My New Year’s Resolution

This year I’m intending to climb the Eiffel Tower, walk the length of Paris, sit on a thousand Parisian cafe chairs, and ride the Tour de France (well not all of it) and I’d love for you to join me!

Okay put down your Cafe Latte and stop choking on your macaron! I haven’t lost my mind or won lotto so let’s just start by clarifying that I’m not actually taking you all to Paris, well not literally anyway! Even thought the first week of January is almost over I am setting myself a New Year’s Resolution. I’m going to get fitter and I’m intending to break the statistical trend and actually achieve it (stop chuckling)! And I would love for you to join me on my French adventure!

Doomed To Succeed!

So have you set yourself a New Years resolution or two? Approximately 50% of adults set News Year’s resolutions and sadly only 8% succeed past 12 months!^[1] So why set them at all, I hear you ask? Well people who make formal resolutions, such as new years resolutions, and share those resolutions are 10 times more likely to achieve them. So I am going to put it out there. I want to get fitter and I am making it my New Years Resolution! Argh I feel excited and terrified all at the same time!

So how am I going to achieve this? Well I have a cunning plan!

Like most of you I’m busy! I have a family, a home to run, I work (in the best Chiropractic clinic in Adelaide), I help when possible at my daughter’s school and I have lots of passions that mostly revolve around good food, good wine (I never said I was perfect) and my friends. I don’t have time
for a gym or swimming 20 laps a day and I definitely don’t have the energy to get up at 5.30 in the morning to go for a bike ride (even if I did have a working bike), well not yet anyway! Sounding familiar? Sadly this is also not my first New Year’s Resolution and I can tell you that I have successfully contributed to the 92% failure rate every single year that I have made one. But this year will be different! This year I am going to be SMART and by this I don’t just mean use my intelligence but I am referring to the acronym that sets you up to achieve your goals. SMART refers to Specific, Measurable, Action Orientated, Realistic and Time Driven and by using SMART I am going to have success!

Even with all this great planning, I hear you ask, how are you going to keep yourself motivated, stop your enthusiasm from diminishing and over come your growing urge to taste the delights of chocolate rather than feel the leather of my smelly runners on my feet? Well for me life is about pleasures so I’m going to base my exercise around traveling through France (my other passion) and all of the exercises I will do will need to be done within 20 minutes, at home and at no cost! Sound good! I think so too!

I am intending to climb the steps of The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and the Champs-Élysées, to sit on over a thousand cafe chairs and to sip over 1500 glasses of wine all in the comfort of my home. No I haven’t been sampling the vin rouge but I have been thinking about how I could reproduce those actions in my home, for example sitting on chairs can be replaced with squats, climbing stairs can be replaced with a single step and drinking wine can be replaced with a bicep curl (well in the most part anyway). Each month I will tackle a different challenge and visit a new destination (well in my mind at least)! Making more sense now? Thinking about joining in yet because the other ingredient needed for my success is company. Now I’m not inviting you all around to mine but together we can become a traveling fitness group on line and through the clinic. Easy as that!

So if you think this sounds like a resolution that you would love to be a part of then head to this link where we will break down our first challenge and get ourselves well on the way to getting fitter while making our own French connection and finally become a member of that elusive 8% group achieving a New Years Resolution!

See you soon in Paris!

Happiness in Health

Lorraine

^[1] University of Scranton, Journal of Clinical Psychology: 1.1.2014