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Shedding Weight : My New Year Resolution

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Published: 06Jan2012
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Losing weight is, for better or worse, one of the most common New Year's resolutions. People wish to look and feel better by shedding some unwanted pounds—both a cause and a sign of life in the following year being an improvement on life in previous years.

Unfortunately, linking weight loss to plans for the new year can also lead to the development of neurotic attitudes about diet and exercise. It becomes all too easy to believe that the success or failure of one's plans for the new year are reflected in one's progress (or lack thereof) in losing weight. Since any plan (well thought out or not, successful or not) will inevitably impact your health, it is important that you are able to think calmly and rationally about how you will pursue your resolution and gauge your progress.

Your ultimate goal must be both realistic and appropriate. You should choose the weight loss objective that is right for you, not a target that is based on faddish or imposed standards. For example, a person with the bone structure and genetics of Heidi Klum can hardly hope to have the build of, say, Zhang Ziyi, unless she plans to starve herself into severe illness. However, both women are healthy and attractive. They may have very different body shapes, but each has a shape that is right for her. We might say something similar for famous men like Brad Pitt and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Both are healthy and handsome, but differences in body type and age can help explain why one is much bulkier than the other. It is not a matter of better/worse or right/wrong bodies.

Try consulting your physician about proper weight loss targets based on your Body Mass Index. Make sure to ask this doctor what frame size you are: people of small, medium, and large frames have different appropriate weight ranges, even if they are of identical height. If your doctor insists on using a single weight range and does not appear to take into account differences in body structure between patients, you should probably think about consulting someone with more specific knowledge of body types.

Furthermore, do not procrastinate. You can put your health at very real risk if you ignore your diet plan for the first 10 months of the year, and then put your body through hell for the last two months in order to achieve your year-end goal. A gradual approach is better. Spend the first month or so acclimatizing your body to mild changes, then slowly up the ante as necessary. Remember, this is your body, not a term paper. Cramming is unhealthy!

In addition, taking up weight loss as your New Year's resolution does not necessarily mean that your weight loss plan should also be new, i.e. avant-garde or cutting edge. A plan might be the "latest thing," but that also means it is relatively untried and most likely over-hyped. Fad diets, after all, have a well-deserved reputation for being ineffective, only temporarily effective, and/or being accompanied by various nasty side effects. Dietary supplements can be outright dangerous as well, one of the most notorious being the so-called "Bangkok pills," as some batches were laced with shabu (a.k.a. methamphetamine). In other words, "old-fashioned" plans that involve eating less fat, chomping on more greens, and walking more often do have their merits, even though they may be tedious and slow.

The way you monitor your progress is also very important. Some research suggests that people who weigh themselves more often tend to lose more weight than those who check themselves only rarely. Of course, checking your weight every day can also lead you to become discouraged when you see no change between one check and the next. Once every week or two should do the trick. Also, remember that sometimes you get heavier even as you lose fat: this is because muscle weighs more than fat.

Best of luck with your weight loss plan for the upcoming year!

Losing weight is one of the most popular new year's resolutions for most people. This stems for the rampant obesity that the world is experiencing at the moment. Unfortunately most people give up after couple of months and only those who have a new year's resolution plan succeed.

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