3 essential tips to kick start your new year health & fitness goals
It’s January 1 and you know what that means – time to turn over a new leaf and make this YOUR year. For many of us, a major new year’s resolution is to look after ourselves and improve our health and fitness.
But as lovely as that sounds, we’re only human, and the occasional slip-up (or, let’s face it, total derailment) is completely normal. So it’s time to stop being so hard on yourself and kickstart your year’s health goals in a positive and mindful way.
Here are three essential tips to ensure you make a realistic plan and stick to it this year.
1. Get organised
Before you lace up those sneakers or pick up those weights you need to define your goals. Do you want to lose weight? Gain muscle? Tone up? Or simply become a healthier, happier you? Grab a notebook and put all your thoughts into writing – just make sure you keep your expectations and your timeline realistic. If you do fall off the wagon, don’t do what many before you have done (i.e. give up). Jump back on, acknowledge your mistake, learn from it and move forward.
2. Start small
If you go into any health journey expecting instant results, you’re going to be disappointed and much more likely to fail. Especially when it comes to fitness, if you do too much too fast, you’ll only end up hurting yourself, putting a huge dent in your progress and crushing your motivation. The same can be said for food – if you halve the number of kilojoules you eat each day, you’re going to struggle massively. When it comes to your health, slow and steady really does win the race.
3. Don’t get swept up in trends and fads
Forget the paleo diet, weight loss supplements and detoxes and stick to the basics – calories in vs. calories out. Download a food diary app like MyFitnessPal (free on iOS and Android) and let it do all the hard work for you. All you need to do to start is enter your height, weight and goals and it’ll tell you how many calories (and how much fat, protein and carbs) you should be eating. From there, just enter the foods (and drinks) you consume each day – it’s a fantastic way to hold yourself accountable for what you put in your body. If you stick to it and update your stats regularly, you’ll start seeing results.
Tell us in the comments below, have you ever stuck to a new year’s health resolution? What advice would you share with others about to begin their journey?