By Dr. Brett Daniel

A goal without a plan is just a wish.
  — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I want to lose weight. I want to pay off my credit card debt. I want to quit smoking. I want to exercise more. 

Sound familiar? 

Chances are that these are at least a few of the New Year’s resolutions you or your friends have chosen to undertake this year. Maybe your resolution was produced on a whim or was a simple response to a common question during a New Year’s party. Or maybe it was a declaration of frustration from dealing with a daily reminder of your need to get out of debt or lose weight. 

Whatever the inspiration for your resolution, it is now yours to keep. Well, today you have less than a 30-percent chance of keeping that resolution past February. 

However, there are some simple ways to help you keep your resolution this year and toast to your success next year.

Set achievable goals

Most resolutions are too ambiguous: lose weight, pay off debt, exercise more. Others can be unrealistic. 

To be achieved, the goal has to be attainable and well-defined. Otherwise, there is no small measure of success, and failure is likely. Here are some alternatives.

Instead of “lose weight,” resolve to decrease caloric intake by cutting out dessert, switching from regular soda to diet soda or water, or not eating fast food for lunch. Choose one to start your year, and try to make all three permanent changes by the end of the year.

Instead of “pay off debt,” resolve to decrease your credit-card debt by switching to a bank debit card and only spending money that you have in your account, taking a sandwich and yogurt for lunch and spending the extra $5 per day toward your debt or making no major purchases for a car or extravagant vacation until your debt is paid off.

Instead of “exercise more,” resolve to improve your health by waking up a half-hour earlier to go for a walk or run before work, not using elevators for less than five floors or doing 20 push-ups and 50 sit-ups per day. Again, start with one resolution and build from there.

Find the time

The most common excuse that I have used and heard in regard to failing to keep a resolution is that there is just not enough time to get it done. To be successful with your resolution, you need to find the time. 

Evaluate how much time you spend on the computer, in front of the TV or working outside of the office, and dedicate some of that time to your health. 

Here are some ways to find the time in your day:

• Set your alarm clock so that you wake up 30 minutes earlier — If you get exercise done first thing in the morning, you won’t need to find the time when you are exhausted at the end of the day.

• Stay away from the television — You can browse through the news on-line quicker than watching it. Instead of watching Monday Night Football, listen to it on the radio for the first half as you go for a stroll.

• Spend less time on-line — Most Americans spend an average of three hours per day on-line or in chat rooms. Instead of surfing the Web at lunch, get out for a walk. Instead of hanging out in a chat room, get a running or walking group together to get out on the weekends.

• Take responsibility — It is easy to find reasons that you will not be able to achieve your goals. It is much more difficult to figure out ways to deal with those barriers. 

Sit down and come up with a list of potential roadblocks to your goal. Evaluate these barriers to your resolution, and try to come up with three things you can do to overcome each of these potential roadblocks to your goal. 

• Get a checkup — Your physician can be very helpful in helping you achieve your New Year’s resolution. He or she can make sure your body can handle the rigors that you plan to put it through over the next year. He or she can help you set reasonable weight-loss goals and work with you to find the best route for you to accomplish that weight loss. 

Whatever you choose to start or stop this year, I hope that this information will help get you started on your way to achieving your resolution for 2012. 

DR. BRETT DANIEL is a family-medicine physician at Pacific Medical Center. Pacific Medical Centers (www.PacMed.org) also has locations on Beacon Hill, First Hill and Northgate. He is also the “House Doc” for Seattle’s sports radio channel KJR 950 AM.

Rough week to be a Seahawk fromt he injury standpoint. But hey, they still have a shot at the playoffs... and worse draft picks. But that is for someone else to comment on.

Sidney RIce was moved to the IR after another concussion. Better safe than sorry with all of the money they had invested in him. Plus, everyone is different with a concussion. Look at Sidney Crosby, it took him several months before he was cleared to return to the ice. It happens. Rice has his whole life in front of him, and a few more years with the Seahawks. Hope things clear up for him OK and he will be have a productive career. The injuries are starting to add up for him though.

Russell Okung tore his pectoral and needed surgery to repair it. Bad news for an O-lineman. Tavaris Jackson can survive with an injured and weaker pectoral, offensive linemen need their pectoral to battle the defensive linemen. He should be healed up and regaining full strength by next season, but it just depends on his recovery.

The O-line for the Hawks really suffers in the long run because of the severe injuries to their young linemen this year (Carpenter's ACL, Moffitt's blown PCL and MCL, and now Okung). They all will have to spend a lot of time getting their strength back before they can regain their form and work on technique.

In regards to Moffitt being suspended, it sounds like he is on a stimulant for ADHD based on reports. This is not an uncommon drug for athletes, 5% of people in the U.S. have ADD or ADHD. It can really help people that suffer with problems focusing. For example, people that have a hard time with having to re-read things several times because of their mind wandering, completing or turning in assignments on time, or just being able to stay on task without their mind wandering in an amazing number of ways, can really see benefit in the medications. However, the medications do have side effects and are controlled substances, so John messed up by not reporting it to the league... if it was prescribed for him. If he borrowed the medication (Adderall and Ritalin are common ones) from someone else (very common on college campuses these days), then I guess he got caught doing so.

It is going to be really interesting to see how the O-line gels next year with all of these injuries.

Lots of knee injuries have popped up, so I thought I would give a little information to help you understand all of those three letter abbreviations that you hear about on the radio.

Rookie tackle, James Carpenter, suffered a torn ACL in practice this week. We have all heard of an ACL injury before. It stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament. It starts in the back of your upper leg bone at the knee, then crosses to the upper front of the lower leg bone of the knee. It provides most of the core stabilization in the knee. This ligament usually tears when the lower leg bone is forced out quickly and snaps the ligament. Once torn in a football player, it usually requires surgery to repair it and means 6-7 months of rehab before returning. Sometimes it will take longer than that to regain all of the normal strength and explosion in the knee though.

Rookie guard, John Moffitt, suffered an injury to his PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) and his MCL (medial collateral ligament). Ouch. Tearing the PCL completely is unusual. The PCL keeps your knee from hyperextending. The MCL is on the inside of the knee and keeps it from opening up with outside force. It sounds like he completely tore both, so he is going to require a period of time for his MCL to heal before they go in and fix his PCL. He is going to take 6-12 months to recover from surgery and be cleared to play again. He too may need more time to completely regain his strength after that, though.

Keith Price also has a knee injury, but his ligaments are not torn completely. He probably has a mild sprain/tear of one or more of the ligaments that is causing some swelling and pain. He should be able to come back when the swelling goes down and he is not in much pain.

We usually grade ligament injuries as Grade 1, 2 or 3.

Grade 1 is mild tearing/sprain that usually recovers quickly, but depends on which ligament. You can have swelling and pain that require icing, bracing and anti-inflammatories.

Grade 2 injuries or medium tears/sprains that require a longer period before return to activity and are more painful.

Grade 3 injuries are complete tears and need surgery if it is the ACL or PCL, but may just need time and bracing if it is the MCL or LCL(Lateral Collateral Ligament on the outside of the knee).

Keep those knees healthy everyone!

Here is a picture of a right knee as if you were looking at someone to understand where all of these ligaments are in the knee:

Marcus Trufant is done for the year due to an underlying back issue, which sounds related to a similar issue in 2009. Not good for a 30yo CB to miss two seasons due to back issues. My best guess is that he has some significant "wear and tear" type of disk loss in his spine. He may even have an old back injury which has caused some mild slippage in two of the vertebra, and that sets him up for problems as well.

The hope is that he will have a good recovery with targeted therapy to restrengthen and offload some of the pressure on the area of concern. He will probably receive some injections for pain and irritation as well. I would not be surprised if he needed surgery at some point in his life if he is having all of these problems already.

He may be able to make it back next season, but he is going to be at significant risk of re-injury at this point based on his recent history. We will hope for the best for him.

Here are some photos to help understand some of the problems that can occur in the back as we age: (of note, think of a herniated disc like the inside of a jelly donut squishing out and causing nerve issues. A bulging disc is more like the intact dough part being compressed and bulging)

And here is an example of a spondylolisthesis which occurs in younger athletes.

It was a hard week for pectoral muscles in the NFL. Mario WIlliams in Houston fully tore his pectoral muscle and is done for the year since he will require surgery. Here in Seattle, Tavaris Jackson suffered a high-grade strain of his pectoral in his right chest when he got hit during a run play.

How long will Tavaris be out? Since his MRI "showed some stuff" according to Pete Carroll, I can only assume that means that he had some significant tearing and bleeding seen on his MRI. This would be consistent with a high grade strain. In the throwing motion, you do use your pectoral muscle to help generate force as you bring your arm forward. So, with a high-grade strain I suspect he may be at risk of not making it back after the bye week. If he rushes it and let's say his arm gets jammed during a throw, he may re-injure it, or even tear it completely, and be out an even longer period.

My best guess is that he takes the week off from throwing, does some therapy, and then tries to start throwing and progresses from there. Two weeks is optimistic, but he might make it back if all goes well.

Here is some more info on pec strains and tears for your learning enjoyment. Not a website I usually use, but this one seemed pretty informative.
http://www.coreperformance.com/knowledge/injury-pain/pectoralis-muscle-strain.html