THE FOLLOWING ARE WELLNESS lessons experienced last year by clients and friends who are motivated to continue their journey this year. Apply the following not only to lose weight but to sustain healthy lifestyle habits and a positive outlook to start the year right.

Don?t over-exercise

After the holiday season, more people will get gym memberships or train for sports. This is a popular scenario year after year for those who have goals for summer and those who have gained weight after the holiday parties.

Do it in moderation so you get excited every time you wear your exercise outfit, and most of all, so you will not overeat after every intense physical activity.

One of my clients who lost almost half of her weight-loss goal in six months learned from experience that burning more than 700 calories after two intense workout sessions like badminton and dance workout in a day would make her crave for food 50 percent more than her usual intake. This shows that over-exercising will make weight loss difficult for you.

Healthy competition

Find fitness friends who will lead you to success. They will encourage you to keep going when challenges come your way: Weight loss plateaus, exercise boredom, emotional eating and feeling of giving up.

But being with a group, you have to consider how you eat after burning all the calories. Make sure that healthy eating is also part of your topic.

Portion and quality control

If you have no medical condition that would require a special diet, don?t even attempt to start one.

Focus on portion control before modifying the quality of your food intake. Write everything in a notebook and try to limit your food servings. If you?ve been used to eating all the pork fat whenever pork chop is served, then limit the fat portion by half. Once your stomach adjusts to a lesser intake, you can target quality control by eating brown rice instead of white rice or whole grain bread instead of white bread. The common mistake of other popular diets is completely changing one?s type of food right away and not on one?s eating behaviors like eating too much and too fast while doing something which is more important in starting any weight loss strategy.

Set a new goal

An example is ?to increase metabolism? and not ?to lose weight.?

If you always think about your weight everyday, you will never achieve your goal since too much obsession with weight will cause you to ignore other positive things from happening like improved strength, better sports performance and faster metabolism. Once you don?t achieve your target weight for the week, you might just resort to emotional eating to make you feel better.

Would you like to eat more than the person who has the same weight as yours and still lose or not gain weight at all? If yes, then the center of your fitness goal this year is to increase your daily calorie-burning capacity?or increase your metabolism. You can only achieve this through exercise to increase your lean mass and eat in moderation. Stop starving yourself just to lose weight. Eating less will cause your body to adjust to low-calorie eating and when you return to your own eating habits, you can gain weight easily.

I have documented my total calorie burn and intake for 12 months last year. The record shows that I have faster metabolism now after years of exercising and eating a balanced diet. This means I can always afford to eat additional 250 calories everyday without gaining weight.

E-mail the author at mitchfelipe@gmail.com