This article actually started out as an email response to a client’s comment that “nutrition is a challenge in my home.“ As I typed, I realized the challenges he is having are far from unique and decided to turn this response into a blog post.

For nutrition, the best advice I can give is to pick one thing that you can change or improve upon, where you can say with certainty that you will succeed. The key is that it has to be an improvement, and you have to be 90% sure that you can do it. No change is too small.

Examples of changes (this list is not exhaustive):

1. If you eat dessert every day, make a pledge to yourself to eat dessert every 2nd day instead. Now when you stick with this, don’t beat yourself up on the days that you have dessert – as long as it’s only every 2nd day, you are meeting your goal: congratulate yourself, don’t flog yourself.
2. If you have seconds at dinner, make a pledge to yourself to only have seconds every 2nd day.
3. If you eat out (take out counts as eating out) every day for lunch, make a pledge to yourself to bring your lunch twice each week.
4. If you get less than 7 hours of sleep each night, make a pledge to yourself to get 7 or more hours of sleep every second night. (lack of sleep can have a big impact on your metabolism)
5. If you drink a beer every night, make a pledge to yourself to only drink beer every second night.
6. If you drink multiple beers every night, make a pledge to yourself to drink one fewer each night (or one fewer every 2nd night).
7. If you have a large or unhealthy late night snack every night, make a pledge to yourself to either cut the quantity in half every day or to eliminate it every 2nd day.
8. If you drink pop (diet drinks count) with meals, make a pledge to yourself that you will drink water instead every second day.
9. If you drink juice with meals, make a pledge to yourself that you will drink water instead every second day.
10. If you buy fancy beverages from Starbucks every day, make a pledge to yourself that you skip your Starbucks visit every second day, or buy drip coffee, espresso, americano, or tea instead.
11. If you feel that you don’t eat enough vegetables, make a pledge to yourself to add one serving of vegetables every day. (you can even add spinach to a smoothie!)
12. If you eat cereal and juice for breakfast, make a pledge to yourself to have something with more protein and less sugar every 2nd day.  options include an omelet, protein shake, oatmeal, peanut butter on whole grain toast (if grains and peanuts agree with you).

Whatever change you decide to make, say it out loud. It doesn’t have to be in front of anyone, but you have to say it out loud. I don’t know what the psychology behind this is, but there’s something about saying something out loud that calls out our internal BS. If you can’t say it out loud; you can’t do it. If that’s the case, pick a different change, or an easier one. Suppress your inner critic if you end up picking a very small change.

Every time you succeed at your goal, give yourself a high-five. If you’re in public, it can be an inner self-high five, unless…

This may sound silly, but really do it. Acknowledge your victories, no matter how small. Seriously! Most of us give free reign to our inflated inner critic, while we silence our inner cheerleader. Dust off the pom-poms, people!

At the end of each week, pick another small change and add it to the first one. It doesn’t have to be a different change – it can be more of the same change. For instance, if you picked “add a serving of vegetables each day”, you can add a second serving of vegetables each day as your small change next week. Just make sure you pick something that you are at least 90% certain you can do.

Think of this as a one year plan.

Be the tortoise.

Make one small change successfully each week = 50 small changes at the end of the year. See that – I gave you two weeks off for vacation. You deserve it!

Remember that no matter how insignificant each successful change feels on its own, 50 of them will be big. And manageable. The really cool thing is that once you have 5 or 6 successful changes under your belt, your body will actually encourage more healthy habits. Your body will actually want you to give it healthier foods. No, really!

Do you have any small changes that you have made that have helped you reach long term health goals? If so, please share them in the comments section!

Elsbeth Vaino is a personal trainer in Ottawa, Canada.

When I think of sesame noodles, my first thought is of Pan Chancho in Kingston. They make a tasty sesame noodle salad! As it turns out, so do I. Except mine uses spaghetti squash instead of noodles, which means that it is delicious and incredibly healthy. It’s basically a big bowl full of vegetables with exceptional flavour. And it’s pretty easy to make.

Want the recipe?

This recipe actually started out as an idea. I wanted to make a sesame noodle dish with spaghetti squash. I’m not really into low carb or Paleo eating, but I am into eating more vegetables. So I went to Google to see what I could find. I found nothing. So I looked at several sesame noodle recipes until this one from Martha Stewart caught my attention. I liked the sauce ingredients but didn’t really like that the vegetables were boiled with the noodles. And since I wasn’t making noodles, that part definitely needed to be changed. So here goes:

Sesame spaghetti squash salad recipe:

Ingredients:
1 Spaghetti squash
1 cup shredded zucchini*
dash of salt
1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
5-10 mushrooms, sliced*
1 red pepper, sliced
1-2 tbsp sesame oil or vegetable oil for cooking the vegetables

For a larger squash:
1/4 cup peanut butter
3 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1.5 Tbsp sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced
1 tsp red-pepper flakes (this gives it kick. Use less or omit if kick isn’t your thing.)

For a smaller squash:
2 Tbsp + 2 tsp peanut butter
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp sesame oil
1 and a half cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced (Ya, I know. 1.5 cloves is lame. Go for 2 or 1 if you prefer. It’s not going to kill the recipe either way)
1/2 tsp red-pepper flakes (this gives it kick. Use less or omit if kick isn’t your thing.)

1. Preheat your oven to 350, cut your spaghetti squash in half, and place the halved squash on either a greased baking sheet or a baking sheet with parchment paper on it (You can also cook the squash by poking many holes in it and cut it once it is cooked). Cook for 30-35 minutes.

2. While the squash is cooking, chop the vegetables and garlic. This is where a food processor comes in handy. Soooo much faster. Start with the zucchini. Once it is chopped, shake a bit of salt on it to get some of the water out of it, and then either let it sit in a strainer or lay it between paper towels or clean tea towels. Once chopped, keep each vegetable in little piles on your cutting board.

3. Place a skillet (that’s fancy talk for frying pan) on the stove on medium-high heat and add about a tablespoon of oil. Once the oil is hot, add the onion. Cook it, stirring regularly for several minutes, until it is translucent and slightly browned (people often undercook onion – unlike most other vegetables, it tastes better if you let it cook longer). Remove from the skillet and return to the cutting board. Top up the oil in the pan if it looks too dry. This time add the garlic. The garlic only needs 30s to a minute, and should be stirred frequently. Remove it and return it to the cutting board. Repeat this process with each of the vegetables you used. I found each of the zucchini, mushrooms, and red peppers each only needed about 2 minutes – maybe a bit less for the red peppers. This part is really not an exact science – as long as you don’t really, really overcook it, it will taste great.

4. Combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili peppers and garlic in a large bowl.

5. After you take the spaghetti squash out of the oven, let it cool for a few minutes and then use a fork to separate the “spaghetti” from the squash. To do this, pull the fork through the squash and you’ll see that it separates into strands (almost spaghetti-like!). Once this is done, use the fork (I like to use two forks actually) to pull the spaghetti squash strands out of its skin and put it into the large bowl with the (delicious) sauce. Pile the other vegetables in there as well and then use the fork(s) to mix it all together.

6. Serve and enjoy.

I’d suggest that this provides 3-6 servings as a side dish, although let’s face it, a “serving” is very different from person to person!

Wondering about the nutritional info?

Assuming it’s 4 servings and using a smaller squash:
Calories: 190
Carbohydrate:90 g (45%)
Fat:40 g (45%)
Protein: 19 g (10%)

Here’s a pic of the end result, served with sesame beef. Great combination! I didn’t time it, but I think the Fridge to Fork time for the entire meal was about 45 minutes. Not quite as quick and easy as some of the other foods I make, but not bad.

It’s crazy, I know. But I just finished drinking a smoothie that has spinach as one of the ingredients. And it was really good. And by good, I am referring to the taste, not the healthiness. No, really. I do love healthy foods, but more importantly, I love foods that actually taste good, and quickly cast aside those that don’t. Like the black bean brownie recipe I tried. They were vile. I would never serve or suggest them to anyone that I actually like. But strangely I am now sitting here writing about adding spinach to a smoothie. Crazy. I know.

I can’t recall what website I got the idea from, but I recall having read that the spinach added a creamy consistency but that the spinach flavour is quite mild and so the other flavours in your smoothie are likely to overpower it. I do love an experiment, and I am currently on a mission to find more ways to eat vegetables in my snacks. Let’s face it: no matter what diet or nutrition approach you believe in, I think the one area where we all agree is that more green vegetables is a good thing.

And so I introduce to you my recipe for Chocolate mint smoothies:

• 1 cup of almond milk (I suspect regular  or  soy milk would also be fine if you drink them)
• 1 scoop chocolate protein powder (I use Magnum Quattro because it’s delicious. Hopefully you pick one that doesn’t have aspartame or any vile sweetener like that as I personally think they can ruin the taste of a good smoothie. This one’s sweetened with stevia and organic cane sugar)
• 1 scoop cocoa powder. I use Fry’s cocoa powder.
• a few drops of peppermint extract
• 4 ice cubes
• 1-2 handfuls of spinach
• crushed mint leaves (optional)

I came up with this recipe (excluding the spinach) after reading Molly Galbraith’s blog entry chock full of amazing protein smoothie recipes. That girl is creative with her smoothies! It had never occurred to me to include things like cocoa powder in a smoothie. Brilliant!

I didn’t know how much spinach to add, so I went to google to get some ideas, and I saw the 2 handfuls recommendation from the Incredible Smoothies website, so figured I’d try it.  I blended the ingredients without the spinach first, then blended in one handful of spinach and gave it a taste. I was impressed. But it did seem that the spinach absorbed a bit of the peppermint flavour that really makes this smoothie, so I added a few more drops before adding the second handful and blended again.

It still tasted delicious – my taste buds could not find the spinach flavour over the chocolate and peppermint. But what did happen after the second handful is that the colour got a little light, and there remained some specs of green – evidence of the spinach that some might not care for. After drinking a few sips, the colour didn’t bother me anymore. Maybe I was over-reacting? You can decide for yourself: the first picture is a version of this smoothie I made a few weeks ago without spinach. The second is the one I just made with spinach.

Now if the colour is too light for you, or if the bits of green don’t appeal, then I would suggest trying it with only one handful of spinach instead of two. Maybe I didn’t look at it closely enough after one handful, but I did look, and it seemed amazingly normal looking.

Lastly, I remembered that the first few times I made the smoothie that I added crushed mint leaves. I stopped doing that primarily because I felt the peppermint extract provided enough colour. But after making this, I realized that if you were making this smoothie for someone and didn’t want them to know there was spinach in it, you could always add a bit of crushed mint and as you’re serving it, make a point to mention that. I’m not suggesting that you overtly lie about the spinach; just that you highlight the crushed mint instead so that nobody asks about the green specs. Your call.

Give this recipe a try with or without the spinach. It’s unbelievably tasty.

Wondering about the nutritional facts? Here are the numbers:

• Calories: 254 kcal
• Fat: 4.1 g (14%)
• Carb: 19.5 g (29.6%)
• Protein: 33.6 g (56.4%)

Note that I use one scoop of protein powder, which in this case is half a serving. If you want a higher calorie snack, then go for the full serving, but personally I suspect that most protein powder suggested serving sizes are holdovers from the days when male body builders were their primary consumers.

There’s more experimenting underway! I’m currently trying out a zucchini-based pizza dough. I’ll admit that I’m skeptical as I have scoured the internet and basically found permutations of only 3 different recipes, each of which suggest that the creators don’t understand that there is chemistry in baking. We shall see…

Elsbeth Vaino, B.Sc, CSCS, is a personal trainer in Ottawa with a passion for healthy, AND tasty foods. 

PS – don’t forget to check out Molly’s protein smoothie recipes. She’s got some really good ones.

I think I am like the stock market sometimes: periodically I am prone to bloating and an adjustment is required. I hit that point last week where I realized an adjustment was needed. Unfortunately that was right before heading to visit my brother and his family. I love visiting them, but I always gain weight when I’m there. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that I tend to eat and drink more but consume almost no vegetables? So I am back home with a strong decision that it is time for my adjustment.

It seems I am not the only person in this boat right now, as I woke up this morning and read Neghar Fonooni’s blog on the very same topic. The reason I relate to Neghar’s great article is not just that I too have been overeating recently and thus feel comfort in numbers (although I do). What I love about the article is that it’s about taking responsibility for our choices. I too have been eating too much, and not sleeping too much and not moving enough, and it is catching up to me. I now choose to address that. Today.

It was also interesting to see Neghar’s list of what she is changing, as I also made a list yesterday. I am a gradual person and so my list was 2 small changes to implement this week, with an ongoing commitment to continue to add 2 small changes each week until I am suitably adjusted.

I’m quite certain that my bloat has been the result of excess snacking. It has been primarily healthy snacking, but this snacking has increased in both quantity and frequency.

My 2 small changes this week are:

• cut my snack sizes in half
• get to sleep earlier

This approach is similar to what I learned from a presentation given by Dr. John Berardi, creator of the Precision Nutrition system and author of one of the top 11 fitness articles on the internet. He suggested picking changes that have a high likelihood of success. Once those become habits, add more. Build success instead of aiming for too much and potentially hitting failure.

I actually think the sleep change will have a bigger impact than the snacking. I have been going to bed way too late, often leaving myself with only 5 hours of sleep each night. I can manage on 5, but I don’t thrive. I consider 6 to be adequate, and 7 to be optimal for me. The lack of sleep does a few things:

• It means I had more hours for snacking.
• It means I have less energy and thus feel more like eating.
• It increases cortisol levels and impacts the body’s metabolic function. [1, 2]

I’d call that the perfect storm for overeating: extra time, not enough energy, and reduced ability to process food.

The latter point is probably the least obvious and yet possibly the most important. A sleep deprivation study done at the University of Chicago’s Medical Center with 12 healthy volunteers found: [2]

profound alterations in glucose metabolism, in some situations resembling patients with type-2 diabetes, during sleep deprivation. When tested during the height of their sleep debt, subjects took 40 percent longer than normal to regulate their blood-sugar levels following an injection of glucose. Their ability to secrete insulin decreased by about 30 percent. A similar decrease in acute insulin response is an early marker of diabetes.

We tend to focus on food and exercise, but don’t overlook sleep. Not only does it feel great, it’s good for you.

Are you finding yourself in the same situation as me? And as Neghar? What will you do about it?

References:

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9415946
2. http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/991202/sleep.shtml

Elsbeth Vaino, B.Sc., CSCS, is a personal trainer in Ottawa specializing in training for performance and injury prevention.

The recipe: http://www.runningtimes.com/blogs/?p=25

Fridge to Fork: About an hour. I forgot to set my timer.  I’ll try to remember to do so next time I make them. There will definitely be a next time!

Servings (claimed vs actual): 18 servings are suggested. I only got 14, but that was more a reflection of the pan I used (sloped sides) and my lazy measuring skills while cutting. I think 16 is very doable, and in terms of how filling they are, 16 would yield a good sized bar – one that could probably be split into 2 decent sized halves.

I made these a couple of days ago. They were delicious. I chose this recipe among all of the other granola bar recipes for a few reasons:

• I wanted a recipe that was actually from scratch, so that ruled out all recipes that included granola as an ingredient. I have no issue with such recipes, it’s just not what I was looking for.
• I was looking for a recipe for crunchy granola bars instead of chewy ones. I like chewy ones too, but I already have a good snackbar recipe that is basically a chewy granola bar recipe.
• I didn’t want a no-bake recipe. I tried a no-back granola bar a couple of weeks ago. It was okay. In fact it’s kind of growing on me. But it wasn’t awesome. I wanted “real” granola bars this  time.

These turned out better than I had expected. In fact they might be the best granola bars I have ever had. And I actually know what all the ingredients are, which I like.

Modifications I made (and why):

• ground flax seeds instead of wheat germ (I had flax seeds. I didn’t have wheat germ).
• butter over margarine (I don’t acknowledge margarine as food)
• for the “1 cup extras” I used 1/2 cup of almonds, and 1/2 cup of Thompson raisins (side rant – why would anyone ever buy any other type of raisin?).

Here’s the nutritional information for the recipe, with the changes I made, and based on the 16 servings that I think is realistic:

• Calories: 272
• Carbohydrates: 35 g (50%)
• Fat: 12.5 g (40%)
• Protein: 6.5 g (10%)

Here’s how it looked coming out of the oven:

I did what was suggested and wrapped them individually (sorry environment! but it’s still less packaging than if I bought a box of them) so they are ready to take with me. I put half in the cupboard and half in the freezer. I haven’t tried the ones from the freezer yet, but I have had good luck freezing this sort of thing in the past, so I anticipate it will go well. I’ll update the post once I have tried it though.

Those of  you who are  friends with me on Facebook know that I love to cook, and have a habit of posting recipes and photos of  delicious meals that I make. I’ve decided it’s time to bring these this habit to my blog, so that I can easily refer back to the recipes. And if interested, so can you.

How a recipe makes the cut

To be clear, I won’t be  posting my own creations. I rarely come up with my own recipes. I’m a pretty good cook, but I am no chef. I know what I like, I’m getting pretty good at finding the great recipes from reading them, and I have cooked enough to make minor adjustments if needed. So that’s what you’ll see: other people’s recipes. Nothing original here! Yes, I give credit where credit is due – respect to the real chefs out there!

Why post recipes from others if they’re already online?

Basically it’s to pull some great recipes into one location: to help you find great recipes without having to search the vastness of the interweb.

Why do I care? Because I have a personal mission to encourage people to cook more. I am convinced that we will all be healthier if we cook more and eat out or take out less. Food has the power to be either medicine or poison. Make it yourself, and there is less likelihood that you’ll be in poison territory. Yes, you can order healthier options in restaurants, but how many of us do? And when we do, how are the portions?

I also have a second mission: to help people to realize that healthy eating can be delicious. No, I’m not drunk. I speak truth. I say this as a healthy living enthusiast, but also as a lover of food, and a lover of my taste buds. I would never disrespect either with a crappy recipe. And from that perspective, I understand why people don’t realize that it is possible to cook healthy food that is also tasty. I think it stems from some of the recipes posted by other fitness enthusiasts and professionals. If you regularly see people eating baked skinless chicken breast with a side of spinach and boiled potatoes as a “healthy and tasty” meal, then, I understand why you don’t try healthy cooking. But please understand It doesn’t have to be that way! That is not an example of healthy and tasty: it is an affront to taste buds everywhere!

Every recipe you see posted here will be taste bud approved. In fact they will all meet what I call the Triple Crown of cooking:

1. Tasty. If it doesn’t taste good, nothing else matters. Period. End of story.
2. Easy. I have coined a phrase that you’ll see on a lot of the recipes I post: “Fridge to Fork in 30 minutes“, or whatever time it takes for that particular recipe. My preference is for foods where the Fridge to Fork time is 45 minutes or less. I came up with this term because I was frustrated with recipes that make ridiculous claims about how long something takes to make. I’ve made “30 minute” recipes that took an hour. Maybe they meant 30 minutes after you have chopped up all the veggies. For a recipe to become a regular for me, it typically takes less than 45 minutes from the time you step into the kitchen to the time you are sitting at the table with a forkful of food moving toward your mouth. I say typically because there are some incredible recipes that take very little time to prepare, but have a longer  cooking time, which might bring the Fridge to Fork time to more than an hour. I think you will love some of these recipes,  so I don’t want to exclude them. In these cases, you can be confident that these recipes do not require you to be active during that whole time. It may be 15 minutes of work followed by 1 hour in the oven. Not a good option when you get home 30 minutes before dinnertime, but maybe a great option for a Sunday evening meal.
3. Healthy. I don’t follow any single nutrition plan: Not Paleo, not low-fat, not intermittent fasting, not weight watchers. I follow a simple approach to eating that doesn’t really have a name:

“Eat real foods as much as possible; ones that agree with your body. Don’t eat too much of it.”

As much as possible, I will also post calorie and macronutrient values for each recipe.

Once I post recipes, I will sort them and add links to this post, so feel free to bookmark this post and check back every week or so.

Look for the first recipe later today…

And remember – healthy and tasty are not mutually exclusive!

There is a lot of “scientific proof” about why each popular diet is the right approach (note I use the term diet in the traditional meaning, as in ‘our approach to food’). Or at least so the authors and supporters of the nutrition approaches will tell you. Those with a better understanding of the scientific process will tell you that these are actually just theories, although the theories are often supported by studies pointing to problems or benefits of some foods in some situations. This is valuable information worth reviewing; but it is far from proof that any one diet is superior for everyone.

Let’s face it, the field of nutrition has become more religion than science, with each sect being led by some assortment of post-hole diggers. Which PhD is right and which ones are wrong? What if none of them are right? In other words, what if there’s no such thing as THE ONE TRUE DIET? (please read with a deep and ominous voice). Read more…

The past 2 months have been a tad stressful for me. And by a tad, I don’t actually mean a tad. It’s been a rough patch. There have been a number of factors, but work has been the biggest. It’s not surprising as I’m moving into my own personal training studio. Moves are stressful, but it’s even worse when the roof over the place you are supposed to move into starts to leak and 8 weeks later, it is no better, forcing you to find a new place but still having paid for the first place. Eek. You can read more about the roller coaster ride (more of a slide actually) on the entrepreneurship blog that I started.

Whether it is work, family, or money, stress hits every one of us. Read more…

Anyone else snack even when you aren’t hungry? This is the main reason I don’t keep junk food in the house. Be it chips or cookies or ice cream, if it’s in the house, I’m probably going to eat it whether I’m hungry or not. But as it turns out, I still engage in minor mindless snacking even without the crappy food, albeit it less so. I noticed this the other day. I had just eaten a nice lunch and then about 20 minutes later, I popped into the kitchen to grab a little something. But really there was nothing worth grabbing. I went into the cupboard, pulled out the jar of raisins and grabbed a small handful. As I was doing it, I started to think. I wasn’t hungry, and I wasn’t eating anything I particularly craved or cared for. I was just eating for the sake of eating.

Is it habit? Boredom? Filling some psychological void? I have no idea. But it occurred to me that I am probably carrying a few unnecessary pounds as a result of useless and rewardless snacking. Mindless eating at its best.
Read more…

We love new beginnings. Fresh starts. Another chance to get it right. With another new year approaching, it’s resolution time! Because most of us are overweight and underactive, changes to fitness and nutrition habits are very popular resolutions to make. Unfortunately they are also very popular ones to break.

If “lose weight and get fit” is going to be your resolution this year, I have a request for you: Please reconsider. No, I haven’t gone to the dark side. I still believe exercise and healthy eating is the best gift we can each give to ourselves. But I also believe that well-intentioned promises with a very slim chance at success are a bad idea, and that’s what “lose weight and get fit” is. In fact it tops last year’s Time Magazine’s top ten list of broken resolutions. Eat healthier and diet makes it in at number 4.

For anyone who is thinking of lose weight, eat healthy or exercise more as a resolution this year: is it your first time? Or does this resolution get dusted off every year or two? If it’s not your first time, what is different this year? My goal here is not to make you feel bad about your self-improvement goals. In fact I applaud them! So much so that I want you to succeed. But an overhaul of your eating and exercise habits is a big change. The reality is that big change is hard. Little changes, however, are manageable.

Whatever you are considering as a resolution, instead of saying: “On January 1st, I will eat well and exercise regularly”; say this instead: “On January 1st, I will eat well and exercise regularly, and continue to do so for the rest of my life”. Now be honest: Can you even say the words? If not, that’s a powerful sign. Are you feeling doubt? Starting to think about foods you love that you’re not sure you’re willing to give up? That’s okay. In fact it’s quite normal. It’s very important that you be honest with yourself now, as that will pave your path to success later.

Now, let’s reconsider the “eat well and exercise” as a new year’s resolution.

If you are very confident that you can do it and sustain it, then go for it! You probably will succeed. If not, break it down! Pick something small but achievable. For some reason we have a “go big or go home” attitude about new year’s resolutions, which unfortunately lead to going big and then going home.

Here’s the thing:
- A small resolution that you do for a long time becomes a big change.
- A big resolution that you do for a short time becomes a small change.

If you resolve to, say, have dessert half as often, and you stick to it for all of 2012, it will be equivalent to having quit dessert entirely for 6 months. If you resolve to give up dessert entirely, do you think you will make it until the end of June? There are some people who can say “I’m going to stop eating junk food now” and they just stop forever without problems. Odds are, that person is not you. If this is not your first “eat well and exercise” resolution, then that person is definitely not you. Accept that and work with it.

Whatever you chose as a resolution, say it out loud and add “and I will do this for all of 2012″. If you can’t say it out loud, you definitely can’t do it. Break it down until you have a resolution that you can say with confidence that you will sustain for all of 2012.

Don’t be among the 99% who make big resolutions that are lost before March.

Be the 1% who makes a small resolution and turns it into a big change.