Make new habits instead of making New Year’s resolutions

Every New Year, people create a list of ambitious resolutions, like losing weight or eating healthier, but before you know it, these goals often fade away.

Cesar Sauza, a registered dietitian and clinical nutrition manager at AltaMed, gives us tips on how to inhabit healthier eating habits throughout the whole year.

Sauza believes that healthy eating is important in every community because it’s costing people and the country a lot of money. “We know that chronic diseases are one of the leading causes of death and disability in America, and they’re also the leading driver of healthcare costs. And we know that nutrition in our lifestyle has a direct correlation with chronic diseases,” he said.

“Making habits is kind of addressing habits that we currently have, and that would be more beneficial for us than an unrealistic list of goals at the beginning of the year that might not be achievable,” Sauza said.

To start these realistic goals, Sauza always recommends that his patients use SMART, which is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound goals. This helps individuals get more specific with the habits they want to achieve.

“For example, someone may put a New Year's resolution that they want to lose 25 pounds this year, but that's what the goal is: just to lose 25 pounds. However, there are no specifics on how they're going to get them there,” he said. 

What he usually will do with his patients is ask them how they are going to get there. “That's when they kind of reflect back on what it is they're currently doing and what they could start trying in order to form habits from what they may be doing now, whether it may be nutrition-related, water-related, sleep, physical activity or stress; there are a lot of different ways you can go with that,” Sauza said.

He also mentioned that it's OK if someone doesn't drink enough water; it's OK if someone doesn't exercise at all because even if they just start with one time a week, that's already an improvement to what they currently do.

“A lot of people, sometimes they want to set a goal of working out when normally this person doesn't work out at all. And they always say, ‘Starting next week, I'm going to work out five times a week.’ That is setting yourself up for failure because, yes, there's a good chance they might make it, but then if they don't, then they start beating themselves up, which is really not the realistic thing to do,” Sauza said. “Starting with smaller goals, revisiting these goals at the end of every week, and then tweaking these goals, however necessary, is definitely going to be more achievable.”

The nutritionist also said that during January, gyms gets the most subscriptions. “Signing up for the gym when you're not doing any exercise is probably not the best idea, because there's really no structure there,” he said. “If they weren't able to get themselves to work out before, a gym membership is probably not going to change that.”

Sauza recommends that individuals try to set themselves up with smaller goals, like smaller walks or runs and even workouts at home. “A lot of people don't know this, but on YouTube, there's a bunch of free videos that personal trainers are putting out there. You could really get these one-on-one personal training sessions for free on YouTube. So they really don’t need to sign up for anything big like that,” Sauza said.

When it comes to nutrition, he said it's almost the same thing. “In that same realm of signing up to the gym when you haven't worked out, you're seeing a lot of people go to the market and then they're just buying a bunch of foods that they think are healthy. A bunch of fruits, a bunch of vegetables, a bunch of fat-free things and a bunch of things that are advertised as healthy that may not even be healthy,” he said.

To Sauza, it is important that individuals who are ready to make these small changes think about the positive outcomes that come with creating healthier habits. He mentioned that it’s not always easy to make the switch mentally. “You know, we can't just flip the switch from what we were doing for most of our lives or what we've been doing for many years to all of a sudden healthier habits. That's why we talk about making these smaller habits instead of just diving in all the way, because usually it's much more difficult that way,” Sauza said. 

According to the National Library of Medicine, improving the quality of one’s diet  and preventing disease risk factors among Hispanic/Latinos is a critical public health priority, given the Latino population is projected to increase from 18% of the total U.S. population to 29% by 2060.

It also said that research suggests that diet quality among Hispanic/Latino adults is negatively influenced by sociodemographic and sociocultural factors such as younger age, less education, lower household income and more.

Sauza told CALÓ News that many people wait until January to make changes in themselves but it doesn’t have to be that way. “It could be February, it could be March, it could be April, and the most important thing is that every single day is an opportunity,” he said. “I think when it comes to just eating healthier and losing weight … the first thing they always say is it's never too late to start, which is true.”