6 Tips for Hitting Your Fitness Goals in the New Year
Many people set health and fitness goals in the New Year. These can focus on losing weight, eating a healthier diet, exercising more, increasing stamina, hitting personal bests, or achieving more specific targets. Often, we just make a vague resolution to become fitter, healthier, or both. Gym memberships rise in January, stores sell more low-fat meals and healthier snacks and ingredients, and it’s common to pass far more people out running or walking. Unfortunately, most of us have given up or slipped back into old habits by the end of the first month. If you want to hit some fitness goals in the new year, and you don’t want to fail, here are 6 awesome tips to help you.
Set Realistic Targets
The most common reasons we fail to hit our targets are that they are too vague, or too unrealistic. If you’ve never run before, you aren’t going to run a marathon in the next few weeks. Set smaller, more realistic but specific targets and you are more likely to hit them.
Add Cross-Training to Your Routines
Your specific goals might be to run a certain distance or get to a time target, or they might focus on weights, muscle mass, or body shape. Whatever your targets are, cross-training is key. You might think that if your target is to run, you need to run more. This is true, but practicing strength training with yoga or weight training will help you to build more powerful muscles and a stronger core, which will support your running.
Increase Your Protein Intake
Protein is a crucial element of building muscle and strength. You can increase the protein in your diet by eating more meat, fish, eggs, and other dairy. If you exercise regularly, you might also want to boost your protein intake with delicious protein snacks from Eat Protein. These are a great way to increase your energy levels, boost muscle mass, and power your workouts. EatProtein has a wide range of food and powders to fit into your lifestyle and help you to make fitness gains.
Figure Out Your Motivation
Why do you want to hit your goals? Are you trying to lose weight? Improve your health? Become fitter? Improve your mental health or reduce stress? These are all valid reasons to work out, and you’ll probably enjoy all of them, but figuring out your motivation will help you to keep going when times are tough.
Keep Track of Your Progress
Progress is often slow, and improvements can be small. It’s easy to become demotivated when nothing seems to be happening. Keep track of your progress and you’ll find it easier to see the gains that you are making and stay on track.
Enjoy Yourself
You’re more likely to stick to exercise routines if you enjoy yourself. Having fun will also keep you going when progress is slow, or even stalls. If you don’t enjoy the workouts that you are doing, try some other things. Look for classes and groups in your local area or try something with a friend.
Remember, sometimes it’s ok to move your goalposts. If it becomes clear that your goals aren’t realistic, or that they are too easy, don’t be scared to reassess and set some new ones.