Setting Goals for the New Year: Nutrition Edition

In preparation for the upcoming New Year, I've written a few different posts devoted to different types of New Year's goals. This one is all about nutrition and healthy eating!

1. Drink more water

Seriously, this one is so easy it's almost not even a goal. But almost everyone can stand to up their water intake. I have all different kids of fun water bottles that I bring with me to work to remind me to fill up. I also like the attention I receive when I bring these bottles into meetings. (yes, this behavior is maintained by attention. No shame). I wrote an entire post devoted to increasing your water intake, so check it out for more ideas.

2. Have fruit or veggies at every meal

Again, seems like a no-brainer, and most of us have the best of intentions when it comes to increasing our fruits and veggies. This one is a simple, do-able goal if you put your mind to it. And no, ketchup doesn't count as a veggie. Neither do fries. Check out this article for ways to sneak more veggies into your meals.

3. Cut out one bad food habit

This one is going to be personal to you. Maybe it's eating a high-caloric salty snack from the vending machine every day at 2 pm. Or it's your daily extra-whip mocha. Maybe it's not eating breakfast in the mornings. (I know lots of people are guilty of that!) Mine was my daily diet soda (just because it's no-calorie doesn't mean it's not terrible for you). Choose one that fits with your lifestyle needs and stick with making that change. Start small, no need to have your goal be "cut out all unhealthy food" - that's neither do-able, nor a SMART goal.

4. Stop skipping meals

So you ran out of the house without breakfast again. So what, right? Wrong. Research shows that having breakfast jumpstarts your metabolism, which means you burn more calories throughout the day. Additionally, studies have found that people who skip breakfast are more likely to be overweight and have a higher BMI, despite consuming less calories during the day. Check out this article for more information, which breaks down the research and gives some great nutritional tips.

Often times, especially as teachers, we forget to eat our lunch, or just plain run out of time for lunch. The work day is stressful and busy, and you can't always prioritize a nice sit-down meal in the middle of the day. I get it. But skipping meals causes your blood-sugar levels to drop, which makes you tired and sluggish. Just like with skipping breakfast, skipping other meals slows your metabolism down so your body becomes less efficient at burning calories. Further, when limiting your nutrients by skipping meals, your intellectual and emotional functioning takes a hit, which is never good when you're dealing with screaming kids all day (or a deadline at work, or chaos in the office). Do yourself a favor and stop this bad habit. Even if it means grazing on snacks during your lunch time, so you can fuel your body right.

5. Pack healthy snacks

Healthy snacks are everything. I'm big into eating three straight meals a day, but I also love me a good snack. If you're struggling with the above goal, try incorporating these two goals together, like my husband does. He works outside and while he can bring a cooler to work, he doesn't like to have sandwiches for lunch, and certainly does not have a place to heat up leftovers. So instead, he packs a few healthy snacks to have, so he can graze on them throughout the day. He's not a big "meal" guy, so this works out perfectly. Our favorite snacks to have on hand are RX bars, jerky, raw cashews, grapes, cheese sticks, pears, and apples.

The most important part of healthy snacking is the portion control. If you decide you just need to have chips, by all means, do it up! However, to keep things balanced and healthy, it's key that you portion out a serving size (I base it on the food label for how many servings are in the container). For example, cashews are a great, healthy option. But if you're wanting to use it to help reign in your eating, grabbing a couple handfuls of nuts is going to add up real quick. For reference, I scoop out a 1/4 cup of cashews (as noted on the label as a serving size) for my husband, and this adds up to about 170 calories. Scale back if you want less calories in your snack (say 2 tablespoons worth for about 90 calories). It's all about portion control and healthy snacks!

ABA at Play: tangibly-maintained behaviors, attention-maintained behaviors, escape-maintained behaviors, automatically-maintained behaviors, response effort, antecedent manipulations, environmental accommodations, prompting, prioritizing behaviors, reinforcement, social skills, social validity, behavior repertoire, socially-significant behavior, pairing, motivating operations manipulation, shaping procedures

For more ideas on goals, check out this huge post to help inspire you! As always, leave a comment letting me know some of your nutrition-related goals you hope to stick to this year.