Most New Year’s resolutions fail due to a combination of unrealistic expectations, poor planning, and a lack of sustainable habits. Here’s why:
- Unrealistic Goals
Setting overly ambitious goals like “lose 50 pounds in two months” or “work out every day” can lead to frustration and burnout when progress isn’t as fast as anticipated. All too often, you have people joining the gym in January being hell bent on cutting their calories by 50% and training 5x a week. By January 20th they are burned out, never to return.
- Lack of Specificity
A resolution like “get in shape” is too vague. Do you want to compete in bodybuilding, run a marathon or look good at the beach? All of these imply being in shape, yet ,they are vastly different from each other.
- No Plan or Strategy
Many people set resolutions without mapping out how to achieve them. Goals need actionable steps that can be followed on a daily/weekly basis such as walking 10K steps a day or eating 200 grams of protein.
- All-or-Nothing Mindset
- A single setback often leads to abandoning the goal altogether. I just had a prospective client contacting me, wanting to train 4x a week after having not been in the gym since 2019.
- When I tried to dial it down to once a week to start, she stated : she is an all or nothing person, needing a kick in the butt. Needless to say, 2025 will most likely be another nothing year.
What to do instead?
- Take a deep dive into why you did not accomplish your goal so far.
A lot of resolutions repeat, especially weight loss so it begs the question: why did one fail? Maybe the gym is too far, the goal was too ambitious,the environment you live in is not supportive. Optimize your environment as much as possible before , then pick a realistic, clearly defined goal.
- Once you set the goal, reverse engineer it.
If you want to lose 30 lbs of fat you need to plan for 30 weeks in a best case scenario which will allow you to drop one lbs per week. For that you need to create a caloric deficit of 3500 cals a week ( the caloric value of a pound of fat) , meaning a daily deficit of about 500 calories.
How do I get there?
Most people can use the following breakdown :
- Protein 1 gram per lbs of body weight,
- Carbohydrates about the same
- Fats would come in .5 grams per lbs body weight.
So a 180 lbs person would be consuming 180 grams of protein, 180 grams of carbs and 90 lbs, by doing so he would be running a sufficiently high deficit to lose about one lbs of fat per week.
Since we want to preserve the muscle mass, we need to lift weights 3x a week to keep muscle.
If you keep doing this you will have lost 30 lbs by July and will be able to keep it off without starvation, crazy workouts and the like.
Need help with your fitness goals?
Let’s talk! Maik