Do you have a bad habit you're trying to kick? It seems like every year in January, people try to devote their "New Year's resolutions" to fixing something about themselves that they could probably be doing better on.
Maybe you feel like you've been spending too much time at work and not enough with your loved ones? It's a pretty common worry, and fortunately the solution is pretty simple: start making more time for the people you care about! Similarly, another pretty common one is for people to be more assertive about what they want out of life.
However, by far the most common resolution among people is to try to improve their health, and especially their weight. I guarantee you that if you go to the gym in the weeks following January 1st, you'll find it beyond packed with tons of people who've decided they need to get in shape. Unfortunately, many of those people will stop after the first 10 days, but it's important to keep going if you really want to see results.
For Stanley Hollar from Indiana though, losing weight wasn't a matter of wanting to better himself for New Year's: it was after his doctors told him that if he didn't change his lifestyle, he'd be dead in three months...
Hollar had always had weight issues since he was a child, and the problem had only gotten worse after he'd had his leg amputated from an injury in 1996. As he explained to the Daily Mail:
"In February 2015, when I was at my heaviest and developing major medical issues and at the point of needing to change, the doctor said I needed to lose weight or I would be dead before my 40th birthday. Weight has always been an issue. I was large even as a young child, weighing nearly 100lbs when I was a five-year-old in kindergarten."
It was the conversation he had with his doctor that February that turned things around for Hollar:
"That did it. In the first year I shed 250lbs, half of which was through heavy diuretics where the doctors drained excess fluid and water and the other half was through regular light exercise," he said.
His transformation has been amazing to see, and he has several things to thank for it.
"I had bariatric surgery which started another rapid weight loss, and through that and starting to go to the gym I lost the rest of the weight to get to my current size. I now work out five days a week and try and go on walks at the weekend. Even when it's cold I improvise by doing laps round the table or through the house. My diet is also so much better."