The Best Way to Set New Year's Resolutions

Hey everyone, it's Dr Angela here!

I wanted to talk to you today about how to set New Year's resolutions. There's a good way to do it and a not so good way to do it. That's what I want to talk to you about today.

If you don't already know me, I'm a board certified obesity medicine physician. I'm also the founder and creator of Journey Beyond Weight Loss, an online course and a membership site designed to help people lose weight and keep it off.

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So how to set New Year's resolutions? So here's what most people do. They say, I want to lose weight. I want to lose 30 pounds by such and such a date, or I want to be a size whatever. And that's what they're thinking about. So maybe they join a gym, maybe they go on some sort of diet. But they're really focused on that weight loss.

Now, I want you to start thinking about it in a little bit different and more effective way. I'm going to show you a diagram that I developed based on a diagram that I found in a book by James Clear called "Atomic Habits". He talks about the 'stages of behavior change' as occurring in a series of circles. Each one getting a little bit deeper.

The first stage is the outcome stage. That's the one in our instance that's weight loss. The next stage is the process or the habits. And then the third stage is the identity. Okay? So here's how I want you to think about this.

If you want to be successful at the outcome, you want to focus on the process that you're going to use to get there.

You also want to focus on the identity. Who are you going to be when you get there? If you want to lose weight, the only way you're going to lose weight is by you changing your eating habits. Research is showing exercise helps. But exercise is not going to be the major way. Without a change in your eating habits, you're not going to lose weight. So that means that you have to change your eating habits.

What processes are you going to put in place? If you step it backwards, if I'm going to eat differently, I have to plan my meals, I have to go grocery shopping, I have to prepare ahead. So many people are leaving their nutrition to chance. And this is what I always used to do.

If I ate breakfast at all, it was a bagel, or maybe it was a banana on my way out the door. A lot of people aren't eating any breakfast at all and they're working through lunch and they don't stop to nourish their body. So one of the processes that you want to set up is a way of regularly nourishing your body, which means you have to find the time to plan your meals. You have to find the time to go grocery shopping. You have to find the time to prepare your meals. You want to make sure that you've got your lunch ready to go before you leave for the day, and you want to make sure that you know what you're going to be eating for dinner before you leave work, right?

So preferably, even before you leave for work in the morning, you know and you're planning ahead. Setting up these processes - if you focus on that instead of the goal, which is the weight loss - your goal now becomes to be very consistent with these new processes.

The other thing you want to do is you want to learn how to shift your identity. So what does somebody who weighs 30 pounds less think about themselves? How do they identify themselves? I think it helps to know how I think about myself - I always share this with my patients - I see myself as a very healthy person living in a crazy country. We are a country of people who just don't care all that much about our nutrition. Once in a while we decide we're going to pay attention and we call that a diet. So that's a little bit crazy as far as I'm concerned because you really want to think about your nutrition as how you're nourishing your body.

I'm really careful to make sure that I'm very cognizant about how am I getting my vegetables in! Am I getting the protein in that I need? How am I treating my body? And that's just a part of my identity. I'm not going to throw a bunch of junk in my body. I'm just not! And so Im not going to just leave my nutrition to chance. I won't do that.

So that's my identity. It's serving me really, really well. I've got really good energy. My body functions great. I sleep really well. I'm a happy person, right? So that's how you want to think about this. Instead of thinking about weight loss as your goal, think about a new identity, Think about the processes that you want to put in place in order to achieve that outcome that you want. Okay? That is the most important thing. Think about those two things first and think about how you're going to get that done.

How are you going to get that meal preparation done? How are you going to get that planning done? When are you going to go grocery shopping? All of those things - build those habits into your day, and then the way it's going to come off.

Now, one thing that I do want you to know is there's a lot more to all of this, and I have awesome freebies that I would encourage you to pick up. There's a link below this video and it's called "The THREE Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes" that people make when they're trying to lose weight. So go ahead and pick that up. You'll get on my email list, you'll get lots of helpful helpful videos and emails that I send out on a regular basis.

I want to help you get control over this so that you can live a long, happy, healthy life and you don't have to worry about arthritis and joint pain and diabetes and all the other stuff that everybody else is having to deal with now. Okay?

So that's all for now. Take care. Have a great day, and I'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.

To Your Health!

Dr. Angela

Download my FREE Guide: The THREE Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes