The Year Gone By

Answer 1

The end of the year is coming upon us rather swiftly. For some of you it will be greeted with great joy and anticipation for the next year. If you met your goals then the odds are that you are happy to see the end of the year, and a long line of checked off New Years resolutions. You get my hearty congratulation on a job well done, and you also get to skip this article, since the rest of it will be geared to those of us who did not do so well on our goals.

Those of you who cannot check off the "Lose 20 pounds, or more" on your list from January first 2011, we are not going to greet the new year with despair, we are going to greet it with new determination and a new plan. Not a plan from a book. No generic descriptions or formulas here. We are going to use the data of your life to show us what changes we should make and how to make next years weight loss efforts more successful than last years.

So lets begin by getting radically honest. You are going to make a list of the top three to five reasons why you did not lose weight. While the exacts will be based on your situation here are some examples of what you may find on your list.

1. My commitment to the diet and exercise plan faded away after a few week into the New Year. While I did try to restart, I never seem to get the momentum back.
2. I tried to throw money at the problem instead of actually putting in the effort that I needed to. It turns out that a trainer is not any help if you do not go to him.
3. I made bad food choices whenever I was under stress of any kind; they usually involved cards, coco products and soda.

The key here is to not sugar coat it at all. Be 100% honest with yourself or you will never see results. Don't worry, no one else has to ever see your list if you don't want them to.

Now, you take your list of reasons and turn them into strategies that you can use to make your new year better than last year. You should do this in a one-to-one matching scenario. So your second list will look like this.

1. I need to choose a plan is sustainable in the long term and not just a fad diet that seems good on the surface, a selection that takes into account my actual day-to-day life.
2. I need to carve out times to go to the gym and remember that real progress is about my efforts.
3. Leave the bad food out of the shopping list and find other ways to manage my stress that help me to not use food as a last resort.

Now, all that you have to do is find ways to use that data in a better plan. Sorry, this one is all boots on the groundwork for you. Like all worthwhile things there are no easy answers.

Answer 2

The year gone by has been challenging and uncertain, marked by the global pandemic and its impact on all aspects of life. We saw tremendous resilience and adaptability as individuals and communities came together to navigate through these difficult times. It has been a year of reflection, learning, and finding new ways to connect and support each other.