IOW blogger

We’re now approaching March 2010 and all those New Year’s resolutions should be starting to pay off.  I’m modestly pleased so far with my progress-  my consumption of scotch eggs has plummeted considerably ( I momentarily fell off the scotch egg wagon in late January), my crisp habit is under control and I have switched to lower fat alternatives such as savoury crisp breads and I have been nowhere near Ikea. However, there was an incident in Homebase, but I’d prefer not to speak of it.

One of the problems of new year’s resolutions for a lot of people (especially myself) is the daunting prospect of dramatically changing your behaviour overnight.   Of course this is neither pragmatic or especially good for you. Gradual, incremental change poses less health threats and is easier to manage and integrate into our lives.  Be it alcohol, chips, fried chicken, full English breakfasts, crisps, etc, etc, cut down- prior to giving up.  There is an excellent NHS health advertising campaign,
(  www.nhs.uk/Change4Life) that recommends such an approach and gives helpful tips on how to realistically achieve this. 

For some years the benefits of regular exercise have been a feature of how to maintain health and fitness.  Regular exercise can be difficult for some people as it is time consuming and a lot of people prefer to avoid public places such as gyms, swimming pools, parks, etc, whilst you sweat, groan, contort your body and assume shapes that are not entirely natural.  Over the years I’ve found that walking can be integrated very effectively and easily into a daily routine by walking. Just put your headphones on, download your favourite tracks onto your walkman and walk extremely fast.   Three sessions of 30 minute, “power walking” a week will rapidly get you fit and help take away the winter blues.  Try walking home instead of getting the bus, get off at one tube stop before your regular one,  walk to the shops instead of taking the car ( which will only end up being a source of frustration once you get stuck in traffic), walk several laps round your local park, etc, etc.

Exercise also offers a range of psychological benefits.  There’s no denying that the slow crawl towards spring is a miserable experience and we’ve all endured an especially cruel winter.  Under such circumstances, further compounded by the economic downturn and many people still “ paying for Xmas” with the arrival of astronomically high credit cards- it is easy to procrastinate and become overwhelmed by an acute sense of inertia and apathy.   Don’t let this happen, you’ll only sit around feeling depressed and revert to bad habits in order to try and feel better.   Get those trainers on, go outside and start walking very quickly.  Rigorous exercise will allow your mind to focus on the physical demands your body is under and release endorphins that will allow you to feel better.

Tell us how your resolutions are going?

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