While New Year resolutions and goals are both a great tool to use for your health journey, you need to carefully consider your goals. Here are 2 questions you can ask yourself to make sure these goals don't get lost in the shuffle in the first few weeks of the year.
1. Is the goal feasible with my current life season
If you are a Mom of little ones that works full time then it is probably not feasible for you to make a goal that requires that you go and spend 1-2 hours in a gym 5 days a week and eat only 1200 calories a day. That just is not something that you are going to be able to do at this season in your life. It is totally unrealistic. Something like, I am going to do some sort of body movement for at least 30 minutes per day. Not necessarily consecutive minutes, but 30 minutes total per day. And I will drink at least 80 ounces of water a day and eat at least 120 grams of protein per day. These are much easier goals to actually achieve.
2. Is the goal something I can tangibly measure
Working out in the gym for 1-2 hours everyday is tangible, but it is not a great goal, because you can't measure it. You can check it off of a list, but you cant measure it. Something better would be, I want to go down 1-2 jeans sizes this year, or I want to go down 5% in my body fat percentage this year. You don't want to use scale weight as a goal. Especially if you are strength training. If you are not strength training, then you should be, but that is another blog post. Another great goal is strength goals. I want to add 30 pounds to my squat PR this year is a great example.
3. How am I going to achieve my goal
It is important to have a plan to achieve your goal. If your goal is to lose body fat, for example, how do you plan to do that? You need first to know that in order to lose body fat, you must be in a calorie deficit, or at the very least, calorie maintenance with some heavy strength training. How are you going to achieve the calorie deficit? You will need to know what your maintenance calories are. You will also need to know how much you need to burn during the day. This is where a health and fitness professional comes in handy! Sure, you can probably research it yourself, but why not someone who has already done all the research and can help you pinpoint where you need to start. The key is, you have to have a plan to follow.
So, before you dive head first into the New Year Resolution pool, make sure you think about your goals and set some goals you can actually achieve. If you set unrealistic goals, you set yourself up for failure and then the roller coaster continues and you are right back where you started. Trust me, I know this story all too well. Ive been there, over and over and over again.
This year, I have strength goals. I am not trying to lose body fat anymore, Im just trying to get STRONG!! I will probably lose some body fat in the process, but that isn't my goal this year. The truth is, the more lean muscle mass you have, the more you burn in a day and the easier it is to be in a calorie deficit. I will be cycling between maintenance calories and a slight surplus this year while lifting heavy to increase strength and muscle mass. I have some pretty lofty PR goals for my compound lifts and I am excited about it. I have 4 programs on board for this year that I will be doing to achieve my PRs in December. I can't wait to crush them!!
Happy New Year to you all! I hope you crush all of your goals in 2021! If you need some help in determining your goals and how to achieve them, I would love to help you! Just email me at vibrantfitnessco@gmail.com
Now let's go get after it!!
Vi