How Big is Your “But”?

Dr. Mitchell is co-author of Fat is Not Your Fate, Eat to Stay Young and I’d Kill for a Cookie.

Listen to her weekly Internet Show on AM580 WDBO http://580wdbo.com/healthcenter/

Visit her websites: http://www.susanmitchell.org and http://www.fatisnotyourfate.com

Have you thought about the New Year and what you want to accomplish? Do you have dreams that you hope come true? Maybe you think about setting goals but your ‘but’ gets in the way. No, not that ‘butt’ although you might be feeling that your bum or backside is a little larger than it was before Thanksgiving. I’m talking about the ‘but’ that keeps you stuck in your rut and prevents you from moving ahead, reaching your goals and making your dreams come true. You know the ‘but’…you would like to take that yoga class ‘but’ or you feel tired and really need to get more sleep ‘but’ or you know you should eat healthier ‘but’ it never seems to happen.

Let 2008 be the year you kick the ‘but’ out of your life and have a mental boot camp with yourself…an up close and personal inventory if you will. You’ve got what it takes to make those dreams happen. The ‘but’ has been in the way blocking your success.

Forget about a long list of goals or resolutions if you’ve been blocked by the ‘but’. Instead focus on tweaking your life one small step at a time. When that small step becomes a habit and part of the way you live, then tweak again and add the next small step. Most people don’t like change. That’s the big reason your list of resolutions gets thrown in the trash before the end of January. Right?

As you think about fine-tuning your health for 2008, consider a pedometer for the first tweak that you make in your life. Walking is an easy and fun way to burn calories and improve your overall fitness level. New research from Duke University Medical Center published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that walking, which is considered moderate exercise, is as good as more intense workouts for lowering the risk to your heart…specifically by lowering triglycerides and increasing the beneficial cholesterol called HDL. But hear this…continued inactivity resulted in a significant increase in cardiovascular risk or to be specific an increase in the lousy cholesterol or LDL.

Pedometers are a great way to track how far you walk. 2000 steps = one mile. A goal of 10,000 steps or five miles daily is a reasonable one to work towards. Your steps include a planned walk as well as steps you take all day long…up the stairs, from the parking lot, down the hall, etc.

I like to wear a pedometer for it becomes a self motivating game. How many steps have I walked today? More than yesterday? Do I need to walk down the hall and speak to someone instead of sending an email? Setting non-food rewards on a weekly basis can be fun. Set a goal for the number of steps you want to log each week and then reward yourself if you meet that goal.

In my corporate classes, people always ask where you can find pedometers online. Two sites that carry good quality pedometers are new-lifestyles.com and accusplit.com.
 
Find one that lets you set your stride for more accuracy in step counting. Some of the pedometers come with a secondary clip to prevent the pedometer from dropping on the concrete or falling in the toilet Yes, this does happen quite often.

Let 2008 be the year that your ‘but’ no longer gets in the way of your dreams and goals. Start with one small tweak to your daily health and let me hear how you’re doing. I’m interested.

Dr. Susan