For many, New Year's Day is the day for a new start and the all-too-familiar New Year's resolution. Unfortunately, although intentions and resolve may be firm, many fail to survive more than a few weeks or at best a few months. This edition we'll look at how to increase your chances of following through with your resolutions.

Why?

The first thing to consider is the why? Why are you making a resolution? What is your goal? For any chance of success, you must understand why you are doing what you are doing and most importantly it must be something you honestly want to achieve. Giving up smoking because everyone tells you it is bad for you provides a fairly shallow resolve which will often end in failure and mean the same resolution next year. You must want to give up smoking, not because others say it is bad for you, but because you believe it is bad for you.

Benefits

Once you've determined why you are going to make the resolution, provide some reinforcement. If your New Year's resolution is to pass a BFA, explore other benefits that will be gained from your resolution. It will improve your cardio-respiratory health, positively influence your bone density, aid in fat loss and decrease the chance of obesity-related illnesses and diseases. For smokers, quitting could mean cleaner teeth, saved money, improved cardio-respiratory health for you and your family and being a non-smoking role model for your children.

Plan

Now the why and its reinforcers have been established, probably the most important factor must be addressed - planning. Remember the adage "failing to plan is planning to fail?" Well, that applies strongly. You need to plan and strategise how you are going to achieve this goal.

So you want to quit smoking? There are numerous planning steps that should be taken. Just before the resolution, all traces of cigarettes must be removed from the house. Have all clothes that you wore while smoking washed and cleaned, use air freshener to remove the smell from furniture, remove any trigger in your house that may lead you to desire a cigarette.

Use the "what if?" planning strategy: What if I get invited out to a place where there are many smokers or my friends who smoke will be there? What if I find the cravings too strong to bear - Will I purchase/carry nicotine patches? - What sort? - Is it safe for me? You need a plan of attack ready to go when your resolution starts.

For fitness, look at where you're going to train, wet weather plans, most importantly set a definitive time to establish a habit (by definitive time I mean "At 0600 I will go for a walk", not "I will walk every morning"). Have you purchased or do you own the runnings shoes you're going to need? Do you have a gym towel? Simple things, but things that compound to deflate your conviction by making the resolution "too much effort".

Realism

Be realistic. Don't set out a plan that is over ambitious and will be difficult to achieve - think long term. A resolution that begins with "I will go for a walk at 0530 every morning" may be difficult to achieve. You may initially suffer from a loss of sleep, thus decreasing your motivation every morning to the point where you are so tired one morning, you to decide to sleep in.

This leads to more and more sleeping in and your resolution is discarded. Going for that walk every second day will provide a sleep catch-up day while your body adjusts. The following month may change to four or five times a week or an increase in walk distance.

This method will also allow for more flexibility in your program. For example, if you're on duty or it's raining that morning you would have an option to catch up the missed session.

Monitor

Determine how you'll monitor your success. For some resolutions this will be easier. If you quit smoking you could celebrate your first week, month, six months and year without smoking and you will be able to tell when you have reached these milestones easily.

Fitness may be more difficult to monitor and is dependent on your resolution. Improving cardio-respiratory health, for example, would be difficult to monitor as the improvements are mostly internal and gradual. With this in mind, more superficial methods can be used.

The first requires occasional re-testing (specifically set periods) of your cardio-respiratory ability (eg 2.4km run time).

Another method is to have anthropometric measurements (like flexibility, skin fold, girths, etc) taken and compared at a later date.

Probably the least demanding means of monitoring your resolution is to simply monitor your program and your compliance to it over a set period of time.

Conclusion

So, this year when you set your resolution, consider: Why this is your resolution; what benefits and secondary (reinforcer) benefits you will gain; what planning, preparation and research needs to be conducted before the big day; is the resolution practical and realistic and how will you monitor and validate it?