How to Get Back On Track with Your Fitness and Health Goals – New Year’s Resolution Revisited

Just like most people, you made some New Year’s resolutions. And, sadly, just like most people, you gave up on that or at least are not doing what you should to achieve it. Here are a few tips on how to get back on track with your goals from when the year started.

“New year, new me.” Have you said that before? And did you follow through? New Year’s resolutions are somewhat difficult to accomplish and there are different reasons for that.

Source: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels

Many of us decide that the new year will be a healthier one, eating cleaner and doing more exercises to be fitter. Why such a promise is so hard to keep?

Not only we will talk about that, but more importantly, we will discuss below how to get back on track with those promises and how to make the year look like you didn’t completely give up on your goals, but strived to be a better version of yourself.

Why Is It So Difficult to Keep New Year’s Resolution

Have you ever thought why is it so difficult to maintain a promise you made at the turn of the year?

The main reason is connected with the saying “new year, new me.” Think about how much pressure that is on someone, that you need to completely change yourself for the next year.

Health-related, new year’s resolutions are usually bound by eating healthier and doing more exercises which might sound easy, but many people fail. Why is that?

Well, one year is one long process. Many people see it as a gigantic task to change their eating habits and move more often for 365 days. And once you slip once, you don’t feel as bad if you slip again the next time, and once you know you have forgotten about your goals and turned back to your older self.

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION GOALS SHOULD BE LOOKED WITH AN END IN SIGHT, NOT SOMETHING YOU WILL MAINTAIN RELIGIOUSLY FOR 365 DAYS.

Another reason why it’s so difficult to keep these promises is that you know what you want, but haven’t found out why you want it, which is a powerful tool when things get difficult. For example, why do you want to lose weight? Perhaps because you want to play football with your children without having to take a break every 5 minutes, or because your blood pressure is high. Find your why.

How to Get Back On Track with Your Fitness and Health Goals

So, how to get back on track with your fitness and health goals if it’s been a while since you set them and think it is not possible to accomplish them?

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Although we will be speaking primarily about fitness and health goals, this can be helpful to any promise and goal you set out to beat. Here is how you get back on track with your fitness and health goals.

1. Be Specific

Do you want to lose weight? Ok, that is your goal. Do you know why you want to lose weight? Perfect, then you have the incentive to do it.

But still, losing weight is too general. If you chose to eat healthier, it is also too generic of a goal. Perhaps the best thing for you to do is to be more specific about your goals.

• Instead of “lose weight,” set out to “lose 5 pounds in one month”
• Instead of “eating healthier,” aim to “eat a plate of vegetables half an hour before lunch”

You see how these goals are much more specific and easier to be accounted for? At the end of one month, you will know if you reached your goal or not and then can look back and how you can improve for the following month.

If you didn’t eat a plate of vegetables before lunch in the past week, you will know you failed your goal once, or twice, or however many times it happened. But keep in mind why you want to lose weight and use that to fuel your drive to keep going.

Read More: Do You Have an Unhealthy Relationship with Food?

2. One Step Back Is Not A Failure

From the example above, if you didn’t eat a salad before lunch twice in the past week, that doesn’t mean you should stop aiming to accomplish your goal any longer.

Failing a couple of times to do exactly what you want is only human. The important thing is to keep focused on your goal and forget about the mistakes in the past and keep doing it in the future and every time you can.

3. Trust the Process

A number on the scale doesn’t mean you are heavier now than before. There could be a lot of reasons for your weight to go up from one day to the next: water retention, hormones, the time of the day you weighed yourself, and more.

The same can be said about getting stronger. Just because you didn’t lift as heavy today as you did yesterday, it doesn’t mean you are getting weaker, but maybe your body is still getting used to all these new workouts you are doing.

Trust the process, and let your body adapt to work towards your goal every day. There will be ups and downs, but you will see the results if you are consistent.

4. Be Consistent

Source: Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels

This is the biggest hurdle and the most appropriate answer to understand how to get back on track with your fitness and health goals. Be consistent.

It is only through consistency that you will see results that last longer. Of course, a crash diet can help you lose 5 pounds of weight in one month if you were eating junk food every week and all of a sudden stop. But once you stop the diet and get back to your old self, that unwanted weight will crawl back into your body.

This doesn’t mean you should keep lifting the barbell days on end, but rather that small improvements add up over time.

long term is key!

• Make a schedule and stick to it
• Start slow if you are just getting back to being active
• Only compensate for one missed day of workout if you know you can continue with your schedule later – don’t sacrifice tomorrow’s goal for the one you lost yesterday
• Use apps to keep track of everything you are doing
• Try something new – this can inject an extra shot of desire
• Celebrate small victories – if you managed to stick to your goals this week, give yourself a relaxing massage or go to the sauna, or do something you love and be in the moment
• Get a personal trainer/nutritionist if you can afford/have to
• Enjoy the process – this is your own body transformation we are talking about

One thing that can help is to take photos of before and after to see the results right in front of your eyes. It can’t get more exciting than this when you see for yourself what you have been able to accomplish already.

5. Tell Someone About Your Goals

Telling someone your objectives is a great way to get back on track with your fitness and health goals.

I did this when I sat out to do the Volumetrics Diet for 30 days to see the results. I also took photos of before and after (see below) and it was incredible.

Source: Robert Born

But the biggest part of being able to keep on track was that people around me were aware of my fitness goals. Of course, it helped that I was doing this for work, but still.

Tell someone, a family member, partner or colleague you see at work every weekday.

Chances are, they will remind you of your goals and be on top of you when you slip up. Even better, they might stop annoying you about drinking beer late at night when they know that alcohol is detrimental to your goals.

Telling someone goes a long way!

6. Rethink Your Plans

Brazilian songwriter Gabriel, o Pensador once said “if you can look back, no street is a dead end.” And we can apply that mentality to understanding how to get back on track with your fitness and health goals.

If it is too big for you to accomplish, if you keep failing on the tasks you gave yourself, then stop what you are doing and start new and fresh. Make a new goal for yourself, something more attainable that will still get you closer to your previous goal, but not necessarily reach it.

Starting new is not a failure, but rather a knowledge that you were trying to do a step bigger than what your legs allow you to. By breaking down your ultimate goal into smaller ones, you might even accomplish that big goal this year still, so long as you are consistent and don’t cheat yourself out.

Read More: 7 Helpful Steps to Lose Weight