End of The Year Routine For Weight Loss Success

Over the course of my weight loss journey, I have found routines to be exceedingly useful. My morning routine is to weigh in, put that number into my weight tracking app, read four chapters from the Bible, say my morning prayers, and do my journal. These things start me out in the correct mindset, which in turn sets up the rest of my day for weight loss (or in my case, maintenance) success. In the same way, an end-of-the-year routine has helped me get into the right frame of mind for the coming year of keeping the weight off. Weight loss and maintenance, after all, is mostly a mental game. I cannot overstate the importance of keeping your head in the right place day in and day out, year in and year out.

As the year winds down, generally on the 30th and 31st of December, I do my year-end review. This consists of reading my journal, making notes, reviewing my calendar, looking over my weight-tracking spreadsheet, and reviewing my spending for the year. As I am doing all of these things, I am asking myself these two questions: what could I do more of, and what could I do less of? I’m looking for failures and successes and trying to learn from all of them.

Read Journal and Make Notes

Somewhere around 2013 or so, I bought myself a journal. At that time I was 28 and obese. I had three kids, ages 1, 4, and 7. I wrote in it for several days, and then I quit. Years later, in October 2015, I came back to it, and re-read it. I was so disgusted with how whiny I sounded that I ripped those pages out of the journal and threw them away.¹ Then I began to journal again, and again I was very inconsistent. There were 8 entries in 2015, 21 in 2016 (the year I lost the majority of my weight), and only 7 in 2017. In 2018 I journaled almost daily for two months, then picked it back up in September of that same year. During the interim, I was doing morning pages which is a form of journaling that I learned about in The Artist’s Way.² From September 2018 up until this very day, I journal almost daily, though I generally forget to on Sundays.³

It was the re-reading of my journal entries at the end of the year that helped me to become more consistent with journaling. Every time I re-read my journals, I found myself thinking that I wished I would have elaborated more, or been more consistent with journaling in general. There are many things I’ve learned about myself by journaling out my thoughts. It has helped me to put into words many of the root issues that caused my past weight gain and struggles with overeating. In a journal, you can be honest with yourself. And when you put things down on paper, in black and white, you can more easily examine your words and thoughts for inaccuracies. At that point, you can correct your thinking, which helps you in the day-to-day weight loss journey.

At the end of the year when I sit down to re-read my journal, I keep a pen handy. I make a new journal entry called “(Year) Review” and then I jot down things that I find important. Sometimes these are insights that sound obvious but can be life-changing. For example, one from 2016 was, “Date nights are really important.” From that point on, my husband and I started implementing a weekly date night, which was a major improvement in our marriage. Here’s another insight from 2021, “I realized my weight was up so I could create drama for myself and not finish my book (Escape From Olshek’s Castle).” This insight helps remind me that when I’m writing a book, I need to be especially aware of my tendency to overeat and self-sabotage. To put it another way, journaling helps me with self-awareness, and self-awareness helped me get the weight off and has helped me keep it off.

Review Calendar

Some years my journal entries are skimpy. Sometimes I’m more focused on my daily emotions, and I do not include other types of context. To help me understand myself better, I review my google calendar. Seeing what was taking up my days can help me get the context that is otherwise lacking in my journal. It can also reveal how rarely I’m doing things I enjoy, or how often I’m doing things that make me miserable. Sometimes the miserable things are unavoidable: they’re simply the right thing to do, and to do them less would not be right. Still, it can be helpful to acknowledge that yes, this is something I do that makes me miserable, but here’s why I’m doing it. When there’s something in my life of that nature, I make a point of being gentler and loosening up a bit on the expectations I’ve set for myself in regards to my weight.

Review Weight Tracking Spreadsheet

Back in 2015, I was a hair’s breadth from throwing in the towel completely on weight loss. I had been working out intensely every day but Sunday. I was trying so hard with my eating, to the point of counting calories and weighing and measuring all of my food. To top it all off, I had injured my back. I had lost about 20 pounds, but by the end of the year, I had started to trend back up and had a net loss of 15.

I sat down with discouragement to my spreadsheet to review my year. It was only when I looked carefully at the data that I realized my problem was inconsistency. When I was being consistent, the weight was coming off, ever so slowly. That one insight motivated me to commit to picking something for the coming year and sticking with it. It took me until mid-January to figure out that was:

• Intermittent fasting 6 days a week
  • Eat whatever I want at my meals.
  • Coffee with half and half any time I want it throughout the fasting window.
• Cheat day on Sunday
• Walk 6 miles a day

A look back at what your weight has done this year can teach you a lot of things, like when you have the easiest time with weight loss or maintenance, and when you have the hardest time. I find it helpful to compare the spreadsheet with the journal and calendar. Many times increases in weight coincide with stressful times, whereas decreases are usually associated with the good times, when everything seems to be clicking right along. This helps with mental preparations moving forward. You’ll know yourself better and you can be proactive. For example, if you’re like me and find that you tend to have low mood in the winter months, brainstorm some ideas for things you enjoy that could occupy your time, so that in those months you don’t end up brooding and comfort eating.

Review Spending

Historically, much of my stress and thus my stress eating has been related to money. I find it helpful to look back at the year and see patterns in spending and earning, so that in the coming year we can make adjustments if needed. Sometimes the key is cutting back on spending, sometimes the key is earning more money. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. Sometimes the answer is to spend a bit more freely in the coming year.

Sidenote: If your finances are a mess, I highly recommend getting yourself on a budget and tracking your spending. For day-to-day tracking, I personally use Mint because it imports all of my transactions and it makes it easy to categorize my spending down to the cent. It also provides helpful things like budgets and trends to show me what my spending is like over time. I generally update my Mint every week, so that this final look back is quick and easy.

Finish Up 2022 Goals (If Applicable)

I have found that it’s important to have non-weightloss related goals that I’m working towards. This has helped immensely on the weight loss journey because having these goals has given me something to strive toward so that instead of eating, I make progress toward my other goals. One goal that has been very helpful is to read 52 books a year. I’ve been doing this since 2015. Depending on the year, the last few days of December may be a time of much binge-reading.

Although I try to finish early, I have found that this kind of last-minute push can be exhilarating and useful. There is value in setting a goal and then giving it everything you’ve got in order to achieve it in the end. So, if you have a goal that you’re almost to, that you can achieve, finish it up. I have done this with my book goal, staying up late and missing out on sleep just to finish. I’ve also done this with my daily step goal, refusing to lay down and go to bed until that 14,000th step is taken, even if that means the clock is about to strike midnight. Every time I have done these things, I’ve gained more discipline which has in turn helped my weight loss. It also made the fasting window easier, because I had things to do, other than eating, to keep me busy.

Of course, your end-of-the-year routine can look however you want it to look. Just like with your chosen weight loss plan, I would encourage you to customize it to yourself. Figure out what’s important to you and do the review your own way. But since I know templates can be helpful, I’m including a list of suggested action steps below. Scroll down to the very bottom if you’d like to download it as a pdf. Have fun reviewing your year!

Footnotes

1. I regret this now. ↑
2. I burned all my morning pages. I don’t regret this. ↑
3. In re-reading my journals, I realized that switching to a five-minute journal style of entry helped me to get consistent. Many times I would be intimidated because I didn’t know what to write, so I didn’t. The five-minute journal template gave me a framework, which made it easier to journal. Here was the format: Morning Entry: 3 Things I’m Grateful For, 3 Ways To Make Today Great, Affirmations. Evening Entry: 3 Amazing Things That Happened Today, How I Could Have Made Today Even Better. ↑

Suggested Action Steps

1. Read your journal entries from this year.
   1. Make notes about insights. Ask yourself what would make your journal more helpful moving forward. (More consistent entries? More elaboration about your day-to-day routines?)
   2. If you don’t have a journal, buy yourself one and start keeping it, however imperfectly you can.
2. Review your calendar.
   1. Make notes in your journal of any insights you have. What could you do more of? What could you do less of?
   2. If you don’t regularly use a calendar, ask yourself if you might be helped by using one.
3. Review your weight tracking from this year.
   1. Make notes in your journal of times when your weight came off consistently, and when you had trouble. Compare that to what was going on in your life by looking at your journal and learning from it.
   2. If you haven’t been tracking your weight, pick a method you think will work for you and implement it today. You can download my free weight tracking spreadsheet from the freebies page of this website. Happy Scale for iOS and Weight Tracker for Android are also good options.
4. Review your spending.
   1. Look back at your spending for the year. What did you spend money on that you regret? What did you spend money on that you really enjoyed? Were there times of money stress? Why? Note your insights in your journal entry.
   2. If you haven’t been tracking your spending, pick a system and implement it now. Mint, Every Dollar, and You Need A Budget are all good options.
5. Finish up goals from this year, if applicable.
   1. Push as hard as you can to finish the goal. Doing hard things helps you build the discipline you need on the weight loss journey.
   2. If you’re behind, learn from this experience so that next year you won’t be.

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