New Year's Resolution to Get Fit? Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes!

Is this the year that you finally get into better shape?

Many of us want to be in better shape but never quite get there. Life is busy, and many people struggle to dedicate themselves to this goal.

The New Year holidays are a typical time to set new goals. People have time off work, probably over-indulge a little in Holiday festivities and have time to reflect.

“A New Year’s resolution is a tradition… [in] which a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their life at the start of a new year.” — Wikipedia

One of the more common New Year's resolutions is to get fit and healthy — meaning losing weight and/or getting into better shape.

Gym memberships increase in January. But then, by February, many people have stopped going to the gym altogether and given up on their fitness goals for another year.

Sound familiar?

It's not just you — research suggests that approximately 80% of people who make New Year's resolutions give up on them by the second week of February.

But not this year! Do you really want to give it a good shot? Of course, you do!

Avoid these five mistakes to increase your chances of staying motivated and achieving your New Year's resolution fitness goals.

Expecting instant results

I know you don't want to hear it, but it will take YEARS to look anything like your favourite athletes or fitness influencers.

I'm sorry, but the chances are, you'll never look like them… UNLESS, you have fantastic genetics, AND you put in consistent effort over a long period.

People new to their fitness journey are often uneducated about exercise and nutrition but want instant results with minimum effort. So they buy into the hype of 12-week programs and the like, expecting to look like the personal trainer or influencer within those few months.

Sure, in 12 weeks, you can lose some body fat and water weight and look physically better. But, you won't have a massive change in your body composition. You won't build noticeable muscle in 12 weeks (unless you're on steroids), despite what the trainer might tell you. However, the muscle you already have will become more visible as you lose the body fat covering it.

It takes years of consistency in the gym to build muscle. And, it can take several months, if not years, to lose all that stubborn body fat — especially if your starting point is obesity.

Read the article below to learn the science about how quickly and the amount of muscle we can build naturally.

Going too hard too fast

The next mistake we'll discuss ties in with the previous one of expecting instant results.

Because people want instant results, they start strong. Sometimes, too strong…

It's great that they're highly motivated, but the problem with this is that this can lead to people burning out and losing motivation. You can only let something take over your life for so long until you get sick of it.

If you get burnt out, or worse — injured, it's easier to fall back into old bad habits and even harder to achieve those fitness goals.

Instead of starting at 110%, pace yourself. It's almost like the Tortoise vs the Hare. Slow and steady wins the race.

Slow and steady is achievable, no matter how busy you are.

Overcomplicated diets

Diets often over-complicate weight loss. It creates a box around what we're "allowed" to eat.

You know the diets — Vegan, Gluten-free, Keto... They're marketed to us everywhere, selling us the myth that one particular diet is healthier than everything else and will help us lose more weight.

However, this idea simply isn't true.

There's no magic diet.

The best diet for you is the one you find easiest to stick to—the diet where you can still eat food you enjoy.

To lose weight, we need to be in a calorie deficit. That means consuming less energy (calories) than it takes to sustain your current weight.

To be healthy, we need to be physically active and consume an adequate amount of micro-nutrients (vitamins and minerals) through our diet - e.g., such as fruit and Vegetables.

To build muscle, we need an adequate amount of protein, often consumed through meat such as Chicken or Beef.

That's it! That's diet simplified.

But, read the article below for more.

Not learning about nutrition

A common saying in fitness is that abs are made in the kitchen. Diet is the basis for 80-90% of our results.

What this means is eating right. I gave some essential information in the previous section, and if you follow those basic guidelines, you're heading in the right direction.

But, learn as much as you can about food. Read the packet of everything you buy. Use Google to know what macro and micro-nutrients are in the fruits, vegetables, meat and other foods you eat.

Understanding what's in different foods helps us make smarter choices without thinking about them.

I can go to any restaurant and choose an option I know will have lower calories than a calorie-dense food such as Pizza or Pasta.

Without this knowledge, we're probably choosing the higher calorie options like Pizza.

I'm not saying you can never eat Pizza again — I'm just saying we should choose a lower calorie option more often than not.

Do you want to lose weight, or not?

Not setting SMART goals

Without a specific goal, we're just heading in a vague direction, with no accountability.

Setting goals means we have to plan to achieve those goals, meaning we become more committed. We can also track our progress and make incremental changes to our routine.

You may have heard about SMART goals. We commonly learn about these in our early studies at University.

In an article for The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Dr Robert Rubin said:

To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
• Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

New Year's resolutions fitness goals often start pretty vaguely, such as 'lose weight' or 'get in better shape'. These are great starting points, but the latter is not measurable, and a person can achieve the former in a week or even a day. It is not specific enough.

Similarly, we shouldn't set ridiculous goals we will never achieve, such as gaining the physique of your favourite athletes or Instagram influencer.

Because we will never achieve these goals, we lose our motivation.

A specific goal could be losing a particular amount of weight in a defined period or a specific body fat percentage loss. Although, a word of caution here — it's tough to measure body fat. Different people using different techniques will get other measurements.

Creating strength goals is a great way to stay on track. An exercise plan designed to achieve these strength goals will help motivate you and keep you accountable. And as you gain strength, your physique will change too (as long as your nutrition is good).

Final Thoughts

This article has explored five common mistakes people make with their New Year's resolutions to get into better shape.

Those mistakes are: expecting instant results, going too hard too fast, overcomplicated diets, not learning about nutrition and not setting SMART goals.

The article turned into a plug of my previous content, which I haven't done before. But stuff it, this is my 100th Medium article! I think I'm a proper writer now?

But, why should you listen to me about health and fitness?

A lot of advice on the internet comes from an unknown source. Who am I to give you fitness advice?

In fitness, social proof is essential. Below, the photos show I do work out! I made this image for another article, showing how your weight can vary depending on goals and body fat levels.

I've been doing this for nearly 15 years. Want to know more about my fitness journey? You can read the article below.

Thank you for reading.

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If you enjoyed this content, you might be interested in the article below about seven common mistakes people make in the gym when trying to build muscle.