5 Reasons Why Most Fail Their Fitness New Years Resolutions
Welcome to 2022.
A new year of possibilities and opportunities.
A new year of improving our mental health and wellbeing.
We all want to make some big changes in our lives and are completely excited about it… but sometimes, it’s only a matter of time until some setback happens.
And some of us quit when it gets tough.
Do you ever wonder why some of our New Years Resolutions fail?
There are a few reasons.
In this post, we are going to cover 5 reasons why most people fail their New Years Resolutions.
Let’s dive in!
For a primer to this post, you can watch our YouTube video on some reasons why most fail their New Years Resolutions below:
I. We Go Too Hard, Too Fast.
Some of us go too hard and too fast with our New Years Resolution goals.
We go on extreme diets that can be very difficult or very hard to sustain.
If you want to lose 15lbs, it’s important to understand that if you want to make it sustainable, you need to make adjustments to your lifestyle that are sustainable.
Crash diets are not sustainable, and they’re quite often a short-term solution for a problem you want to take care of for the long term.
What we propose is simple: small steps will help you succeed. Here are some suggestions to start:
- Look at your patterns. Do you tend to emotionally eat in the evening? How much junk food do you have in your house and is it easily accessible? Do you consistently exercise or find yourself skipping days regularly??
- If there’s a pattern you’re unhappy about, be aware of the triggers that set that pattern off. If you know that if you buy Oreos you eat all of them… don’t buy them or buy one of those small snack size ones. Just ONE.
- Don’t be obsessed. No bullseye is needed, you just need to be in the general ballpark of the bullseye. Good consistent eating or exercise habits 80% of the time lead to the transformation you desire.
- Schedule your indulgence meal. Schedule 1–2 meals a week that you will indulge.
- Set the foundation, then micro-adjust. When you start building consistency around eating or exercise habits, then you can adjust accordingly. Maybe add an extra exercise or workout session. Maybe modify one of your less healthy meals into a more healthy one.
II. Our Goals Are Not Specific Enough.
A third reason why some people fail their New Years Resolutions is that their goals are not specific enough.
Let’s say we want to lose 15lbs in 3 months.
How will we get there?
What types of steps will monitor our progress?
What adjustments will we make if we don’t make progress?
It’s important to create an action plan on how to reach your goals. Think about the following:
- What are some things you need to know (or skills you need to develop) to reach your goals? For nutrition, it could be something like learning what are protein-rich foods and carb-rich foods. For exercise, it could be something like you watching videos on how to do specific exercises.
- What weekly actions will you take to reach your goals? This could be scheduling your workouts, planning your meals, or preparing healthy recipes in advance.
- What daily actions will you take to reach your goals? This will be things like drinking your water daily, eating your fruits & veggies, getting your protein in, and more.
Planning this out makes it much clearer for you to reach your goals.
III. We Learn, But Don’t Implement.
We can learn as much as we can about fitness stuff on the internet, but this knowledge is useless without implementation.
Implementation is super important because we get to see what actually works best for us.
What we propose here is to just do SOMETHING. Even if it’s not perfect, that’s ok. Your body needs to get used to exercising, eating certain foods, and more.
If you need help with something, don’t hesitate to ask people in your gym or environment.
If you ever need workout or nutrition advice, head on over to our facebook group. We enjoy providing feedback or advice on exercise form.
We got your back!
IV. We Don’t Track Progress Beyond The Scale.
Some of us will track progress on the scale, looking at a number that fluctuates based on stress, hormones, sodium intake, and more.
You NEED to track other factors that go BEYOND the scale.
What we propose is finding a few things to track that show you’re making some progress. If you don’t know what to expect yet, here are some you could pick that may help:
- Progress Photos. These are 1000x better than standing on a scale. Take progress photos every 2–4 weeks. These will determine whether or not you’re making big progress.
- Stress Levels. Higher levels of stress may mean a lot of things. If you’re going for weight loss and you eat too few calories or food, your stress levels will be impacted negatively.
- Quality of Sleep. Poor sleep may negatively impact your goals. Sometimes eating too little food impedes the quality of sleep.
- Energy Levels. You want to make sure you’ve got the energy to spare for other parts of your day.
- The severity of Hunger. If you’re ravenously hungry, you might want to eat a little more food.
- Exercise Performance. If your exercise performance is improving, that’s a good sign.
V. We Have No Accountability.
A 5th and final reason why most people fail their New Years Resolutions is that we don’t have people or communities that hold us accountable for our success.
We need accountability partners who monitor our progress, like personal trainers, coaches, or even groups we can surround ourselves around.
These groups or coaches do not have to be local; they can be online groups or coaches as well.
As I mentioned previously, you can join our Facebook Group where we exercise our way out of depression. We love holding you all accountable in there!
Changing Your Behavior
As you can see, the reasons why most people fail are things that we have some amount of control over.
One of the most important factors is adherence. If we can’t stick to our diets, then there is something wrong.
Maybe the calories are too low or we eat too little.
Maybe we sleep poorly.
Maybe we hate the style of exercise that we are doing.
Maybe we don’t have an accountability piece to our journey.
It is super important to know where you’re deficient and focus on rectifying it.
I want to thank you for reading this post. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at support@reforgedperformance.com or message us on Instagram.
For the rest of the month we will focus on adherence and momentum, so stick around for future posts!
Until next time!
