New Year Fitness Goals and Advice That Works

New Year’s resolutions often include fitness goals that incorporate healthy eating and exercise. Sadly, many people give up their resolutions after just two or three months. If this sounds like you, choose this year to be different. It can be a struggle for anyone to begin their fitness journey and stick with it, so the more tools you have at your disposal, the higher your chance for success.

Here are some tips and advice on what works to help you achieve your fitness goals this year.

Get Excited!

Getting excited can help you set yourself up for success. First, define your fitness goals. In other words, what would you like to accomplish? Some ideas might include:

· Winning a virtual race or competition

· Lose weight or lower body fat

· Gain energy so you can play more with your kids

· Increase muscle strength to improve sports performance

· Increase your physical fitness to increase mental fitness

Each of these is a valid fitness goal and thinking about what you desire can help you better achieve it. If you want to win a race, for example, envision the thrill of winning the race.

Feel the excitement as your friends and family congratulate you. If you want to lose weight, feel yourself thinner and visualize yourself wearing the clothes you desire. If your goal is to become a better skier, try to feel what it would be like to feel stronger as you ski. Get excited as you see yourself skiing faster or performing jumps.

We all have our personal reasons why we want to embark on our fitness journey. Visualizing these goals every day can help us get excited and remember why we are doing what we do.

Keep yourself excited by posting pictures of your desire, like people winning races or a future event you’d like to attend when you feel healthy and more confident. And then get even more excited as you prepare yourself for success. This brings us to our next bit of advice...

Prepare Yourself with Anything You Need

This means to obtain all the items you will need to get the most out of any workout that you do. As you picture yourself reaching your goals, see what you are holding or wearing and do your best to get it.

You don’t have to break the bank, for many items can be found at bargain stores or online.

You may need new clothes to make sure you have something to wear during training, especially if you train outside of the house. If you workout outside of the house, you may need a water bottle or an armband to hold your phone for music. If you need colorful weights for motivation or a workout waistband to keep your back straight, then obtain those items if you need them.

Find whatever you need to keep you motivated, and don’t forget to keep visualizing so you remain excited. And, if you cannot afford everything you desire at once, try the next bit of advice.

Set Goals and Reward Yourself

Giving yourself small incentives along the way is a fun way to remain motivated. Try mapping out your goals and what you will give yourself as a reward. For example, after working out for 12 of the next 14 days, you may reward yourself with a new workout shirt or water bottle. If you do endurance exercise, reward yourself with a fun fitness app when you reach a desired daily distance, or you increase your daily time.

Or use a fitness app that rewards you after you reach certain goals like Yes.Fit. And be sure to use rewards that will contribute to keeping you even more motivated and moving forward on your fitness journey.

Plan Your New Year and Post-it

Planning your workout days and times is best done when it is posted where you can see it. These days, it’s easy to forgo a workout as people get overly consumed with work or other obligations.

To counter this, write out your exercise plan on a large calendar or dry erase board for a visual reminder. Using a schedule has proven successful in many ways:

· A calendar acts as a visual reminder

· It will help you stay on track

· You can use it to continually update your workout, and changing your workout is a great motivator

· A calendar plan can be used to help you begin your workout, if you haven’t yet, because when you see what you are supposed to do and when you are more likely to stick with it

Keep Track of Your Fitness Journey

Use a notebook or whatever makes it convenient for you to write down your daily activities like exercise and meals. Keep track of your work out, what exercises you did, and how you felt, both physically and mentally. Write down what you eat and how you felt afterward.

Don’t be shy and include the “bad” stuff, like desserts or days you didn’t work out. Keep track so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

When motivation truly wanes after a month or so, your journal is a helpful tool to see how far you have come and the positive changes you have made. Many people are surprised to read their writings from a month ago as they realize they have accomplished more than they thought.

And this can lead to even greater motivation to stick with your New Year’s resolutions!

Keep it Fresh

Boredom is one excuse used to give up on working out, while some people begin to find “better” things to do. But if you keep it fresh with new and interesting ways to stay fit, you can avoid this trap and keep yourself motivated to follow through on your fitness goals. And there are many ways to do this, for example:

· If you jog outside, use a fitness app to get chased by zombies or explore Italy

· If you jog inside, go outside to the local trails for a change

· If you do a strength training workout at the gym, change it for a couple of weeks by going to a HIIT class, instead

· If you get bored with stretching after your exercise, then only stretch for five minutes, but take a yoga or stretch class (online or at the gym)

· Put aside your entire workout routine for a couple of weeks and replace it with a sport like cross country skiing, swimming or racquetball for three to four days of each of those weeks

No matter what you do, there are substitutions and lots of them. From incorporating sports, or Yes.Fit, to doing just about any workout online or outside that you desire, you can keep your workout fresh and keep yourself mentally motivated. And don’t forget to keep visualizing so you remember why you embarked on your fitness journey, to begin with.

Need some extra motivation all year long join The Forrest Gump Virtual race* How Far Can You Go Challenge, and start logging miles 01/01/2022! Sign up ends April 1, 2022.