Making New Year Resolutions

So the year is roaring towards its end. At this time of year, we sit, corpulent and full of festive cheer (ie bacon fried in bacon) and we resolve to do the things we resolve to do.
Again.

At Fitness Soul, the coaches have all been in discussion about what this means for us and our business. Should we support this as a “New Year, New Me” attitude, wryly raising an eyebrow and taking the corporate dollar? Should we hammer on about lifestyle change and that resolutions rarely work, thus driving our much-valued new customers to heartless profiteering corporate rivals (with showers)
A while ago I posted some teasers on change and positive choices (https://fitnesssoul.co.uk/just-do-it-movement-for-change/).

In this article, I’ll take a step further along the way towards suggesting a few things to bare in mind this year when making those resolutions.

Firstly: make them! We should be aspirational! Kaizen and all that! But then, have a read through the rest of this article and see if anything seems to help:
It’s worth trying to simplify all of our aspirational changes into two basic categories: Thing we will stop doing (smoking, drinking, wasting time on unresearched fitness blogs) or things we will do more of (exercise, healthy eating, being present for the kids, etc).
The trick to actually following through on these is pretty much the same.
Just Do It. They ought to put this on a T-shirt or something.
To be fair, if it were that easy, everyone would do all the healthy things. And also, I have zero qualifications to advise on this stuff. Thus disclaimered, read on at your peril….

The next post will cover strategies for actually following through on these resolutions. But before then, I’d suggest, once you’ve written them down, review them. There is a lot out there in internetville about SMART targets — read it. But more simply — how will you know when you have achieved it? “To be thinner” is an illusory goal — to cut 5% bodyfat is not. It’s measurable (although speak to your Fitness Soul coach about whether it is realistic and desirable — bodyfat isn’t always a bad thing!) “To Be Thinner” will still be your goal at the end of the year — the gold at the end of the rainbow that seems to travel further away. It’s too subjective.

For those embarking on Bootcamp, you get a one-to-one consultation and weigh in (if you choose it) so we can put these into place.

For everyone else — think about this question as you dream big on New Year’s Eve:

How Will I Know When I’ve Done It?

If you can’t answer that, ask for our help to redress your goal.
Have a happy Hogmanay!

Richard

Originally published at https://fitnesssoul.co.uk/making-new-year-resolutions/ on December 30, 2018.