amazing you can wake up early, and discipline yourself.

The R in SMART is for REALISTIC

#5.  When Will You Have It By?

“The deadline is the most important invention ever, because without nobody would have finished any other invention.”

-Dan Kennedy

For the most part New Year’s Resolutions actually have this built in – it’s a goal for one year.  “I’ll workout three times a week for one year.”

If, however, you want it sooner that one year from now, write that down.

The T is fore TIME BOUND

#6.  The BONUS Tip

Write it all down and review it at least once a week if not every single day.  It only takes 2min to review a single resolution.

Life is busy and messy and there is always more things going on than you can possibly keep up with.  If you let a week go by without reviewing what, by your own definition, is most important to you, then you will get caught up in the urgency of life and not make one ounce of progress towards anything that really matters to you.

And worst of all, if you try to do #1-5 in your head, you are doomed to fail.  You can only pay attention to 5-9 pieces of information at any given time.  Holding 5 in your head is occupying over half of your valuable metal real estate for no good reason.

Write it down or else you’ll forget your resolution and before you know it, it will be 12am, January 1st, 2011 and you’ll finally remember, “oh crap!  Last year I was supposed to workout more.  I didn’t do anything!”

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Super Easy Low-Carb Appetizer for Your New Year’s Eve Party

In case you have been living under a rock, or taking nutrition classes at a University, then you know that when it comes to fat-loss and health low-carb wins hands down.  I’ve written about that here, here, here, here, here, here and a whole lot of other places.

Your New Year’s Eve party is right around the corner, so I wanted to give you something easy that you could make that would be both tasty and helpful with getting a head start on your New Year’s Resolutions.

When you go low-carb one of the things that you miss the mot is crunchy stuff like crackers.  Here is a great alternative that I love with Baba Ganoush (a great, lower carb alternative to hummus).

Low-Carb Cheese Crackers

Ingredients

4 slices (approx 1 oz each) cheddar cheese (pre-sliced from a grocery store – I’ve used several brands and they all seem to work fine.)

Parchment paper

Directions

1.  Take cheese and fold into quarters (you end up with 4 pieces of cheese that are about ¼ the size of the original slice) and place on baking sheet that has been covered with a sheet of parchment paper.

2.  Preheat oven to 400 F, and put cheese in oven when the oven heats to 400.
3.  Bake for 8min

For a crisper cracker – leave the cheese on the parchment paper for an hour or more to help it dry out.  The longer it sits out the dryer it gets and the crisper your cracker.

Nutrition

Makes 4 servings of 4 crackers

Regular cheese crackers – 18g net carb per 1oz serving
These cheese crackers – .5g net carb per 1 oz serving (4 crackers)

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Get The Body You Want in 8 Weeks And I’ll Even Give You A Prize For Doing It. So, What Would You Like To Win?

Why wait for the New Year to start getting in shape?  Get started now and you could actually win a cool prize for your efforts.

The Body You Want is launching it’s first ever Holiday Body Transformation Contest.

So far we don’t know what 1st prize will be, but we’re looking for ideas from the folks who read the blog.  Submit an idea as a blog comment below.  (You have to 1st click on the title to pull up the blog post as a separate page.)

Who: Anyone who’s a client or who has purchased The Client Success Manual is eligible. (We even have 8 week coaching packages for people looking to enter our contest.  Email Natillie (thebodyyouwant@yahoo.com) for the details.)

What: The winner will be picked on two criteria:
#1.  Before and after picture
#2.  Essay

When: We have a rolling entry.  That is you can start any time between today (Oct 6th) and Oct 25th.

Read more

A New Year, A New Body – The Exclusive Workouts

Want to lose 10 pounds in as little as 28 days?  Think that sounds out of reach or that it will require starvation?  Well think again – you can start shredding body fat almost immediately by lifting smart and eating your fill of healthy foods.  Find out how to amp up your metabolism and accelerate your progress in part two of our four part series.

Oh and while you’re at my article do me a favor and post a comment or two.

Thanks.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and a personal trainer in Washington DC that was nominated several times for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine.  Oh, and check out his new web-site washingtondcpersonaltrainer.com

2 Things You Need In Your Kitchen

Before I get into the meat of the post I want to thank you for tuning in to me in 2008.  I am honored by your attention and time.

I’m looking forward to seeing you in the New Year.  In week #1 look for the start of a 4 part series on creating a brand new body in the time that you actually have.  I’m doing it with the good folks at Primer Magazine over the next 13 weeks:

•    Part I A (week 1):  creating the mind-set to finally succeed this New Years – 99% of Americans fail to keep their resolutions past even 2 weeks, so don’t miss this part.
•    Part I B (week 1):  the simple nutrition plan that will massively skyrocket your energy AND help you drop 10lbs of body-fat in 4 weeks without having to count calories
•    Part II (week 2):  the 4 week Metabolic Blast workout plan – the other half of the equation that will have you down up to 10lbs of body-fat in just 28 days and less than 3.5hrs/week of exercise.  (I’ve had people do a lot better than 10lbs in 28 days.)
•    Part III (week 5):  phase II of the Metabolic Blast and trouble-shooting based on readers questions.  If you want your body to make progress, then you must systematically (NOT haphazardly) progress your workouts over time.  Generally every 4 weeks works very well.
•    Part IV (week 9):  phase III of the Metabolic Blast.  Its time to finish off your New Year’s transformation and “unveil.”  If you’ve stuck with it so far you will be looking at a new person in the mirror.

#1.  Sugar-Free Syrup

.25 cup regular maple and/or pancake syrup has at least 200 kcal in it, ALL of which are from sugar.  A quarter cup is only 4 tbsp and is extremely easy to eat without realizing it.  Most people end up eating between .25 and .5 a cup with breakfast.

4tbsp of maple syrup is the equivalent of a 20oz bottle of regular coke.  That is a HUGE blood sugar spike and crash (energy destroyer), and a HUGE spike of insulin (super fat storage, unless you just finished lifting weights).

Sugar-free syrup has just 20kcal per .25 cup, all of which come from slow-digesting sugar alcohols.

So, if you are making my super yummy, high protein pancakes use sugar-free syrup.  By the way “super yummy, high protein pancake” is NOT an oxymoron, and they’re made out of actual food, not a hodge-podge of highly processed Franken-food.  Oh, and they are very easy to make too.

#2.  Low-Carb Ketchup

Ketchup is pretty much just red high fructose corn syrup (HFSC).  This came as a big blow to me as I am a ketchup lover.  75% of the calories in regular ketchup come from HFSC, the most fattening substance known to man.  A few tablespoons here and a few tablespoons there you have a can of coke on your eggs, bun-less burger or whatever you like ketchup on.

Luckily there is such a thing as low carb ketchup where they take out the HFSC or sugar and replace it with Splenda, and the remaining calories come from actual tomatoes.  It has 75% fewer calories AND no added sugar and still tastes good.

While neither one of these changes alone will give you a completely different physique, both will help you to make more progress towards a leaner and more energetic you.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and a Washington, DC based nominee for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine. Click here to find out more.