If you don’t plan on making a new year’s resolution about weight loss, congratulations! They usually fail and lead to cycles of losing and gaining weight, preoccupation with food, and a negative body image. We can probably all use a resolution to be healthier though in the coming year. Here are a few things to consider.

Focus on lifestyle changes that are more likely to last. Make it about wellness, rather than weight. This way, you’ll be healthier and might even lose weight as a byproduct of your efforts.

Look to make a daily behavior change, and set short-term goals. If you’re physically active a couple of times a week, it might be as easy as resolving to be active four times a week for a month. Then, re-evaluate. And when you set your goal to be active four days each week, determine what your reward will be. Perhaps you’ll wait to order that self-watering planter until after you’ve met your first goal. Let your goals be achievable and based on things you can actually do, rather than weight-loss results. It could be eating a healthy breakfast every morning, or eating fish twice a week and making sure you sit down when you eat.

You might resolve to eat a fruit or vegetable at every meal of the day. Eating more fruits and vegetables, along with drinking plenty of water and walking daily, has been shown to be a pretty powerful combo when it comes to weight-loss success. But that’s not your concern now. Before you get there, your goal is to create a healthy habit you can sustain. Same goes for exercise: Your goal is to create a habit that will improve the health of your body and mind.

And about that blustery, extremely cold weather that might squelch your activity goals and make them hard to achieve: if you dress in enough layers, no one will see your shabby long underwear!

Be well!