“Take care of the minutes and the hours take care of themselves.”
Author Unknown, Shared with me by Susan Awot

In this traditional time of new year’s resolutions I find this quote to be particularly fitting. There’s nothing wrong with long term goal setting but a HUGE step that must be taken to achieve the long term goal is one many of us miss: Short term goal setting. Long term goals must be followed up immediately with short term goals that form a plan of action. The long term goal is the “what”–it’s what you ultimately want. While the short term goals are the “how”. How your going to eventually achieve the long term goal is based on steps you institute today. An easy way to determine the “how” of how your going to achieve this year’s goal is to ask yourself what this goal is going to bring you. We say we want to lose weight but why? What is losing weight going to provide for you? What does that mean? How is it going to make you feel? What will be different in your life if you lose weight? How will it be better? All of those factors can point you in the right direction for TODAY’s action–which is all we have to work with anyway. We have a brand new year ahead of us but as the quote alludes to: If we take care of the days, the year will take care of itself.——-If you’re using the WW 12 week tracker, take a look at the beginning of each week. It gives you a few lines to brainstorm what you want to happen this week (your mini goals), what obstacles you can forecast arising along with room to come up with some possible solutions. Tracking what we eat is important to our success but so is tracking our plan and our thoughts. Most of us can easily recite what we want but we need to be able to understand exactly what we can do this moment to get closer to achieving it.——-It’s a relief to know that today is really all we need to be concerned with in order to succeed. If we have some extra time/energy to do some planning ahead today, great but if not that’s ok too. Just make sure as many of the choices you make today are in line with what you want to have happen ultimately. If you know control is something you crave and something you’re going to have to exhibit to achieve your goal, quickly jot down 3 ways you will exercise control today. For me it will be: 1. Getting back to eating 3 meals a day, whether I feel like it or not. Over the holidays I’ve gotten away from eating breakfast and sometimes even lunch because our routine has been different. This causes me to eat more at night than I need and makes control very difficult. 2. Drinking water BEFORE I am thirsty. Drinking water throughout the day helps me to accurately assess my hunger. I will keep my water mug on my desk and drink it as the day goes on. 3. After work I am allowing and scheduling 15 minutes all to myself to wind down before shifting gears. It’s the 1st day back to school for the kids and back to normalcy at work. It’s going to be tiring. I tend to turn to food when I’m tired, so today that 15 minutes to read, lay on my bed, take a quick walk-whatever will help me rejuvenate so that better choices will follow throughout the night.———That’s me–now your turn! Work with me here! One day, one simple plan but the results are incredible and you won’t have to wait to feel good.