Now that we are in the thick of celebrating the holidays, why not indulge a little? Your goal of making those lifestyle changes to improve and protect your cognitive health can wait until January… right?
I find that December is a really good time to start thinking about the year ahead. This week I did both! I celebrated with my team at Solcere Medical Clinic with a small holiday party and we had a visioning day to start working on our goals for the new year.
Statistics show us that only 9% actually accomplish New Year’s resolutions.
Starting your New Year’s resolution today might be the answer. Studies find it wiser to ease into new routines and behavior changes instead of trying to do everything all at once.
Brian Clark noted in this post how starting with small steps of light exercise and simple diet modifications before the New Year set him up to achieve some big fitness goals in 2023.
Change doesn’t happen from one big decision. It’s comprised of 30 to 50 small decisions every single day. So if you start turning a few of those small decisions into habits before the end of the year, you’ll be on your way to bigger changes and the chance to actually see results in January while everyone else is struggling.
“By starting now, you will get a much deeper understanding of what you’re resolving to do. It’s better to find out in December that a five-mile run is a bit optimistic for your current fitness level, so you can dial it back and start with two-mile runs in January. And to make sticking to your New Year’s resolution even easier, with a few weeks of occasional warm-up jogs, you won’t be starting from scratch on January 1. You’ll already have gotten over the worst of the starting period. You might even be beginning to see results,” explains New York Times writer, Harry Guinness.
A five-mile run isn’t needed in a cognitive improvement plan. Tai Chi has been shown to improve cognitive assessment scores and might be a better form of exercise for your resolution list. Perhaps you can start by finding where classes are available in your area, attending one to get your feet wet before the New Year, or warm up by trying a few online classes to get familiar with the movements.
If creating a lifestyle to improve and preserve cognitive health is your resolution, or if you are caregiving for someone trying to make those changes, here are a few tools that can help set you up for a success:
- Find out what motivates you and your loved one. Take a behavioral-focused personality quiz such as The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. Do you need external accountability in order to stay on track, or do you need to do all the research and have a thorough evidence-based “why” to take action?
- Start habit stacking. Habit stacking is stacking a new behavior with something you already do on a regular basis. If you want to start Kirtan Kriya meditation and you watch TV for an hour every night, try stacking the meditation practice by doing it before you watch TV. To learn more read BJ Fogg’s, PhD, best-selling book of Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, or the best-seller Atomic Habits by habit and behavior expert James Clear’s.
- Attend my live workshop tomorrow, Monday December 11 or watch the replay (registration required). I’ll be explaining how to integrate a keto diet into a home-based memory care routine and my Marama at Home PLUS Course that offers meaningful, personalized guidance to implement each module of our Marama at Home framework.
- Work with a health coach. Health coaches are taught how to motivate people to make the behavior changes prescribed by a doctor.
Whether you decide to start today or are just too overwhelmed in this holiday season, remember that the best way to achieve long-lasting lifestyle changes is to start small and start slowly.
I hope this guidance helps you find a way to change your lifestyle into one that supports cognitive health, or starts to reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Warmly,
Dr. Heather Sandison
P.S. – Is removing sugar from your diet one of your planned resolutions for 2024? Sign up for the 11th Annual Quit Sugar Summit! The summit is hosted virtually online and is 100% free to attend. There will be over 60 speakers from around the world (including me) talking about how to get free from sugar for a full week starting on January 8!