It's a tradition. Every New Year, we make a New Year's resolution. It may be to save more money, enjoy life more, loose weight, or anything we tend to find a challenge to achieve. Many resolutions are kept a week to a month. If you keep your resolution through the first quarter of the year, you're a rock star! There are many reason's why these resolutions fail. I propose we forget the New Year's resolution! Instead let's make sustainable lifestyle habit changes to get you going down the right path.
Our resolutions fail for so many reasons. We're impatient. We think negatively about ourselves when we don't achieve our goals. Then to top it off... we set completely unrealistic goals for ourselves. Let's take a look at one of the top choices: weight loss. A very important goal especially for some diabetics.
We want to loose weight over night. Did it get there overnight? Probably not. We tend to add weight over time. It makes perfect sense that it will take more time to come off. Let's be patient with ourselves and allow more time for change.
Change is hard! It's not immediate. We don't just set a goal, rub a lamp and have a genie grant our wish. Habit change is about the journey as well as actually achieving the goal. To make our goals become a reality we just set the smallest achievable goal for the week.
It might be not drinking a soda for one day in the week. It's a good goal but worded in a tough way. It implies that we can't have a soda. It will seem really hard to achieve and even harder to keep doing. Now if we reword the goal... Find a healthier drink we like more than soda to drink one day during the week. It seems like a challenging but pleasant task that we're going to enjoy achieving. This is sustainable and achievable.
What if we don't make our goal for the week? We dislike the negative emotions that the thought of failure produces; but we didn't fail. Think of it like a scientist. At first there is a hypothesis. We did an experiment and got a result. It wasn't good or bad. It's just information. If it didn't give us the result we wanted, we need to stay in our scientific mode of why? Once we know why it didn't work, we can fix it.
Next week, we may change the experiment. The new goal may be to work in green leafy vegetables to your diet starting with one recipe this week. Wait! You don't like to cook? It may be that you need to look for a green vegetable at your favorite restaurant. You're an individual. You're goal/experiment needs to be personal and enjoyable to you to be achievable and sustainable. We tend to repeat enjoyable behaviors. Repetition makes your habit change permanent over time leading to a new lifestyle.
How do we figure out what goals to set for ourselves? Let's look at how the weight got there... Most likely with less motion in our lives; and enjoying food that might not fit in with our goal to be lighter. It's quite normal and losing weight in a healthy manner isn't easy. Congratulations! We're doing great just working at it.
In the past, the health industry told us we needed to eat restrictive diets and go to the gym. If we didn't like the food, that was too bad. This wasn't sustainable.
We shouldn't feel deprived when we eat. Learning the best foods to eat takes time; but enjoying the process makes us want to continue to doing it! The gym trips were time consuming and often painful! Remember we are looking for the smallest weekly change that we can maintain over time.
I don't go to a gym or yoga classes.
I do yoga at home. I have an old fashioned CD or an app that I follow in the living room on the floor.
I focus on the stretching poses more than the strengthening poses. I focus on what I can achieve. Then I get to celebrate more goals achieved.
If yoga isn't your thing, just getting up and moving is perfect! You can clean house, dance, walk or garden. Remember goals should be something you want to do. If one of your goals is to add more healthy recipe to your diet this year, here is one that I hope becomes a habit for you and becomes a part of your new healthier lifestyle...
Ingredients:
- 2 bundles of collards
- 2 tbsp. butter
- 3/4 tsp. Himalayan salt, divided
- 1 large yellow onion, diced
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
= 1/4 tsp. paprika
- 1/4 tsp ginger
- 1/4 tsp. garam masala
Directions:
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Blanch the collards in the water for 2-3 minutes. They will become bright green. Then toss them in a strainer and rinse with cool water.
Melt butter in a skillet on medium heat.
Sauté the diced onion by cooking for 2-3 minutes in the skillet.
Add the chicken broth and cook about 12 minutes until almost gone.
Pour in the cream and reduce the heat to a simmer at medium low. Allow the cream to reduce by half while stirring constantly.
Mix in the nutmeg, paprika, ginger, garam masala, and black pepper.
Fold in the collards and cook until the collards are tender, roughly 5-8 minutes.
Collard greens are a cruciferous vegetable that are fantastic for your overall health. They are full of nutrients and may help prevent prostate, breast, ovarian, lung, bladder, and colon cancers. The calcium and high level of vitamin K aid in bone health. It contains vitamin A and antioxidants: lutein and zeaxanthin that promotes eye health, possibly decreasing the risk of developing glaucoma. Collards support digestive health due to their fiber content. Fiber promotes regularity and feeds healthy gut bacteria. It may even reduce your risk of heart disease by improving your LDL (bad) cholesterol and systolic blood pressure (upper number). Just be aware that the high level of vitamin K may interfere with blood thinning medication because vitamin K is involved in coagulation, blood clotting. If you take blood thinners, make sure to keep your daily vitamin K intake consistent and discuss with your doctor to ensure you have the correct medicinal dosage. Increasing your dietary intake of collards may also cause intestinal gas and bloating due to its fiber content. So when you add collards to your diet, make sure to chew it thoroughly and drink plenty of water to aid in the digestion.
Source: "Collard Greens: Nutrition, Benefits, Recipe and More
Healthline.com 08/11/2021
Once you get the hang of making small habit changes, it becomes fun and a way of life. Just be aware this new way of thinking may bleed over into other aspects of your life. For me, it is home improvement projects like hanging a solar control panel on the wall out of site but accessible and creating a battery charging station to make it easier to charge batteries for my tools to accomplish more home improvement goals. This recipe may just give you some extra energy to get to your home improvement projects too.
I hope you make a habit of enjoying this recipe. It could be one of the first goals toward your new lifestyle for 2022. Please comment, like, share, and come back next week for more recipes, ideas, and tips. Subscribe to the website, if you would like weekly email reminders to add more recipes to your recipe book.
Disclaimer: This is not medical advice, but a compilation of research from medical sites. Make sure to see your doctor and have up to date lab work.