This Is Your Year to Get Fit

January 7, 2015 • Foundation Fitness, Services

How’s That New Year’s Resolution Going?

The promise of a New Year—it’s a great time to take a quick self-assessment, start afresh, and get fit by making some fitness goals for the New Year. Maybe you need to do a little holiday recalibration or maybe this year really and truly is The Year you’ll shed those extra pounds and become that healthier, stronger person you promised yourself you’d become last year. And the year before. And maybe the year before that.

Let’s face it: New Year’s resolutions are tough to keep. In fact, research shows that most people will give up on them in less than month. Old habits are hard to break and while we love the before-and-after story, we’re just not so good about sticking with the in-between, sweat-it-out routine that it takes to get there. Get fit this year!

Sarah Giboney, personal trainer and owner of the Village’s Foundation Fitness has a few tips to help you keep on track and keep this year’s promises.

Be realistic.

Change happens over time. Not in a week or even a well-intentioned month. So instead of grabbing those lofty resolutions that you’re just going to dump come February, start with ones you can actually reach and set your yourself up for success, one month at a time.

If you’re new to fitness, that could be mean committing to walking 2,000 more steps a day or heading into the gym for just 30 minutes of cardio three times a week. If you’re ready to improve your health, forget the fad diet du jour. Instead, make one simple and easy change—like starting a food journal or adding a vegetable to your plate at every meal.

The point is to build a healthy foundation for fitness that makes sense for you and your lifestyle, goal by goal, month by month, that you can make part of your life.

Set smart goals.

We all get caught up in what the media says we should look like, and then we set goals that are often incredibly difficult to live with and live up to.

Your goals should be smart, says Sarah. That is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

• Specific: If you want to lose weight, for example, your goal may be to lose 5 pounds in the next month. If you want to improve your body composition, your goal could be to reduce your body fat by 1 percent over the next 6 weeks.
• Measurable: Goals that can be measured are easier to track—and stick with. Measuring your weight loss is as easy as jumping on the scale. You can determine your body composition by hiring a trained professional to do a skin fold caliper test. Sarah offers those for a nominal fee and is included in any training package. However, goals like “become a better me” or “get stronger” make it difficult to know when you’ve reached success.
• Attainable: Goals should be challenging, sure, but they have to be realistic. Losing 20 pounds in a month? Not likely or healthy. If you’re new to fitness goals, Sarah suggests setting up a consultation with a personal trainer to find out what makes sense for you and your lifestyle.
• Relevant: At the end of the day (or at 5 a.m. in the morning), you’re the only one who’s going to actually do the work to achieve your goals, so it should be something you want to accomplish and something that is important to you. Write it down and take an honest look at it. Are you ready? Are you willing?
• Timely: We can all lose those five pounds . . . someday. Goals need deadlines. Attach a date to your goals, so you know when you’ve achieved them—and when you’re ready to set new ones.

Make it personal.

It’s worth repeating: your goals are yours. They have to make sense for your lifestyle and the work it takes to reach them has to be something you can commit to.

For many of us, time is the biggest issue—and the one thing that really thwarts our resolve and intentions. We bite off too big of a commitment that we can’t maintain. We go extreme only to see little payoff. We buy the one-solution that swears to fix all, only to wonder when, if ever, we’ll see some real results.

Put away the magazines, ignore the trends that are grabbing the attention of all your friends, stop spinning your wheels on a plan that was never designed to work for you.

Sit down, one-on-one, with a personal trainer and make your goals personal and accountable. A personal trainer can help determine the goals that are right for you and develop a personalized plan that will work for your body type and your lifestyle.

To help you set the right resolutions (and get the resolve to reach them), Foundation Fitness is offering a free 30-minute consultation, along with flexible and affordable fitness packages. Call 816-810-9931 or email sarah@foundationfitnessbriarcliff.com.