For the first time in years, I’m almost someone who starts the new year with resolutions. In previous years, I always thought that was a bit for losers who let themselves go from February onwards only to make the same resolutions and mistakes again in the new year. Sometimes with a half-hearted attempt to get beach-ready in the summer only to slide back again.
“Real tough guys” just train all year round and watch their diet all year round. What about, for example, participants in the SAP Cup who show their best shape of the year in mid-December?
This year is different for me, though. Now that I’m temporarily juggling three jobs, I’ve had the worst period in almost 15 years when it comes to training and nutrition over the past three months. Not that I haven’t done anything, but averaging 1.5 workouts per week is obviously more for stay-at-home moms and their zumba or spinning classes.
I know I couldn’t have put that in a more derogatory way, but it kind of indicates how dissatisfied I am with my training right now.
So, I find myself in the situation many find themselves in:
Being in your worst shape around the holidays.
Not because I’ve fattened myself up, but because I’ve actually lost 4 kilos of muscle mass (since I’m not eating enough against my will to maintain mass). Plus, I’m trying to avoid the following mistakes for next year.
1: Starting Too Strong
If I were the average person now, I would have made resolutions for the coming year.
Let me take Harry as an example.
Harry’s resolution for the new year is to “work on his figure a bit”. No specific goal other than “getting a bit tighter”. Harry joins a gym and plans to start the next day.
Harry is a child of the 70s and pumps himself up while driving to the gym with “Eye of the Tiger” playing on his headphones, of course, because he wants to walk into the gym in the same flow later on. As he walks from the parking lot to the gym, he daydreams about his future self with a tight six-pack. He knows that six-pack is probably a utopia, but he thinks:
“Ah, dreaming is allowed”.
Once he arrives at the gym, Harry is so enthusiastic and motivated that he jumps up the stairs to the gym two steps at a time. He even tries to take the last steps three at a time. At least, that was the intention.
He stumbles, twists his ankle, and limps away with “Eye of the Tiger” still echoing in his ears.
If it were a RomCom, he would encounter a woman offering him some support while walking to his car and she would turn out to be the love of his life. But it’s not a RomCom, there’s no woman, just a sprained ankle.
In the following days as Harry recovers from his injury, that rare surge of motivation fades away and Harry falls back into his old habits.
The window of opportunity is closed, Harry messed it up.
It’s clear that this is an exaggerated example of starting too strong. In many cases, however, people who haven’t trained for a long time want to immediately start at their old level.
Not only will your maximum capacity be lower than before, but you’ll also be less able to utilize that lower maximum capacity without being punished with injuries. So, you really need to hold back in the beginning.
2: Outcome-Oriented vs. Effort-Oriented
So, you can do less, and then you also have to hold back while you’re bursting with motivation. That feeling doesn’t diminish if after three weeks you’re nowhere near the ten kilos you want to lose or don’t see any visible results. Of course, you understand that not much could happen in three weeks, but that one kilo doesn’t bring satisfaction.
You want more, it needs to be faster.
I know that a tip for good fitness resolutions is often to have specific goals. Determine what you could achieve, set realistic long-term goals, and break them down into shorter-term goals. That works fantastically for many people. For some, however, that horizon is too far. Even if that kilo is right on schedule in three weeks, it still doesn’t give them enough satisfaction to keep going.
For those people, it might work better mentally to give themselves an effort obligation rather than an outcome obligation.
Instead of saying, “I want to lose ten kilos,” you say:
“I want to train twice a week and have a healthy breakfast every day.”
Your goal there is not to achieve a certain result but to teach yourself a certain lifestyle and gradually expand it. People often say that fitness is a marathon and not a sprint. However, we don’t all have the discipline and motivation of the messenger Phidippides who ran from Marathon to Sparta only to collapse and die there.
If your goal is to walk to Paris, you’ve barely made progress relatively if after a few days you’re not further than Steenbergen, Zeeland.
If you set yourself the goal of walking every day, you can achieve your goal every day and look back proudly. Then after a few days, you think:
“Hey, Steenbergen. Never thought I’d pass by there.”
My goal for the coming year is to get back to my old training frequency and make sure I get enough nutrition daily again.
Of course, it could go faster if I aim higher, but speed is not my goal. After all:
If you build it, it will come, but probably no one understands that reference to an old baseball movie.
3: All or Nothing Mentality
A final pitfall can be avoided: Tell yourself in advance that there will be moments when you can’t stick to your schedule. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes even for a few weeks. A common mistake is thinking, “I couldn’t train on Monday and Wednesday. This week is already ruined, so I won’t go on Friday either. I’ll start fresh next week!”. But the same thing happens next week, and the barrier to exercise again becomes higher.
Hold onto that lifeline!
It sounds dramatic, but by training that one day despite everything, you’re sticking to your good habits.
4: Waiting Until January
It’s often procrastination that leads to cancellation, convincing yourself that you’ll make up for the damage later. In that regard, the old wisdom applies: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. That’s why I’m writing this article now and not in January. That’s also why I’m not waiting until after the holidays, but diving back into the gym tonight.
References
- nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidippides
- Field of Dreams. 1989
