Here we are the beginning of a new year. Every January comes with a sense of renewal for many people. A common theme among individuals is to create a resolution involving things they would like to change or achieve in the coming 365 days.
One of the more prevalent resolutions involves fitness. Whether it be to simply improve overall physical appearance, get healthier or maybe just become stronger, a vast amount of people base their resolutions around some facet of physical fitness.
Unfortunately, the majority of New Year’s resolutions fail. The fiery motivation felt in late December to mid January begins to wane and by February, people find themselves at the same place they were the year before.
Fitness goals are notoriously prone to not being fulfilled. If you’ve ever spent much time in a gym, you know the routine. For the entire month of January, there is often a line at every piece of equipment in the building. The local fitness facility begins to resemble Times Square.
Advertisements flood the media with discount gym membership rates, dietary supplements and all sorts of shiny new pieces of equipment promising to transform your body in a short amount of time.
In this article, we are going to break down a few tips that will hopefully allow you to fulfill your fitness goals for the New Year. If you can set yourself apart from the statistics, you will undoubtedly thank yourself next December when you are reveling in your progress while others are starting the typical, “maybe next year” routine!
Keep Things Simple
When embarking on a new fitness journey, it is so easy to become overwhelmed. Contemplating which workout routine to start, what foods to eat, even the outfit to wear to the gym can get in the way of your overall goal. Fitness, as well as life in general, is best kept simple.
The best workout routine is the one you will stick to, period. Similarly, your nutrition should not be rocket science. You know what foods are good for you and what is junk. The biggest determining factor pertaining to your success in fitness is consistency.
Set Reasonable Goals
The media does a remarkable job of making drastic body transformations seem like an overnight process. We are constantly bombarded with images and television commercials promising that if you buy their equipment or take a certain supplement, you will look identical to the models used to promote these products.
Even more comical is the time frames reported by these advertisements. How many times have you heard, “In just 15 minutes per day, 3 times per week, you will finally have those six-pack abs?” This is all nonsense, as physical changes to your physique do not work this way.
Fitness is about the long game. As you begin your journey, it is critical to realize that while you WILL see progress, it doesn’t happen overnight. Therefore, instead of planning on going to the gym 7 days per week and eating nothing but rice and chicken from a Tupperware container, set goals that you can stick to.
Start small, like holding yourself accountable to 3 workouts per week and avoiding your favorite late-night junk food.
Develop A Strong “Why”
As we have already discussed, fitness is about consistency. Remember this, the incredible sense of motivation and enthusiasm you feel at the start WILL come and go. If your only goal to work out is to “look better,” there are going to be a lot of days in which that is simply not enough.
If you are going to stick to your fitness goals this year, developing a reason why that is strong enough to stick it out when the motivation cools off, the excitement isn’t there and you’d much rather stay in and watch television instead is MANDATORY.
Your “why” has to be unique to you. Find whatever that is and use it to push through the hard days!
If you would like a little help reaching your goals, please reach out to me and lets set something up.