Tips For New Year’s Resolution Goals

Tips for New Years Resolution Goals:

1. SMART Goals and overall planning – Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timeline. Too often we set ourselves a hard due date to meet said expectations. This causes undue stress and often leads to undesirable motivational loss. A good example of a smart goal would be to say go to the gym x amount of times per week over a set length of time vs expected weight loss in the said time frame that has an outcome that might be out of your control.

2. Having a strong support network - Whether it is a gym buddy, trainer and or a class with regulars that you frequently visit and have built a relationship with. This will hold you accountable and also create a community that will provide the support needed when you’re having those harder days in finding motivation to continue to move.

3. The pacing between diet and exercise is something people often get wrong - The frequency and intensity to your gym routine and diet plan can be escalated as you progress weekly. It is not realistic to eat chicken salad three times a day and go to the gym every day of the week. Rest and recovery is when the body will see results faster than if you burn out in two weeks with plausible injury. A suggestion would be to eat ‘clean’ and exercise 3-5x a week. That is a bit more than half the working week where you can also concentrate on other chores and tasks without being overwhelmed.

4. Realistic goals is something in the ball park of 1-3lb of weight loss per week - More than that is
often water retention or loss.  1lb of fat is 3,500 calories, if a person is to exercise 300 calories a day and
reduce their portions another 200 calories; that is 500 calories multiplied by 3-4 days a week. You would have lost 2,000 calories and that is a little more than half a pound loss in the week. You can see how this is a journey and not a sprint in that even if a person was to be perfect in their routine, the expected loss would still be about a pound lost.

Tips sourced from : https://www.active.com/fitness/articles/5-tips-to-achieve-your-new-year-s-fitness-goals