Of all the New Year’s Resolutions, only 8% will be achieved by the end of the year. Many (75%) people will be able to hold on to their resolution through the first week, but after that, the percentage starts dropping. Can you join the happy 8%? We think you can!

Of all the resolutions the ones related to self-improvement (47%), weight/fitness (38%) and money (34%) are the most popular. The tips below should help you to achieve goals in all these three areas. Good luck!

Tips

1. Eat a full breakfast

To save calories many people decide to cut breakfast from the equation. The logic kinda makes sense: less calories = losing weight. Alas, there are two problems to this logic. First, you are more likely to snack when you have missed out on breakfast. Second, it’s likely to stress your body out and is linked to higher blood pressure, overweight and blood-fats. Therefore eating breakfast is a good idea.

When you eat breakfast you satisfy your body with energy it needs to get started, it jumpstarts your metabolism. Even your brain is thankful for the calories in the morning, i.e. you will think better on a good breakfast. If you eat three meals a day you are also less likely to snack in-between meals and stick to your diet.

2. Exercise in the morning

If you’ve decided that regular exercise will be part of you in 2015, do it in the morning. In the morning you have more willpower and will be more likely to stick to your (new) habits. It will cost you less (mental) energy to do sports in the morning than doing it after a long day of work or study.

Another benefit of working out in the morning is that you will sleep better. Brain scans have shown that it can improve deep sleeping up to 75%. Working out in the morning may require some willpower of you to get up, but seeing that you will sleep better this challenge may not be so hard.

3. Don’t go on a crash diet

Your body will hate you for it. You will have a deficiency

in nutrients, muscles will be burnt and the aging process will be sped up. Next to that the weight will most likely come back. This is because your body gets used to the very low calories (also called survival mode) and when you start eating normal again you will gain weight very quickly.

Much better is to cut calories by a maximum of 500kcal. This way your body will still be able to get the much-needed vitamins & minerals and it will not go into survival mode. This kind of diet is easy to maintain, will produce consistent results and has very little chance of a yo-yo effect.

4. Buy food in bulk

Saving money can be done in a million ways, here we focus on saving money whilst buying your groceries. Small packaging of food is much more expensive than large (family) portions, buy the latter. If you check food labels you will be amazed at how long most things are preservable. Store your excess food in a freezer.

Buying food in bulk and storing it has a second benefit. You can take advantage of discounts from (different) grocery stores. And if you normally don’t cook at all, consider learning to make easy recipes. Cooking simple meals can be done in 15-30 minutes and is usually 50% or more cheaper than pre-prepared meals.

5. Automatically transfer money to your savings account

Use the money you have saved with the aforementioned method and by doing some light bookkeeping you can significantly improve your financial position. The best way to do this is to transfer money into your savings account automatically. This is the best way because you only have to decide to save once. After that, your bank will do the saving for you!

Another benefit from saving is that you prevent yourself from overspending. With less in your checking account you will be less tempted to spend it all. If you lock your savings account, you will never be tempted to take out your money.

6. Share

In the end, it’s always difficult to commit and stick to your goals. One last trick up our sleeves is to share your goals. More than 75% of people who achieved their New Year’s Resolutions believed that sharing them has helped them. By sharing you make yourself accountable to more people and are more likely to achieve it. So why not share your goal this year!

Queal

In achieving your New Year’s Resolution we believe that Queal can help. We think that Queal can help you eat healthier, be better prepared for exercise and save money on food. Here are three reasons why!

1. Queal contains at least 100% of all your RDA for all the essential nutrients

2. Queal releases energy consistently during the day, so no more after dinner dip or hungry stomach 1 hour after eating

3. Queal costs €2-2,50,- per meal, much cheaper than fast food or pre-prepared meals and you can make it in seconds