The Secret Approach to ACTUALLY Achieving Your New Year Health and Fitness Goals
The new year is here! Are you feeling motivated and inspired to take on the New Year with some exhilarating health and fitness goals?! Or perhaps quite the opposite..? Maybe you are feeling demotivated and sick of hearing about everyone’s goals. Perhaps this feeling is coming from the disbelief of previous unattained New Year resolutions?
Believe it or not, you’re not the only one. It’s extremely common for many of us to start the year with strong intentions of achieving our New Year goals, then fall off the wagon weeks later. I see this trend happen year after year - gyms get packed out and classes fill up in January… then a sudden drop by the time February rolls around.
Why does this happen and how can we change these results?
What tends to happen is that people start the year strong. Maybe too damn strong, by diving into fad diets and drastic intense exercise regimes that promise quick results. I call this type of person the 0-100 goal getter. They go from one extreme to another with a drastic tunnel vision approach that results in very little, life balance or enjoyment.
The 0-100 goal getter wants to achieve quick results, however sooner or later, depending on their discipline and motivation, it becomes too much of an overload and the mind and body starts to crash. The 0-100 goal getter typically gets frustrated, eventually giving up and…. BOOM... back to square one (the relapse).
This style of goal getting does not achieve long term results, as the lifestyle change is too drastic, too soon and not sustainable. This is not the way to create a lifelong change. Only short term results. It is not a maintainable lifestyle and so begins the cyclic behaviour (and results) – weight loss, weight gain, weight loss, weight gain, motivated, defeated, motivated, defeated again and so on… You will not receive different results by repeating the same method of goal getting. You will tire quickly and may start to give up and not believe your goals are possible.
So how do we cultivate these long-term results? Don’t worry, I got you!
We can start by changing our mindset and approach. The secret and key to reaching your health and fitness goals and MAINTAINING them is through gradual healthy lifestyle changes and consistency!
Gradual healthy lifestyle changes? That’s it? Yes, it can be as simple as creating small changes everyday. The aim is to stay in the maintenance phase of behaviour change, to sustain new lifestyle habits, that you created!
“We can start by changing our mindset and approach”
The Maintenance Phase:
You have achieved that goal and now you must continue to work to keep it. This phase is often forgotten or overlooked. For example, you have achieved that goal of losing 10 percent body fat, by training 4-5 times a week. To continue to stay at and maintain that percentage of body fat, you must continue the same behaviours and lifestyle at which you achieved that goal.
The Gradual Approach:
I preach and coach my clients to live a healthier and happier lifestyle by building new habits and gradually working on them, one at a time. I like to emphasis the basics such as learning how to prepare healthy food for yourself, moving daily and getting quality sleep for your needs.
Fall in love with the process of developing a healthy life and how it makes you feel from the inside out. That’s how you create the new you!
“Fall in love with the process”
During the process of creating new lifestyle changes, acknowledge your social, environmental and cultural influences. We are all different and there is no single solution for everyone. Relapse is inevitable, you learn from trial and error, identifying barriers and developing coping strategies to overcome challenges. Learn from these experiences, keep exploring different methods that work for you and stay motivated.
DO NOT GIVE UP.
I want to know about your New Year goals.
Citations: (The stages of change Model is an integrative, biopsychosocial model to conceptualize the process of intentional behavior change). The Transtheoretical Model (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983; Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992)