Happy New Year! In our last few posts (Eat Your Way into the New Year and Move Your Way into 2014), we touched on two of the more popular New Year’s resolutions that Americans make – eating healthy and exercising more/improving personal fitness. It can be difficult to be successful in keeping a set goal for an entire year though. So, we recommended that you be specific and include measures when goal-setting. Ask yourself questions about what you currently do, what you would like to do, and what is recommended by trusted sources.
If you would like to take steps toward improving your health, it may be beneficial to look into taking an already established program. The Missouri Arthritis and Osteoporosis Program and its seven Regional Arthritis Centers offers several programs for persons with chronic health diseases (such as asthma, arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease) or for their caregivers. Self-management Steps to Better Health programs offered include:
- Living a Healthy Life (Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP))
- Tomando Control de su Salud (Spanish version of CDSMP)
- The Arthritis Toolkit (individual format) and
- Better Choices, Better Health (online version of CDSMP).
Physical activity programs offered include:
- Arthritis Foundation Exercise Program
- Walk With Ease (group and individual format).
Participants of the Stanford University programs Living a Healthy Life, Tomando Control de su Salud, or Better Choices, Better Health, will recognize the process for setting achievable goals or action plans. Some questions to ask yourself are: What specifically will you do? How much will you do? When will you do it? How often will you do it? How confident are you that you can achieve your set goal?
If you want to learn more about taking a class or would like to register online, your first New Year’s resolution may be to visit the MAOP website within the next week to learn more about classes offered. And, you may find that one of these classes is the first step toward better personal health!
Just because the New Year has arrived does not mean it’s too late to make a new personal resolution. Make your resolution something achievable in the immediate sense; you can always change it later. If you are confident in this goal, you are more likely to achieve it. At the end of a week, re-evaluate your goal and determine if you would like to try again, maintain this goal, or if you feel confident that you can create a new goal building on your previous goal. It may seem difficult to make a big life change overnight. So, don’t feel like you have to! Make a small change, be confident in it, and continue doing it if it works for you.