62. Year-End Assessment – Reflecting on the Past Year and Moving Forward

In this episode of Weight Loss Made Simple, Dr. Stacy Heimburger guides you through the powerful process of year-end reflection to set yourself up for success in 2025. Before jumping into goal setting, it’s crucial to assess where you are with your habits, health, and mindset. Dr. Heimburger explores how reflecting on what worked, identifying areas of struggle, and understanding your system can help you make more mindful and sustainable weight loss decisions in the coming year. Learn how to assess your physical health, emotional well-being, and habits to create a strong foundation for achieving your weight loss goals. Tune in to discover practical tips for a thoughtful and successful start to the new year!

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Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Weight Loss Made Simple. I’m Dr. Stacy Heimburger, and first, I’d like to say Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate Christmas. I actually record a little bit early, so it is the end of November right now, but I am already in full Christmas spirit, getting our house ready and trying to get as much out of the way as I can so that I can be ready and relax.

Today, I want to talk about a new special series. I know we just wrapped up sort of the holidays and how to avoid some holiday overeating, but it’s getting close to the new year. So, I want to help with this series as we get ready for the new year with clarity, purpose, and goal setting.

So today, I want to talk about assessing. I know a lot of people want to jump straight into goal setting as soon as the year ends. I know I’m just as guilty of this, but I truly think reflecting on last year is the real secret to setting achievable goals for next year. And full disclosure, this is something I really have focused on working on this year, the end of 2024. I really want to work on this assessment piece. Reflecting is really important, so I’m going to try and walk us through some ideas of how to assess where we are, how to look back and see what worked, reflect on the habits that got us closer to where we want to be, and maybe the ones that didn’t get us closer to where we want to be. So I think this is going to be a real game changer, and I hope it helps.

So, let’s talk about what assessment really means. It’s about taking a deep and honest look at where we are currently in terms of our habits, health, goals, mindset—all of that—where we are right now. So it’s a little... this is the one time I’ll let you use tough love, right? It’s a little bit about tough love only because we need to be real with ourselves. This is not where we’re writing down what we’ve achieved for the Christmas card and sort of putting our best foot forward. This is really about being honest and saying, "This is where I am right now," and then looking back and saying, "This is where I thought I was going to be," or, "These were my goals at the beginning of 2024."

So, in this way, it helps us see what we need to pay more attention to next year, where we can improve. Not only that, it helps us identify our strengths. Sometimes, you know, if our negative Nancy brain is on full alert, we will look back at last year and think, "I didn’t accomplish anything." But part of this being honest and part of this deep dive is to be able to see all the things you did accomplish. If you really set goals and sort of kept them at least somewhere in your mind—maybe not immediately in front, but somewhere—I’m sure you’ve made some gains this year.

So this is the other part of the assessment, right? It’s not just about where we didn’t get to or what we need to do better. It’s about what worked. Like, I bet we found something that worked and something that we need to consciously identify as something that works for us so that we can make sure that we continue to do that. When we skip over this step, we start to make changes or make plans without really understanding where we are or what’s really holding us back. Or I would argue to say, as well, like maybe we’re going to change something that’s working for us, and we don’t want to do that.

So let’s reflect on our health and wellness. Right, first we talk about where we are. How are you feeling right now—physically, emotionally, mentally? Think about the last year. Where did you plan on being at this point? Where were your wins? Maybe you stuck to your new exercise routine or made some real improvements to your diet. I can tell you I was just going through this with one of my clients. We were doing this together on our call. She has exercised 345 of the last 365 days. She found a routine that worked for her, and she has stuck to it all year long. But without an assessment, we’re not going to give that the credit it’s due, right? If we just move on to next year and we say, "Keep it up," what does "keep it up" mean? What were we doing? What was our measurable? Where were we drinking much? So by assessing and thinking about that, we can say, "Oh, like, look, I did this thing, and I feel good," or, "I did this a little bit, and I feel better. Maybe I’ll try and do it more." So we need to look for those wins.

Okay, we also need to look at where we struggled a little bit, and that’s okay. There’s no shame in struggling or setbacks, right? We need to assess the picture so that we can see where to go. So, if we didn’t meet our goal, why not? What happened? What got in our way? Was there some problem in our system? Okay, let me take a side note for one second. When we don’t achieve our goals or when we don’t stick to the habits that we set for ourselves, we have a tendency to think, "I’m wrong." Right? We make it very personal—like, "I’m bad. I didn’t do it. There’s something wrong with me." Instead of thinking, "Maybe there’s just something wrong with the system." Okay, maybe the system I set in place is not conducive to that new habit. Right?

So if I’m taking the kids to school every single morning, maybe exercising every single morning is not—like, that’s not set up in my system to work out. Now, if my system is sometimes I take the kids, sometimes my husband takes the kids, and on these days, like, we have a schedule so that I can exercise those days... Honestly, what happens in my house is I usually he takes the kids, and I take the dog for a walk, and so I get my walk in, the kids get to school, and then we usually have a couple of minutes back at home together before we both head off to work. That’s our ideal system, and it probably works for 3 to 4 out of 5 days. So that would be something that we assess. We haven’t formally made that contract with ourselves, but maybe that is something when we do our assessment to say, "Hey, this really works. Does this work? Did it work for you?" Right?

So, did we meet any of our goals? If we didn’t, was the system set up for us or against us? Okay, are there changes we need to make to the system? So as far as my physical health—do I feel energized or exhausted most of the time? I already know in my assessment, these last couple of months of the year, I’ve been really tired. So I’m really going to go back and do an assessment and see, what could I have done earlier in the year, or what can I delete? Like, I over-committed somehow in these last couple of months. Maybe it’s just the weather change, and I need to be mindful of that next year.

Okay, so that’s this. Emotional well-being—did you take care of your mental health? Was your stress managed in a healthy way? We have to do an assessment so we can pick up patterns so we can find flaws in our system—physical health, emotional well-being, and our habits. So what habits worked? If we didn’t keep track, we have no idea. Maybe that’s where we want to start in 2025 if we need to keep track, right? So, if we kept track, are there any patterns we can recognize? Things that worked, things that didn’t work, things that worked kind of? Maybe we just need to be more mindful of, like, what are the days that it worked? What was going on? What are the days it didn’t work? What was going on?

This reflection—it’s just about awareness. We’re not judging it, okay? So we need to think about what worked and what didn’t, right? So we’ve done our little assessment. We’ve been honest. We’ve identified things that worked and things that didn’t work. The things that worked, like, shine a little flashlight on that, shine a spotlight, write it down, and this is just to reinforce to our brain, "Hey, we did this. It worked. I liked it. I want to keep doing it." Otherwise, our brain is just like, "I don’t know if that worked out," right? And then maybe there’s some resistance. So maybe we meal prepped most Sundays, and that works, and we like that. We need to tell our brain, "That works, and we liked it intentionally." Otherwise, it just gets lost in the noise.

Okay, so did that help us add vegetables to our diet? Did that help us stay on track during the week to feel more energized? Or maybe we meal prep a lot, but we didn’t eat any of it, or it didn’t make us feel good, or it was really stressful, and it didn’t quite work out. Okay, that’s all right. Maybe it was just overwhelming to do that on Sunday. Maybe it would be easier to do that a different day of the week—maybe change it up.

Okay, also, let’s pay attention to one thing: something didn’t work. Did we do it more days than not? Because then it worked. Okay? This idea that I didn’t do it 100% of the time... I know you guys have heard me say this—that doesn’t mean it didn’t work. Okay? That’s still... if we did it more times but not 100%, that worked. So let’s make sure when we’re saying, "Did it work, didn’t work?" we’re being honest that, you know, 100% is not real, and if we did it more days than not, that worked.

So let’s just talk a little bit more about setbacks. When we are trying to do something new, it is an unreasonable expectation to think we’re going to do it perfect the first time. Okay? Think about learning to walk. Right? We didn’t just stand up and learn how to walk. We fell down a couple of times. We kept going. Okay? But we learned a little bit. Maybe we learned we need to hold on for those first couple of steps, or we need to balance first and then walk. Right? There are all these little micro-adjustments that we learn with every time we fell down. So falling off track doesn’t necessarily mean we need to ditch that habit. We just need to look at the system. We need to look at what happened. We need to see, is there just a little tweak I can make?

We fell off our workout routine after a busy week, so maybe we look at our tracker, and it’s like, "Oh, gosh, I never made it to my workout on Friday," and then I felt guilty and overwrote. All right, so maybe we don’t put a workout on Friday, but maybe we weren’t working out on Sunday, and maybe we try and add a nice recovery walk or something on Sunday. Okay, if we fell off our workout at the end of the week—like, we were so sore—maybe we didn’t have enough recovery days leading up to Friday, right? So it’s not just, "Oh, I didn’t stick to my workout routine." Let’s take a look at it. Why? Was I too tired? Was I too stressed? Was I too sore? Because there’s different solutions for all of those. Right?

If I was too tired, then maybe I just don’t get to work out on Friday because the week has been a little rough. Right? If I was too sore, maybe I just need to add a rest day. Maybe Thursday’s workout needs—Wednesday’s workout needs a tweak. Right? There’s one day, two day her after workout, and maybe my Wednesday workout was just a little too hard. Maybe I need to push that. Like, if I think I would feel great working out on Friday going into the weekend, maybe I just need to flip-flop my workouts and put that really hard workout on Friday.

So, what adjustments can we make to support our goals? Why exactly did it not work? Or did we not think it worked? What was going on?

So, you know, I love a pretty journal. I love that. This might be a pretty journal, right? I use Clever Fox planner. I really like it. It gives you this opportunity to reflect at the end of every month. It does not have one at the end of the year, which I think is a big mess, but I love the idea of having a separate notebook anyway and just doing these reflections. Write it down. What am I most proud of? What worked? What changes did I make? What changed the system? Where did I advocate for myself? Where did I change my mindset? Where did I change my nutrition? Where did I start to delegate and delete things and really cut down on my work? Write that all down, and then I like the idea of just sort of brainstorming, "What does next year look like for me?"

Okay, and we’ll go more into that. We’re going to do goal setting in a couple of episodes, but this is about what worked so that we shine a spotlight, tell our brain, "Yes, that worked. We liked it." What didn’t work and why didn’t it work? So first, we ask ourselves, did it really not work, or am I trying to do 100%? Because maybe it really did work, and so it goes into the first column. And then if it didn’t, was it a system problem? What was the routine? What was the pattern? Where was I falling off, and is there some little tweak? What can I learn from that? What can I change? What can I tweak for next time?

Okay, so write it down—any lessons about your successes and setbacks and what you think you learned, and what did you identify? Any blocks that are blocking you?

Okay, then we’re going to identify one or two things that we want to bring into the next year. So it could be a continuation of a habit that worked for us and we loved. I might even not count that, and then two new things. Right? So we can pick one or two new things, we can keep something that worked, and then I want you to pick a couple of things to leave behind. All right? We’re not going to work on 10 things a year, so pick the two things you want to work on for 2025, and then sit with them until we get to our goal-setting episode. Just sit with those and make sure those are the two that you really want to work on. Okay? And then let go of anything that’s holding you back. Make space.

All right, so I know sometimes journaling is hard, but I do think this reflection piece is so important. Again, if you look back at my journal for the year, my calendar that I use—I told you there’s monthly reflections every time—I think I made less than half. But the month that I did it, I saw a really positive jump the next month. So that’s one of the things. Like, I tried it. I liked it. I just wasn’t very consistent, so I’m going to try and just do it more next time, and I am going to do this big end-of-year exercise, which I haven’t really done before. I’m great at setting the goals for next year, but I haven’t been great about reflecting on last year and wrapping up.

So this is really just about assessment. There are a few articles that I can put in the show notes that just reinforce that this is really important to this self-perception and affecting our behaviors. And so if we look back and think, "Oh, I didn’t make any of my goals," and that might not be real, we need to assess and like catch those wins. Okay? Our brain loves to be negative. It’s going to wash over those, like, they didn’t happen. So assessment this year—I want you to do an end-of-year assessment, and I will meet you next week for the next series of wrapping up our year and getting ready for next year.

All right, until then, bye.