Set Your 2022 New Years Fitness Resolution – FitNtip

As the year draws to a close and January approaches, this is typically the time when everyone starts thinking about that time-honoured tradition – New Year’s resolutions and goals.

And if you’re anything like most people, chances are you’ve been down this road before. Almost everyone has the experience of picking a resolution and getting really psyched up about it – only to have it completely fall apart by spring (or worse, by February).

Having watched so many people try and fail at this, you may be tempted to think that a New Year’s resolution is simply a massive waste of time and mental energy. But that simply isn’t true. The problem isn’t the fact that people are setting goals for the New Year – it’s the way they’re setting them that’s the problem.

If you’re serious about getting it together in the year ahead, the following guide is for you. We’re going to break down how to correctly choose, plan and execute on a goal.

Since the majority of people reading this blog are likely interested in fitness-related ambitions, that’s what we’ll be using as our outline. With that said, this process can be applied to any goal you choose. If you are starting from scratch this January, our fitness guide for beginners is a good companion to this one.

Step #1 – Choosing a New Year’s Fitness Goal

The first place to start, obviously, is with the goal itself.

And at the end of the day, some goals are better than others. Deciding that you’re somehow going to lose 14 kg of fat and gain 9 kg of muscle by spring simply isn’t going to happen for the vast majority of people.

First things first – your goal needs to be realistic and doable. The example above, in which you completely change your body composition in three months, is just unrealistic. Generally speaking, when it comes to weight loss, anywhere from 0.5 to 1 kg per week is a realistic range to aim for.

For gaining muscle, it tends to be a much slower-moving ship – once you’ve been training for a while and used up your “newbie” gains, progress slows to a few hundred grams to around half a kilo per month for most people (also keep in mind that losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time is incredibly difficult for most people).

Your goal also must be measurable, bound by a deadline, and attached to a specific action plan (all of which we’ll be covering in detail). Not sure what your numbers should look like? Our fitness and health calculators can help you work out a sensible calorie and weight target before you set the goal.

Fortunately, this is quite straightforward with most fitness goals. Let’s say you want to lose 10 kg (a common resolution). A deadline is important because, as you probably know, an open-ended “I’m going to lose ten kilos” almost never happens. You’ll also need to make sure you’re tracking (in this case, by using a scale and taking your measurements) regularly to make sure you’re on the right path.

Let’s look at a performance goal, because the same principle applies. If you want to bench press 90 kg for your one-rep max, look at where you are now, and set a deadline for yourself. From there, ensure that you’re keeping track of everything (reps, sets, rest, all that good stuff).

Step #2 – Setting a Timeline for Resolutions

Let’s spend a bit more time discussing the all-important deadline of your goal.

The trick is finding the right balance – set a deadline that’s too far in the future, and you’ll end up losing sight of it. Set a deadline too close, and you may end up overextending and burning yourself out.

For most fitness-related goals, a few months is usually a good length of time. If you have a fairly large goal (like losing 25 kg) then you’re probably going to want to break it up into manageable three- or four-month chunks.

It’s also really important to keep track of things on a regular basis. In the case of weight loss, this would mean weighing and measuring yourself every few days, and being as accurate as you can (consistently weighing yourself first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, for example).

Step #3 – A Fitness Goal Action Plan

The most important part of a goal – the action plan.

Goals by themselves are meaningless. One of the biggest reasons most people fail at this is because they have a vision, but no plan. In other words, they have a goal that they want to reach, but they haven’t thought out the steps to get there.

And while much of your action plan will need to be changed and tweaked as you move forward, you should have the fundamental road map laid out.

Go back to the weight loss example – rather than simply saying “I will lose 10 kg by 1 April”, you should say something like:

“I will lose 10 kg by 1 April by eating around 2,200 calories per day, doing 30 minutes of cardio three times per week, and eating at least 20 grams of protein with every meal.”

That may sound incredibly specific, but that’s the point. You want a detailed action plan, filled with steps that you take on a regular basis. Doing so will not only get you going in the right direction, but it will build up sustainable habits – see our guide to making working out a habit for how to make those steps stick. In fact, you could even get more specific than that – “I will do 30 minutes of cardio on Monday, Wednesday and Friday first thing in the morning so I don’t skip it”. Doing it this way will make it substantially harder to talk yourself out of it when the going gets tough.

Stick to Your Fitness Plan

There’s no question about it – sticking to ANY goal for the long term can be hard. But by following these steps and being intelligent and strategic with your goal setting, you can go a long way towards stacking the odds in your favour and making sure that you kick off the year ahead right.

Sources

• ACE Fitness — American Council on Exercise
• Exercise and Physical Fitness — MedlinePlus
• Physical activity — WHO fact sheet

Related guides

• Fitness Resolutions to Consider for the New Year
• New Year’s Fitness Resolutions Got You Down?
• 5 Ways to Make Working Out a Habit

By the FitNTip Editorial Team · Last updated: 3 October 2022

How FitNTip builds its guides: our articles are compiled from official public sources — including the Indian Food Composition Tables (ICMR–National Institute of Nutrition), USDA FoodData Central and the WHO healthy diet guidance — and reviewed against them when updated.

This article is educational and is not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or plan a major change in diet or training, talk to your doctor first.