Health e-Actions: Tips to Make – And Keep – Healthy Resolutions

Tips to Make – And Keep – Healthy Resolutions

The best New Year’s resolutions are the ones you keep. This year, try designing a series of small, simple, and achievable resolutions that you can focus on over the course of the entire year. As your small successes add up, you may find you are well on your way to achieving your bigger goals for 2010!

Choose from the list of healthy resolutions, or design your own. Jot a few of them down on each month of your 2010 calendar and focus on those specific resolutions during that month. Sound simple? It is!

Healthy eating

• Make a grocery list before you shop and stick to it.
• Eat a healthy breakfast every day of the week and make sure members of your family do as well.
• Ask for salad dressing "on the side" when you go out to eat.
• Replace sugary drinks with water or low-fat or fat-free milk.
• Try a new fruit or vegetable once a week. Great tasting, nutritious ones to try include plantains, star fruit, papaya, bok choy and edamame.
• Learn how to read nutrition labels.

Physical activity

• Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator at work.
• Wash your car by hand.
• Do sit-ups or stretch during a television show.
• Take a brisk 10 minute walk during your coffee break once a day.

Lifestyle and family

• Remove TVs from your children’s bedrooms.
• Create a house rule (and enforce it) that limits screen time to 2 hours most days of the week.
• Turn off the TV during meals at least 3 days a week.
• Eat dinner together as a family most evenings of the week.
• Take a family walk after dinner 3 or more nights a week.

Know your numbers

• Learn your cholesterol numbers and what they mean.
• Learn your blood pressure numbers and what they mean.
• Calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI) and know your BMI category.
• Estimate your 10-year risk of having a heart attack.

Take care of your health

• To help regulate a healthy sleep pattern, get outside in natural sunlight for at least 30 minutes a day.
• Stick to a sleep schedule.Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day — even on the weekends.
• Learn the signs and symptoms of a heart attack.
• If you have asthma, make sure you have an asthma action plan.
• If you have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) get a flu shot every year and talk to your doctor about the pneumonia vaccine.
• Know the names and doses of all your medicines, how to take them, and what they do.
• Refill your medicines before they run out and take them exactly as your doctor directs — don't skip days or cut pills in half.

Share your resolutions (and this newsletter) with friends and family and reward yourself with a fun activity when you keep a resolution for a month.

Resources to make your own resolutions

• The Keep the Beat™ Healthy Choices for 2010 Calendar is loaded with tips, information, and space to make and check off resolutions!
• We Can!™ Tips for eating right
• We Can!™ Everyday ideas to rev up activity
• Diseases and Conditions Index (DCI): Understand the basics of conditions you have
• Try new recipes from the original Keep the Beat™: Heart Healthy Recipes Cookbook