Join the likes of Michelle Obama and the The Biggest Loser contestants and jump on board the express route to a healthy lifestyle.

Now that you've moved past the ‘party season' and into the heart of 2010, your New Year's resolutions are probably proving harder and harder to maintain and you may be starting to struggle to stay committed. Implementing lifestyle change is difficult - and often even harder to maintain for long enough to achieve the desired results.

There's been a good deal of media attention around ‘healthy lifestyles' recently. Michelle Obama has launched the ‘Let's Move' American campaign focusing on childhood obesity; soft drinks are being targeted by all the major media outlets for their effects on obesity, heart disease and now cancer. On home soil, the Biggest Loser Australia competition is in full swing for another season.

What appears to be consistent across all of these topics is that people are becoming increasingly aware of what is good and bad for them. The question now becomes how much of everything is too much or not enough? There is no clear answer to this question and there may never be for each individual but I would like to suggest a strategy to assist in your efforts for maintaining your healthy start to 2010.

Change is only really effective if it's sustainable. When you think about changing a part of your lifestyle ask yourself initially, ‘Can I sustain this long term?'. If the answer is ‘no' then the likelihood of that change being effective is decreased.

On top of this, start thinking of yourself as an elite athlete and when making lifestyle choices question whether it will affect your performance. Performance is not just in reference to the physical but all the factors that combine to ensure you are operating at optimal health. So your lifestyle changes should consider factors such as exercise levels, daily activity, nutrition, sleep and recovery, emotional issues, relationships with others and overall health and quality of life.

By thinking of yourself as an elite athlete and only implementing change which is sustainable you'll achieve a much more objective approach to managing your health. Your body will become something that you fuel and train to live at your best for the long term. Diets, fads and resolutions will come and go, but the future ‘you' will be a summary of your actions. Choose the actions you know will make you prosper with longevity, not the ones that shine brightly for a few seconds and then fade into your past.

Jarrat Wood is a personal trainer and the gym manager at Regenesis Fitness in Edgecliff, Sydney.

Bella Beauty Magazine #18