Your New Year Fitness Goals Can Begin in August!
There is a strange phenomenon that occurs every year just before the New Year. All of a sudden, everyone and their grandmother decide that they’re going to get fit and healthy and transform their life.
The fact that they were consuming junk food the entire year and the most exercise they got daily was reaching for the TV remote seems to escape them. These habits that have governed their lives, for the most part, are given scant regard… because it’s a NEW YEAR.
That means it’s a new beginning… and a new life awaits them. Right?
Wrong. The road to good health and fitness is littered with the carcasses of those who tried with the best intentions and failed a few weeks into their journey
Age is just a number
You may have heard the saying, “Age is just a number.” Well, in the same vein, 1st January is just a date too. It’s no different from August 17 or October 27.
The date you decide to turn your life around has no effect on the chances of you attaining your goals. Step into any gym in January and you’ll see it packed to the brim. Step into the same gym in March and it’ll be a ghost town.
What happened?
Simple. Reality happened.
You start with a clean slate every day
The truth of the matter is that you are given a clean slate every single day. It doesn’t matter whether it’s New Year’s Day or any other day. What matters is that you make the best of it.
If you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, and you gave up in February, guess what? All hope is NOT lost.
You can start all over again right now. You have a clean slate every day. Even if you started in August, if you stay on course, you’d lose quite a bit of weight, boost your stamina, and increase your strength – if you were on a clean diet and trained daily.
You won’t need to make a New Year's resolution to lose weight again. It’s done and dusted. You’ve achieved your goal.
Focus on increasing the effort, not decreasing the goal
Very often, when people do not attain their goals, they decrease the goals. For example, if they decided to lose 20 pounds and they only managed to lose 3 pounds after one month, they quit and settle for what they got.
You should always focus on increasing the effort. But what if you’re giving your best efforts and the results are still abysmal?
The answer is simple but often overlooked. You just need more time. The more time you give yourself to attain your goal, the cumulative effort expended will be much greater.
All things held constant, if you’re on track with your diet and training, your efforts multiplied will get you to your goal. Even if you started in March and achieved your goal in September, instead of June like you were hoping for – it doesn’t matter. You STILL succeeded.
Give yourself time so that your sweat equity is higher.
Self-discipline is more important than motivation
One reason why most people make resolutions and set goals during New Year’s Day is that they feel motivated and inspired. They believe that since it’s a new year, they’re going to have a new life.
This almost NEVER happens because to get a new life, you’ll need to make massive changes to your current mindset and lifestyle. Motivation and inspiration fade very quickly.
Once that happens, you’ll need the self-discipline to carry you through. You’ll find out that there will be days when you just want to quit your diet which is getting on your nerves. There will be days when you want to skip your workouts because they’re such an arduous grind.
You’ll discover that these days often outnumber the days when you feel motivated or inspired to do your best. It’s at times like these when you must exercise self-discipline to stay on track to meet your goals.
The term ‘self-discipline’ almost sounds like a dirty word to those who are used to giving in to their temptations and living life doing whatever they want to do, instead of whatever they need to do.
They fail to realize that no matter how ambitious they feel or how inspired they get on New Year’s Day, without self-discipline, they’ll be back to square one by February 10th with all their bad habits and actions that lead them nowhere.
You decide when your goal begins and ends
Finally, your goal starts when you decide it starts. You do not need to wait for any day that sounds good. You don’t need a New Year’s Day or a Monday or a start of a new month, etc.
You can start today, right now… and most winners do. The earlier you start, the faster you’ll reach your goal. So why wait?
Your goal ends when it’s achieved. If you attain your goal, your journey is over and it’s time to make a new goal. Having a deadline is good… but what happens if you reach the deadline and you’ve still not met your goal?
Will you quit? What if it’s December 28th and another New Year is approaching and you’re still stuck with the goal you’ve not attained yet?
You carry on the struggle till you achieve it. You decide when your goal ends. Not dates, events, or other people. Some goals take years to achieve.
Thankfully, health and fitness don’t require that much time. You can do wonders in 90 days, and transform your health completely in 180 days. Even if it takes longer, it’s fine.
New Year resolutions are fun… but focus on your daily resolutions. These are the ones that will change your life and take you to heights you never believed you could reach.
Start today. Start now.
