How many people do you know have resolved to lose weight in the New Year only to fail?  Have you experienced this yourself?  Well, it’s incredibly hard to accomplish, and as you may know, you can resolve to do it year after year without actually accomplishing it.

If you need some weight loss advice  going into the New Year, consider the following:

Plan, plan, plan. How much weight do you want to lose?  Break your big picture plan down into a small goal — so instead of you want to lose 100 pounds, say you want to lose 10 pounds within 2 months.  It’ll give you realistic goals you can follow, quickly (relatively) meet, and be satisfied with your progress.  If you set one goal way down the road, you’re setting yourself up to become discouraged.

Change your diet.  Figure out how many calories you’re consuming each day and if it’s over 2,000, gradually lower it.  Most likely, if you’ve been living an unhealthy lifestyle like most complete with fast food meals, daily soda, and alchol, you’re way over the 2,500 limit.

It’s not only about the kind of calories you eat, however.  Sure, you could eat nachos all day and meet your daily caloric goal of 2,000, but that wouldn’t be very healthy.  Follow the basic food groups and get your recommended daily allowance (RDA) of all the right food groups.

Be active. You can’t sit and watch television every night after you get home from work or school.  You need to get in the gym, even if you can’t make it a daily thing.  You have to add some sort of healthy element to your lifestyle, something elevate your heartrate, burn calories, and give you something else to do other than be a potato.

Take supplements. If your doctor allows you to,  you should consider taking supplements that are aimed toward you meeting your goal.  Do you want to lose weight?  Take weight loss supplements.  Want to build muscle?  Consider bodybuilding supplements.  If you want to just take some general vitamins and supplements to fill in where your diet is lacking, those are available too.

Make friends. It’s extremely hard to lose weight alone.  You didn’t put on all that weight by yourself — by that, I mean you didn’t enjoy those long nights at the bar by yourself, you didn’t eat that chili hotdog at the stadium watching the game by yourself, the popcorn at the theater by yourself, etc.

You gained weight with friends and family, it’s only natural you lose weight with them as well.