How to Supercharge Your Goals
By the end of January, nearly half of New Year’s resolutions are quietly abandoned. In my work as a women’s health dietitian, I see this every year, and it has very little to do with motivation or discipline. Most resolutions fail because they are too broad, or because people don’t see measurable feedback early on. When effort doesn’t translate into noticeable change, even well-intentioned plans lose momentum.
Think of it like this: You want ‘better gut health’ or to ‘eat healthier’ but have not quite defined it. You see the lifestyle you want, but you are simultaneously overloaded with information about it and have zero direction. Abstract goals don’t give the brain or nervous system anything to respond to. Without specifics, the brain checks out. You may remember this from raising children or deliverables at work. No schedule means you are scrambling for soccer pickup, no outline of the project means a lot of wasted time throwing things at the wall. When there is no feedback, your brain checks out. Even disciplined, intelligent people benefit from an outside lens. At a certain point, clarity comes from structure and interpretation, not more effort. This is why I practice in a high-touch, comprehensive way.
Motivation isn’t created via peptide or NAD injection. It does not appear on 1/1 and stick around all year. We all know this. Motivation follows evidence. The evidence that you can do hard things, that you are walking a path toward your goals, and that you are willing to stick around for a while during that crappy ‘nothing is working’ period without changing course. We as humans are not built to stick around when something isn’t working unless it is a habit to do so. That is not a character flaw.
If you want to eat healthier for more energy, you won’t notice an energy shift in the first week. Plus, January tends to be a time when we change multiple variables at once. So it isn’t just eating healthier, it is playing a round of golf 3x/week instead of 1, going to the gym all week, giving up all the foods that you were eating last month.
The body is always responding to inputs and consistency. It is HARD to change that many things at once and stay consistent. Plus, you will be more tired at first (from all that activity) → think it isn’t working → be more likely to give up.
Better gut health is even trickier. I will get into this next month, but for any goal, a more effective approach is to narrow the focus. Choose one measurable action that supports long-term health.
Want to feel less bloated after eating? Try sitting for meals, ditch the straws and sparkling water, chewing a little more, and not waiting until you are starving to eat so you do not swallow as much air.
Want better bowel movements? Take a look at how much fiber you eat. Track using Cronometer for a few days. If it is less than 25g/day, slowly increase by a few grams per week with colorful produce and whole grains.
Want to go deeper with more severe GI symptoms, skin issues, histamine symptoms, a body that feels ‘off’, etc? Sick of outsourcing your health to the internet? We need to find the root cause. That is where my work as a concierge style GI dietitian comes in.
Other examples of narrowed goals include a daily step goal around 7,000 steps, which is associated with reduced chronic disease risk. Consistently adding one additional fruit or vegetable to each meal. Adding one workout per week and building on that. Making an appointment to get your iron, vitamin D, b12 & MMA checked to see if there is an underlying reason for your fatigue.
Small, repeatable wins create traction, and traction creates follow-through. Follow through and you will experience that motivation we all search for. Boring works. Chaotic implementation of everything you see on the internet does not. Internet advice = generalized, uncontextualized, often contradictory. The first phase is always going to be gathering information. What is hard for me? What fits well into my schedule? What can I get rid of to make room for more relaxed meals and a better plan? Your body is always talking to you, but sometimes we just do not have the tools to listen. I know this first hand after spending 20 years with Crohn’s disease miserable and confused. Generic plans got me vague results, which is why I got in to this field in the first place.
Personalized care leads to pattern recognition over time. My job is to narrow the lens, identify which inputs matter for you, and remove the guesswork. You do not need a reset, you probably just need fewer moving parts and less confusion.
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