How’s Your Gym New Year Resolution Going?

The New Year Resolution Paradox 

Did you set yourself up to fail…again?

I have been an online strength coach & online nutrition coach for over 10 years now. I was a full-time face to face personal trainer for over 10 years preceding that. So it’s fair to say I have probably witnessed more New Year’s resolutions committed to and then failed equally fast as they were set. 

I’m a numbers guy, I like to keep objective with no emotion so I could be pretty comfortable argue that the 1st of January is the single worst date to start your weight loss campaign. If there was a day set up to have you fail, it was/Is/always will be that 1st day of the year. Now to keep it all fair, that could be because far more people start on that date, but it does not change the fact the overwhelming majority of them fail and fail fast. 

“the 1st of January is the single worst date to start your weight loss campaign”

So why does this happen? It’s rather simple, let’s look at the month of December. The festive month, people go on holiday, have end-of-year/Xmas celebrations with friends/family/work. This results in much less exercise, a lot more eating and, for most and significant, an increase in alcohol consumption. This little trio will send your body composition in a negative direction faster than you can go buy bigger pants. So by the time new years rolls around, your rather drastic short-term change in lifestyle has resulted in a drastic drop of your serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. These 3 hormones are responsible for a lot of things but for the context of this blog, you need to understand they are responsible for, mood, perceived fatigue, happiness, sleep and “fuelling” the part of your brain responsible for top-down motivation (or the ability to commit and stick to a goal)

So because you’re feeling like crap, looking like crap and do not really have the ability to have any positive forward thinking, essentially December has set you up to not be thinking rationally on the 1st of January. It’s going to be human nature for you to do EVERYTHING you can do to not be what you (perceive) are right now and because you are not thinking rationally you are going to blame the last 2 weeks of overeating and not moving your body, so what do you do?

You swing as hard as you can in the opposite direction, eat as little as possible while moving as much as possible. You’re a genius? Not really, as you know how that story ends. Failure.

Why do you fail?

That’s easy to answer. You blame the wrong thing. December was not your problem. EVERYONE should over eat and under move (if they so choose) over Christmas. I do, all of my clients who maintain full abs all year round do. In fact, those people probably would give you a run for your money on the over eating front. 

December was not the problem you needed to fix because that implies that before Christmas, you were very happy with your body and your training routine, were you? No.

The question you need to ask is…

“How did you let the 50 weeks from last new years to Christmas go bye without getting to where you wanted to be?”

I will tell you how. All you cared about was not “feeling” how you felt after last holidays, you went do hard in the other direction, that after 3 weeks of starving yourself you were mentally cooked and a lot of people even get to the point sometime in the year where the internal dialogue turns into;

I hate feeling like I am dieting all the time. I would rather be fat than feel so much restriction.

Which you can reconcile for a bout a month or two until you get on the scales or your pants do not fit so you start something really stupid like a liquid diet or the carnivore diet. You have put yourself in a constant state of suffering, just on both ends of the spectrum. Balance does not exist.

So what is the solution?

Well, that’s even easier

Let’s stop dieting AWAY from what you HATE and start TRAINING towards what will make you happy. The old, overused approach of eating as little as possible is in NO way conducive to any type of positive training outcomes. I mean, you start your weight loss phase with the desire to be healthier and happier, yet your diet immediately makes you feel tired, cranky and unmotivated?

The other HUGE reason to stop dieting away from what you do not want to be is, if you are not working towards a goal, are you really allowed to be upset and frustrated you did not get to where you did not plan on getting to?

I mean sure you have in your mind “ok I was happy at 70kg….let get back to that” but the primary focus is NOT getting to 70kg it’s to not weigh what I weigh now!! 

You have (unknowingly) guaranteed failure. If you have 15kg to drop, why are you starting your plan on 1100 calories and exercising 5 days a week? There is nowhere to go from there (apart from hunger and fatigue)

Train towards the level of lean mass (muscle) that you want and even if you want to gain ZERO muscle (trust me you do actually want to gain some ladies) you still need resistance training to be a focus to support metabolic health and function and once your programming is sorted, you need to eat to support optimal health and your ability to make progress with your training. 

Once you can do that (consistent weight training and eating to support that) the majority of people will drop more weight(fat) than they ever have. 

If this gave you a few light bulb moments or you can relate and would like help to get off the diet binge cycle….go here and fill out your detail to book a no obligation to consult to discuss you, your specifics, your strength training goals and how we get them.