Keeping up with your goals

As we move through January, it may seem complicated to keep up with your goals at the beginning of the Year. This is the time to reevaluate the barriers you are running into that may keep you from working toward your goals.

I know after a couple of weeks, old habits start to take over, and progress toward new habits starts to slow. It is incredibly hard to break habits and create new ones. This is the time to work on self-discipline.

Discipline > Motivation

You cannot rely on motivation to keep you going. You must work on discipline when you no longer feel that “New Year” motivation. This will help you work toward changing your habits to achieve your goals.

I wrote a post about how to create your goals, as well as this one about how to create new habits. Both posts are all about sustainably creating goals and habits. But, even the best-planned changes run into roadblocks.

Those posts are great places to start if you’re beginning your new goals. Even if you’re beginning to run into roadblocks, you can benefit from the information in those posts. You can evaluate your goals to see if you began in ways that promote habits that will achieve your goals., or if you tried to make too many changes at once.

If you’ve gone through the whole process and feel you’re still losing motivation. Here are some tips to help you keep up with your goals. My favorite quote is

“Do something your future self will thank you for.”

Changing and creating new habits are things that your future self with thank you for!

This is a long one!!! But if you are struggling to keep up with your New Year’s goals. It will be so helpful to make sure you are reevaluating your goals! Read on to learn how I like to reassess my goals every six weeks or so.

Identify barriers

This is the first step. What are things that seem to keep getting in the way? Remember that most of your barriers may be excuses and justifications you’re making to yourself. Other things may be daily routines or prevent you from working toward your goals.

Identify if you are making excuses you are telling yourself or if there are real barriers that are getting in the way. Here are some examples

Excuses/justifications:

“I don’t have the time.”

“I just don’t feel like it.”

“It is too hard.”

“I lost motivation.”

“I am overwhelmed.”

Real barriers:

“Morning workouts are not working.”

“I only have time for two workouts a week.”

“I am struggling with my workouts.”

“I lost motivation.”

“I am overwhelmed.”

Once you identify real barriers vs. excuses, you can determine if you need to adjust your goals, work on self-discipline, and push through the lack of motivation. It is okay to make changes that will help you continue to work toward your goals.

Note that losing motivation and being overwhelmed can be excuses and real barriers. It is how you move through those thought patterns that make a difference. If you allow them to prevent you from making any changes - those are excuses. If you use those thoughts to pivot and make changes to continue toward your goals - these are barriers.

Review your goals

Once you’ve identified your barriers, it is time to re-evaluate your goals. What are your goals? Start with writing down all of your goals.

Here are my current goals:

1. Build muscle

2. Workout daily

3. Adjust nutrition to work toward my goals

4. Stretch/yoga/mobility

5. Do pullups

These are great goals, but they can all be broken down into smaller mini-goals. I am already in the habit of breaking down my long-term goals into smaller mini-goals. But if these were the goals I began with, I would get overwhelmed, discouraged, and lose motivation much faster. But for example sake, this is where I would move on to adjusting to my goals.

Adjust goals as needed

Here are my current goals with new adjustments to break down into smaller goals:

1. Build muscle

   1. Cut weight - not scale-focused, more so looking at how I feel to cut my excess body fat. Start workouts with lower intensity. Create a solid foundation with lower weights than what I’ve previously been capable of lifting, as I’ve been inconsistent for the past year or so.

   2. Increase weights in workouts every six weeks, and evaluate how I feel about the excess body fat. Is it time to change my nutrition to work toward my big goal - repeat number 1 with increased weights or move to number 3?

   3. Focus on volume in workouts and nutrition focused on maintenance.

2. Work out daily - this one is easy for me. But I must remember I cannot do strength training every day.

   1. Cut weight

      1. 5 days of strength training - all lighter weights and high reps

         • 3 upper body days followed by 30 min cardio - 2 focused on unilateral movements to improve muscle imbalances. 1 day focused on compound movements.

         • 2 days leg days starting with a 15 min incline walk as a warmup (no cardio after) - 1 day quad focused and 1 day hamstring and glute focused. Superset most leg exercises with abs - I hate abs but love working legs, so supersets here work best for me.

      2. 2 days cardio

         • 1 day stretching/yoga/mobility with 1 hr cardio

         • 1 day with abs with 1 hr cardio

      3. Walk during my 1 hr lunch break to increase my daily activity

   2. Increase weights in workouts every six weeks, and evaluate how I feel about the excess body fat. Is it time to change my nutrition to work toward my big goal - repeat number 1 with increased weights or move to number 3?

   3. Focus on volume in workouts and nutrition focused on maintenance.

      1. 5-days of strength training - all heavier weights

         • 3-upper body days starting with a 15 min incline walk as a warmup (no cardio after) - 2 focused on unilateral movements to improve muscle imbalances. 1 day focused on compound movements.

         • 2-days leg days starting with a 15 min incline walk as a warmup (no cardio after) - 1-day quad focused and 1-day hamstring and glute focused. Superset most leg exercises with abs - I hate abs but love working legs, so supersets here work best for me, or I won’t ever work abs.

      2. 2-days cardio - cut back the amount of cardio to non-strength training days

         • 1-day stretching/yoga/mobility with 1 hr cardio

         • 1-day with abs with 1 hr cardio

      3. Not necessary to add in a walk during lunch, but if I need additional movement, I will do so.

3. Adjust nutrition to work toward my goals

   1. Cut weight - caloric deficit with high protein-focused: 40% carbs, 25% fats, and 35% protein.

   2. Evaluate - repeat number 1 or move on to number 3?

   3. Focus on volume - maintenance calories with high protein-focused: 40% carbs, 25% fats, and 35% protein.

4. Stretch/yoga/mobility

   • this is simple; add in 1 day combined with cardio

5. Do pull-ups

   • this is simple; add in working on pull-ups on every upper body day. Also, working on the upper body (back shoulders) and core will help increase being about to do pullups

Prioritize your goals

Determine how to prioritize your goals. Do you need to adjust or reduce how many goals to work on now? Are your goals too broad? Do you have too many goals?

Example:

1. Build muscle

2. Workout daily

3. Adjust nutrition to work toward my goals

4. Stretch/yoga/mobility

5. Do pull-ups

Say you’re new to working out, adjust your priorities to match your current fitness level. Using my goals as an example of how to prioritize:

1. Focus on learning nutrition by tracking caloric intake

2. Workout 3-4 days a week

3. lose weight (set an individual goal here)

4. Adjust nutrition to work toward new goals

5. build muscle

6. workout daily

Reordering goals in the order of things you need to change will help you achieve those goals. You can further break these down similarly to how I broke them down previously. When you are brand new to working out, you will want to start smaller. You will work on nutrition 80%-90% of your time, and workouts will consist of 10%-20% of your time. So that will be your priority, then add a few days of working out.

You will ultimately lose weight if you’re consistent with nutrition (at a caloric deficit) and workouts a few days a week. Creating those habits with nutrition and workouts will help move that momentum forward. After 6-12 weeks (or achieving your weight loss goal), you want to adjust to your next goal.

Keep going and working toward your goals

Fitness is ever-changing. You will continually evaluate your current level vs. where you want to be. I want to build muscle, but I need to shed some excess body fat first to SEE the muscle gain physically. So my first step MUST be to lose a little body fat.

THEN my next goal will be to increase calories (not to bulk, I don’t want to add the body fat again, just at maintenance calories) to fuel the muscles to promote muscle gain.

Every six weeks, I will need to reevaluate where to change from there.

Examples of how to make changes based on barriers:

“Morning workouts are not working.” How to move past: workout after work or lunchtime. Determine a better time that works best for your lifestyle and YOURSELF personally. Determine if this is a priority you MUST add into your life and how that looks.

“I only have time for two workouts a week.” How to move past: workout two days a week. Can you add in a walk during lunch? What CAN you do to work toward your goals? Sometimes there are life things that prevent you from having time. Other times, you need to MAKE the time and prioritize working toward your goals.

“I am struggling with my workouts.” How to move past: lower the intensity. Sometimes starting with hard workouts will work against you. You may begin to feel discouraged and ultimately quit together. Drop the weights for your workouts, do three days of strength training, and do lower-intensity workouts such as walking or yoga. Find a workout type and/or schedule that works with your CURRENT fitness level.

“I lost motivation.” How to move past: REPEAT AFTER ME: Everyone. Loses. Motivation. It is all about self-discipline. You MUST work on discipline because that is how habits are changed and created. KEEP WORKING TOWARD YOUR GOALS.

“I am overwhelmed.” How to move past: determine if you are simultaneously working toward too many goals. This can be VERY overwhelming and discouraging. From here, you can do a couple of different things: prioritize your goals and adjust the number of goals you are working toward OR determine if your goals are long-term goals that you can break down into small mini-goals.

Remember that you will always be working toward your goals! You must be disciplined enough to work toward them when you lack motivation.

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If you are here and reading this, you are interested in your health and fitness. That is so good; I am so excited for you! Taking care of your body is the best thing you can do for yourself in the present and the long term.

“Do something today that your future self will thank you for”

— unknown

I find that quote so inspiring. Hard work will pay off in the future, but you also have to live in the moment, and I feel like taking care of yourself is doing both. You are doing good for yourself now as well as for your future self.

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