Follow These 6 'Winter Arc' Rules to Jumpstart Your New Year Health Goals

The “winter arc” trend offers a fresh way to prioritize your health during the holiday season. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s basically a way to kickstart the habits you’d normally save for the new year.

While some people begin their winter arc on Oct. 1, it’s never too late to start low or tweak your goals if they haven’t gone as planned thus far.

To set yourself up for success, focus on realistic goals. For example, the hustle and bustle of the holiday season may not be the best time to try to start walking three miles every morning.

To follow through on your winter arc goals, you have to “meet yourself where you’re at,” Susan Albers, PsyD, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic, told Verywell.

There’s no shame in starting small, especially now, when your schedule may be a little busier than usual. For instance, if you’re hoping to eventually walk one hour each day, you could start with a 10-minute daily walk now and work your way up. “Behavior isn’t a light switch, it’s more like a dimmer switch,” Albers said.

We asked health experts for some winter arc goals that most people can try, along with strategies to stay on track when the challenge gets tough.

Start With ‘Exercise Snacks’

Jumping into an intense fitness routine can be risky if it’s been a while since you’ve worked out.

“Doing too much too quickly is more likely to lead to overtraining and burnout,” Grace Horan, MS, ACSM-EP, an exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, told Verywell.

To avoid this, Horan recommends starting with “exercise snacks”—short bursts of movements lasting five to 10 minutes a few times a day.

“Gradually work up to 30 minutes of consistent and continuous low-intensity exercise over the course of a few weeks,” Horan said. “Once you are able to build up to participation in continuous exercise on three to four days per week, increase the intensity of one of the workouts and continue as tolerated.”

Journal for Any Amount of Time

Some people like incorporating a grounding exercise—like journaling or coloring—into their daily routine. These can help people relax and reflect during a busy day, Albers said.

But if you turn the practice into a chore—by making yourself journal for a certain amount of time or pages every day—it may get harder and harder to sustain. “The important thing is to just do it, rather than doing it for a specific amount of time,” Albers said.

Eat Some Protein Every Morning

Setting goals around diet and nutrition can be very hard, Alissa Rumsey, MS, RD, the author of “Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life” and founder of Rumsey Nutrition Consulting, told Verywell.

“Avoid any [practices] that speak to having to ‘always’ or ‘never’ do something,” Rumsey said. “Anything this rigid and inflexible is going to be counterproductive.”

You always want to avoid any practices that involve eliminating certain foods or food groups. “Goals oriented around avoidance or cutting things out of your diet generally are not sustainable,” Rumsey said. “Our bodies have a biological response to any type of scarcity or restriction, which sets us up for increased cravings, higher hunger cues, and an uphill battle when it comes to avoiding certain foods.”

It can be tough to think of productive ways to tweak your diet, but protein may be a good place to start since we all need a certain amount each day to keep our bodies up and running.

Making sure to prioritize protein first thing by adding it to your breakfast every morning is a good way to give your body the energy it needs to start the day, Rumsey said.

Reassess Toxic Relationships

When you’re looking for a fresh start, it can be helpful to evaluate your current relationships. If certain friends leave you feeling drained, that might be a sign you could stand to spend less time with them.

This doesn’t mean you have to cut people out of your life and never speak to them again. Rather, you can start to taper down the amount of time you spend with these friends and see how that feels to you. If it feels positive, you can continue on that path; if it feels negative, you can reassess what the relationship brings to your life.

Track Your Health Journey

When you’re experimenting with new health practices, it can be difficult to know what’s working and what’s not. But a good way to figure out whether your new health goals are working for you is to keep a log of what you do each day—and how you feel.

“Having some data is important,” Albers said. At the end of each day, it can be useful to write down the healthy habits you engaged in—such as walking, drinking a certain amount of water, doing a mindfulness exercise, etc.—then jotting down how you feel.

You may notice patterns; for instance, you may discover you feel restless on days you skip your daily walk or anxious on days you don’t journal. On the flip side, if you’re overtraining, you may notice pain or other physical signs that you should tone down your fitness routine a little.

Try a New Vegetable Recipe Each Week

When many people think of how they can make positive changes to their diet, they automatically gravitate towards eating more vegetables.

And while that’s a good thing, it’s important to set reasonable goals around this practice. “I recommend goals centered around ways that you can add to your day,” Rumsey said. “Approach it from a place of ‘How can I take better care of myself?’”

Getting enough vegetables with all three of your daily meals might be ambitious at first, but a weekly commitment to trying a new vegetable recipe can both up your intake and give you new staples to add to your regular food rotation.