Lose Weight in 2007: How to Better Succeed at Your 2007 New Years Resolution

Okay, so you have decided that one of your New Years Resolutions for 2007 is going to be losing weight. Maybe you just want to tone up or build muscle or maybe you want to do all three. In any case there are some simple ways that you can better prepare yourself over the next week to be better tooled to succeed at your New Years Resolution!

Let's start with your kitchen pantry. Go in there and look to see if there is anything that will cause you to make it easy to relapse into eating junk food or would feed an emotional eating habit or a boredom food. If it is in there and you don't want to throw it away, put them in a container and give them to a friend, neighbor of a family member for safe keeping or give the foods away (non opened of course) to a local food bank or shelter.

Now that your pantry is rid of those nasty little foods that could cause a setback, head over to your refrigerator and freezer. If you keep chips or snacks in your refrigerator or on top of it, in freezer as well, get them out. Unless they are healthy for you, you do not need them there to tease you into the alluring easy temptations that it wouldn't hurt to take just one bite. One bite leads to two that leads to a whole pack or bag of snackaroos. From there, if you are like 90% of most people, you will feel like a failure and stop all of your good work right there saying you, failed. This is not true....you just had a set back, but, if those foods are not there to tempt you, then you have a fighting chance at getting to where you want to be, whatever fitness goals you may be striving for.

Once your kitchen is rid of those tasty tempting tidbits that allure you in the middle of the night or after a hard days work, now you must get your self ready by making sure you have the right equipment to be able to attain your fitness goals. If you were planning on getting a gym membership, go ahead and do it. There are often times that gyms this time of year will offer a special to new comers to encourage you to get a membership from their establishment. Take advantage of those specials!

Other ways to get better prepared for your fitness goals would be to buy weights or get an interesting exercise tape or find a walking buddy. If you go to church, see if someone there would be interested in starting walking for fitness for the New Year. Organize your house and your schedule in advance to know if you will have to get up early or the times when you will need to work your fitness into your routine. Don't say it can't be done. It is only a matter of when and IF you REALLY want to do this.

Lastly, if you are able, go grocery shopping for the foods that you know will help you stick to your fitness goals. If you stay on the road, protein bars or cereal bars are good to help you keep from giving in to the snack attacks. If you like pretzels or protein shakes get those and have them ready to go with you. Get eggs or oatmeal or both, lean meats and stock up on some fresh veggies, making a list of what you want to fix for meals over the next week or two. Go ahead and make a list of what you would like to eat for the next month, meal wise. That way you will know ahead of time what your grocery list will be and that will not only cut your shopping time down but it will also give you no reason to go down the isles that have the junk food in them or snacks n cookies and lead you astray in your fitness efforts.

I know that this last part can be particularly troublesome and very hard if you either do not have a supportive spouse or you have a family who eats anything and everything and are very happy with the way they are. If you are sincerely doing this for you, with your own goals in mind, whether it be to lose weight or to run a marathon one day, just to tone and tighten up your body or to be in a fitness competition, then YOU are the one you have to worry about when it comes to how your fitness goals get completed.

I know it can be hard, very hard, with kids running around. I have two teenagers, one whom thinks the refrigerator is a never ending revolving door that is always stocked automatically by the grocery stores on a regular basis! I have a hubby with a snack habit; I love him and he loves me AND his sweet tooth. Those are barriers we have to overcome for ourselves if we want to make our habits and resolutions and dreams of a new us to happen. It can and it WILL happen, IF you really work at it. I personally fix many meals a day and have to often resist the urge to dig down into that ice cream or his snacks or eat that fried chicken that my hubby wanted for dinner. The temptatious urge to snack when fixing meals for others is one that many people, me included, have to fight each and every day. The urge to take a bite here and a bite there can become overwhelming when you are fixing peanut butter jelly or banana sandwiches and you know you should not eat them or have them but they smell oh so scrumptious. That is when you take one of your snack times if you can, getting out one of your prepared snacks and eating while fixing those otherwise very yummy meals for your family.

Then there are the times when you are bored, upset, depressed or just feeling hungry, overwhelmingly. Those times you have to fight the urge to snack on everything in the house. To keep that New Years Resolution, you need to FIGHT that urge. Get up and take a walk, even if it is only around the block, find something else to do for a little while and drink a large cup of water or bottle of water. Do something, anything, to get your mind off of that strong urge to snack. If you drink water or take a walk you will often find that urge to slowly go away. If not, call someone that you trust to help you or write how you feel down. That helps too; anything to get your mind off of your troubles or your boredom.

There you go! Now, you have all the tools you need to make your fitness goals to happen. Make sure you have a notebook or something and write down everything you do and everything you eat over the next six weeks to three months. Look over it every week to see how you are doing on your fitness plan and adjust it accordingly. If you are eating something you shouldn't but want that item, figure out a time or day when you can have that something sinful, without having the guilt of eating it. If you are not working out like you should, sit and think about why and rework your plan so that you can and will succeed. Get up a few minutes earlier than you normally would or cut out part of that TV show you might normally watch. Go during your lunch break or after dinner to take care of your fitness. Any ways you can get it fit in, do it, especially if doing this, making this new years resolution, and is what you really and truly want to happen. If you do, you can and WILL make this New Years Resolution a fact and SUCCEED!!