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Making New Year’s Resolutions in January is easy. Keeping them going is another story. More times than most, we make our resolutions too complicated and without flexibility. We need to give ourselves some grace and allow for our goals to be tweaked. Some progress is better than no progress. Don’t throw in the towel just because you are not perfect. Aim for progress not perfection. Below are some simple healthy eating goals and one TIP to help you make progress. Keep trying and know we are all on this health journey together.

1. Stay Hydrated – This is not always easy in the winter months when the last thing you want is a cold beverage.
   TIP: Drink hot lemon water. A simple and satisfying drink is hot water and a slice of lemon. It will keep you warm and hydrated. Need a bit more flavor, try herb tea.
   
2. Eat More Fruits and Vegetables – This goal is evergreen. Whenever anyone asks what is one thing they can do to improve their diet, I choose this one. Not only is eating the fruits and vegetables healthy, they will likely replace other foods that are not so healthy in the diet.
   TIP: Make twice as much as you need. If you are roasting or steaming vegetables, make twice as much so you have leftovers (plannedovers) for future meals.
   
3. Keep or Get Moving – Winter is a hard time of year to keep moving. Too cold, too dangerous to be outside, and all of the other cold-weather excuses makes winter harder to be active.
   TIP: Join a gym (and go to the gym). There are so many low-cost options now to give you a daily indoor option for moving. If you don’t have a gym in your area or are not into a gym, try youtube videos of walking. I REALLY like Leslie Sansone, here is one of her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enYITYwvPAQ.
   
4. Sleep – This is something our programs highlight and emphasize over and over. Lack of sleep interferes with your hunger and satiety hormones making you hungrier when you don’t get enough sleep.
   TIP: Keep your phone out of the bedroom. If you cannot do this (I have an elderly mother so I have to have my phone nearby), silence alerts and pushouts, especially weather alerts.

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Yet another report of a new study on Intermittent Fasting (IF) has crossed my desk. IF (or time restricted feeding) is a dieting trend that includes dedicated periods of time when an individual consumes little to no calories and other times they eat as usual. Unless you raid the fridge during your sleeping hours, we all IF.

There have been over 11,000 studies (fewer than 2,000 peer reviewed), an estimated 13,000 Tik Tok and 3.8 million Instagram posts, 20 million Google listings…and no, I have not read them all. There is consensus from the scientists that the studies show the results you might get from IF are no better nor worse than what you would get by using an old-fashioned calorie counting strategy to lose weight.  In either case, any weight loss comes from restricting calories. Dietitians have said for years, if you consume 500 calories less a day, in 7 days, you will lose a pound a week. Of course, results do vary by gender, physical activity and age.

For some people it may be more convenient and sustainable to restrict their eating to an 8 hour window, or eat as usual one day and fast the second day, or carefully control caloric intake for 5 days and eat as desired on 2 days of the week. I haven’t tried any of these strategies. I have never been able to fast. I am a person who gets very” hangry” if I don’t eat meals and snacks throughout the day. So, the only fasting I do is when I sleep.

Finding the right strategy for you to maintain a healthy weight may involve experimenting with IF. And there could be some additional benefits like a modest improvement in insulin sensitivity and/or a small decrease in LDL (bad) cholesterol and a reduction of inflammation. Most of the improvements seen in fasting studies, the science shows, is due to the weight loss. Again, this weight loss is due to calorie restriction and not something magical about IF. Most healthy adults can tolerate IF well. IF is NOT recommended for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, or teens and adults with a history of eating disorders, or high risk of hypoglycemia, or are taking medications that should be taken with food.

A new study that crossed my desk adds a new insight that might be helpful for those who want to try all day fasting. Researchers followed a group of Muslims fasting from before sunrise to sunset from food and drink during their holy month of Ramadan. They reported that hedonic hunger (also known as eating for fun or pleasure) many experienced at the beginning of the month, was tamed with time, making adherence to fasting easier and more sustainable to follow for them. It would be important for those experimenting with IF to be committed to trying for at least a week before saying that strategy won’t work for them.

Source: Selen H. (2025) The Effect of Intermittent Fasting on Hedonic Hunger: A Pilot Prospective Cohort Study Based on Ramadan Intermittent Fasting. Frontiers in Nutrition.  https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2025.1718105/

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