No more New Years Resolutions that end up in failure within the first month! These 6 tips will get you off that year after year roller coaster of failed attempts and set you up for success to reach your health and fitness goals now and in the long run.
Have the Right Mindset
To reach your health and fitness goals, you need to have the right mindset. You want to set yourself up for success, not failure. Most of the time, people approach their diet and exercise the wrong way and they set themselves up for failure. So what is the right mindset? Think big-picture, and think GOOD, not great. Most people think that they have to get all of their desired results NOW, and then when they don’t see them, they quit and then go backwards and even further away from their goals. You have to think big-picture.
You have to think long term. Remember, diet and exercise have to be a part of your life forever, so you might as well think of it in the long term. Our bodies are designed to be taken care of and if you don’t exercise and you don’t eat right, then you will go backwards. So, yes it is a life-sentence, but it doesn’t have to be a bad one. Your goal is to do good, not great, and do it for a long time. Most people try to do everything perfect. They go from doing no exercise and eating terrible to going crazy with their exercise and going on some super-strict diet. It’s too far from what you were doing and it’s too much to sustain, so you quit and then you are back to not exercising, not eating good, and you start going backwards. (this is the roller-coaster of losing 10lbs, then quitting and gaining 20lbs, then starting back and losing 10lbs, then quitting and gaining another 20lbs, etc., on and off for years and years). It’s all mindset! Think progressive changes. Think GOOD instead of great. Start exercising regularly and start making easy changes in your diet that will help you improve without total deprivation, which causes you to quit.
I can’t express how important this mindset thing is. I have spent 25 years teaching people how to be a normal person and still get results and how to avoid the pitfalls that cause people to quit. I have created a system that allows you to enjoy life while getting results. This is a system for the person who wants results and still wants to enjoy life. I could write several more pages explaining this, and I have… For a quick and easy read showing you exactly how you can get real results while still enjoying life, check out my book, Calorie Budgeting 101.
Consistency
I have worked with thousands of people over the past 25 years and I have found that the number one thing in common with all the people who reach their health and fitness goals, more than the best routine, or hardest worker, or who sacrificed the most, and so on, is that the people who reached their health and fitness goals were the ones who were consistent. The ones who consistently do their workouts and who consistently eat decent (while still cheating!).
While it is important what you are doing for your workouts, cardio, and diet, it is even more important that whatever you do, you do it consistently. The best program in the world will not work if you do not do it. So make consistency your top priority and then worry about what you are doing.
Commit to not quitting for an entire year. I don’t mean never missing a workout or never cheating on your diet. What I mean is commit to not quitting completely. Miss days here and there, go on vacation, take sick time, etc., but just like you do with your job, when the missed time is over, get back to work!
Pick the Right Workout Program
To reach your health and fitness goals, you need to choose the right workout program. You need to choose a workout program that is safe, efficient, and effective, and one that is sustainable for a long time.
Most of us are super busy, so time is of the essence. Look for workouts that are 45 minutes or less and cover pretty much every body part. This way time is not wasted and you won’t miss working any specific areas of your body. My workouts at Hoover Fitness and via my Virtual Personal Trainer are all 45 minutes or less and cover every body part. We also superset exercises and do combination exercises which make them very efficient.
It will be very difficult to reach your health and fitness goals if you get injured. But, you can get in great workouts that produce great results and great strength gains without getting injured. In our programs at Hoover Fitness and via my Virtual Personal Trainer, no one ever gets injured. The reason being is because the moves are designed for the individual and can be adjusted to their limitations and also because we use dumbbells instead of bars and racks. The benefit of dumbbells is that they conform to your body’s movements, whereas a bar requires more that you conform to it.
There are lots of great programs out there. I recommend finding something to follow that uses dumbbells, is not competition based, and that works multiple body parts per workout. Find a workout program that is safe, efficient, and effective, and also that can be adjusted to your improvements and advances throughout the year.
Do Cardio in Addition to Weight Training
The 3 main components in your health and fitness are to workout, eat better, and do cardio. If you haven’t gotten results in the past, there is a good chance it is because you left out one of these three, and usually it is cardio.
Cardio not only will help you with your heart health, stamina, and health in general, it will also help you burn fat and tone up. In addition to those benefits, cardio will help you have better endurance for your strength training workouts, thus enabling you to get more out of those workouts.
And most importantly, working out regularly and doing cardio regularly take the pressure off of the diet. Your diet will never be perfect, so the more you can be consistent with your workouts and cardio, the less your diet failures will effect you.
My advice is always to work hard for 15-20 minutes. If you are working hard enough, 15 minutes on a regular basis is plenty. Often times people walk or do something easy for 45 minutes or an hour and get nothing really from it. Their mind tells them that they are working hard because they went so long, but the reality is that there is a reason they were able to go so long – it was easy. My best advice that I can give for cardio is that it is not how far you go or how long you go, it’s how hard you work.
As for what to do for your cardio, pretty much anything that causes your heart rate to increase and stay increased for 15-20 minutes will suffice. If you are at home, this could be a jog or run outside, up and down stairs, riding a bicycle, etc. At a gym, you can use the treadmill, an elliptical machine, a stairstepper, an exercise bike, or any other equipment in the cardio area.
Get out of your comfort zone and be miserable, but only for a short amount of time, like 15 minutes. Not only will you get better results, it will be better for your joints and keep you from racking up chronic injuries that accrue over time when you just keep rolling up that odometer.
Have a Realistic Diet
You can’t reach your health and fitness goals by going on some crazy, miserable fad diet. You need to have a realistic diet. Start simple and with small changes. People fail on their diets because they change too much too fast and deprive themselves of everything and then they quit. And when they quit, they quit everything, including their exercise.
Commit to exercising, then the pressure should be off the diet. Your diet will come and go, but your exercise can be consistent.
Find ways to cut calories without being miserable. One way to do this is to take something that you normally eat and replace it with something that you like that has less calories. Then it becomes relative to what you normally eat, not relative to what the actual food item is.
Skip a meal. Yes, skip a meal. This is by far the easiest way to cut calories. The bottom line is your calories in vs. calories out. You have already increased the calories out by your exercise, so find ways to reduce the calories in. The bigger the deficit is each day, the faster you get results. You don’t have to eat 5 times per day, and you don’t have to eat breakfast. Never eat because you think you have to.
Avoid snacking. Grab a cup of coffee or a piece of gum. Cut out those snacks and you have cut out those calories.
Drink lots of water. Water will make you feel more full and also help your body operate better with your exercise. Shoot for 64-100 ounces per day.
I could go on and on about the diet and what to do and what not to do to keep you from quitting, but for the sake of simplicity in getting started, just implement these few diet tips. For a lot more easy diet tips and help with the mental side of all this, read my latest eBook, Calorie Budgeting 101. It is a quick read and the ultimate diet guide for the person who wants results and still wants to eat the foods they love and enjoy life.
Take Supplements
You get aftermarket accessories for your car. You get the best equipment for sports and hobbies. But yet when it comes to health and fitness, people hold back on getting “extras” that can boost performance and help achieve health and fitness goals easier.
If you take the right things, then you can get even better results with little to no extra effort, which is always a good thing to keep you going and keep you happy.
Think of taking supplements like an athlete having the best gear. A baseball player having the best bat and cleats and then taking supplements to get the most out of his training. Or like If you get into running, and you wanted to get serious about it, you wouldn’t just start running without doing anything else. You would probably start by getting good running shoes and then taking supplements for your performance.
There are a lot of quality supplements out there that can help you get results in the gym and with your diet. While there are a lot of great supplements on the market today, I am going to talk about the supplements that I take and recommend professionally. As always, do your own research. But if you want my professional opinion, then I would advise these.
As for workout performance supplements, I personally take and professionally recommend Prestige Labs products. If you are looking for something to help you lose weight and burn body fat without having to do anything other than take a product, then take a look at the Prestige Heat and the Prestige Crush. These are two of the most popular products we sell in our weight loss workout programs. Check out all of their amazing products by clicking HERE.
As for health-type supplements, I recommend Juice Plus+ fruits and vegetable capsules. I have personally been taking Juice Plus+ for almost 20 years and it is a great way to get real, whole food nutrition without having to eat a ton of calories. The recommended amount of fruits and vegetables is 7-13 servings of raw fruits and vegetables per day. If you eat this amount, then you will reap amazing health benefits, including heart health, feeling better, better immune system, and much more. The problem is that it is impossible to physically eat that amount. Plus the cost and the calories would be way too high. Juice Plus+ gets you this amount of fruits and vegetables daily, in a capsule! learn more at by clicking HERE.
Final Thoughts
Make this the year that you stick with it. The year that you get results and keep them. The year that you make exercise a priority in your life. January is the time to get started. Motivation is usually very high in January, so use that motivation to get started. But have the right mindset, be consistent, pick the right workout program, do cardio in addition to weight training, have a realistic diet, and take supplements, so you will be able to make this the year. Realize that health and fitness is not optional and that to get results you have to do the things things that are needed on a regular basis. If you make the right decisions with your health and fitness, you will be able to get results and keep getting them for a long time.
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