Weight-Loss Countdown Begins Now

You’ve got to be wondering how I can be writing about “Holiday Weight Loss” when you’re still wearing your sandal and shorts while the local swimming hole still remains a destination location.  The bottom line is that in the next fourteen days, we all will begin counting down the 8 weeks to Thanksgiving, and following that, the 4-weeks to the December holiday’s including New Years.  In the lives of most Americans that means food – and lots of it.  Research has supported that most Americans gain 1-1.8 pounds each holiday after age 20 and rarely lose what they have gained.  To that point, the math is simple to perform if you weigh 150 pounds at age 25 and keep adding 1.5-2 pounds every year into your 60’s.  Over the years, a frequent comment I hear from procrastinators and excuse makers is that they are waiting for their New Year to begin fitness resolutions. 
  To this statement, I ask “why not start NOW?”  Do you wait until your car runs out of gas before you refill it?  How about your printer, do you wait only until there is no more paper left (usually in the middle of a printing job) before you make sure you have extra?   Usually the answer to my choice of rhetoric is an emphatic, “no.” Most of us have come across a piece of literature that clearly explains new habits can take anywhere from 18 to over 200 days to become a major “installation” in our daily behaviors.  Knowing this fact alone certainly trumps any reason a person would have to wait over 120 days to begin their new fitness, weight loss, or body audit challenge.  My good friend’s dad used to say, “tomorrow comes early.” For all those who envision the body they want, and the lean muscle they need, the time to start preparing your body for tomorrows resolutions is today.