5 Tips To Get Back On Track With Your Fitness Resolutions

So January 1st has come and gone, the holidays are over, and your plans to reset your body and mind are not going quite as planned. The drive to make healthier habits and a fresh start with New Year’s fitness resolutions are maybe not as strong as when you first made them, and you are finding it hard to stay the course. Don't hang up your boxing gloves just yet; we are here to help you get back in the ring!

Even if you missed a few workout sessions, fell off the bandwagon with some tasty treats, or you haven’t started on them yet–whatever the reason may be, there is always time to get back on track. You can always pick up again on those resolutions tomorrow or at the beginning of the week, but why not start today? Just by reading this article, you have taken the first step to turn this back around and crush your fitness resolutions.

Tips for Getting Back on Track with Your Fitness Resolutions

1. Find Your WHY

This is a super powerful and motivating factor when it comes to wanting to make fitness resolutions. The majority of people who make fitness resolutions want to lose weight, which is a great reason to start, but it helps to really do some soul searching as to why you want to lose weight. Maybe it’s for health reasons. Maybe you are losing self-esteem and self-confidence. Maybe it's just for vanity’s sake and you want to look amazing come beach season. Whatever that “why” is for you, find it, write it down, see it daily, and you’ll be surprised how much that motivation starts to turn into drive and determination. Just remember that everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. It's how you use them and what you decide to prioritize that counts; so whatever your resolution is, find your why, and keep at it.

2. Embrace The Stress

One of the best ways that you can get back on track with any goal is to learn how to manage, cope, and embrace stress on a daily basis. Stress can be both positive and/or negative. During challenging times our body starts to flood itself with hormones and not having the resilience and ability to recover from stress can be harmful. A great example is boxers who strength train–they expose themselves to high levels of physical stress while lifting and overtime, as the body copes with that demand and recovers, they become stronger.

To ensure you are coping with stress effectively so that you can focus on your goals, first determine the current stressors in your life: work, life, family, money, etc. What can you start doing today to better cope with these non-fitness-related problems? Meditation, spending time outside in nature, talking to someone, and of course, working out, are great ways to deal with stress. Exercise, especially, has been shown to lead to better management of stress. Learning how to differentiate between consistent, managed stress and stress that is non-managed is key to avoiding burnout and mental health issues.

3. Plan For Setbacks

As much as we hate to admit it, we will have setbacks when working to change our habits. We all slip from time to time–and this “failure” is actually a good thing. A great way to deal with setbacks is to plan for them. Jot down and create hypothetical scenarios that you may encounter with your resolutions and solutions to these problems. That way, if and when you do experience a setback, you will already know how to handle it.

Here’s an example: One of your New Year’s resolutions is to change your diet and eat healthier, but you’ve found yourself wanting to “cheat” and binge on sugary foods. Some possible solutions could be to find recipes that get you excited to eat more fruits and vegetables, experiment with different seasonings and spices to enhance the flavor of your meals, set aside one meal each week as a “cheat” meal so that you don’t feel like you’re completely denying yourself, or practice mindfulness techniques when you are eating so you can appreciate the food you are eating and enjoy it!

4. Learn From Your Mistakes

This is definitely a big one when it comes down to getting back on track with your fitness resolutions. Sometimes, this means sitting down and asking yourself the tough questions: was this avoidable, what could I have done better, what exactly is causing these setbacks. Once you’ve done that, you can then take steps to learn from these mistakes. From the first three tips we’ve mentioned above, we know we will make mistakes (tip 3.), so it’s important to embrace them and any stress they may bring (tip 2.), try and plan for them (tip 3. again), remember the reason you made the goal (tip 1.), and then, learn from these mistakes and move forward.

The great thing about being human is that we have control over our actions and the ability to make changes and must remember that no failure is “bad.” It is just an opportunity to see what doesn’t work. Failures and mistakes are life lessons. So falling off track with your New Year’s resolutions isn’t the end of the story. Everyone slips and makes mistakes, but it's how you handle them that can either make you successful or unsuccessful in the rest of your year.

5. Celebrate Success

To truly be successful when it comes to making behavioral changes, crushing goals, and staying on track with New Year’s fitness resolution, you need to start rewarding yourself for the victories you have made, big or small. All too often we only focus on the negatives–our mistakes, our setbacks, our shortcomings–especially when we start on new fitness endeavors. We beat ourselves up at the slightest mistake, and we forget to acknowledge and celebrate the 10 other small victories we had along the way.

Celebrating any successes can help give you a sense of accomplishment, and more importantly, help keep you motivated to reach your long-term goals. Even if it's just realizing that you have the chance to start over, that’s a win.

Strength From Within

So don’t give up just yet! Keep those boxing gloves at the ready! Use these five tips to restart your New Year’s fitness resolutions and make your healthier, fit YOU a reality. If you slip up, just remind yourself of your WHY to get back on track.

For more content to help you get back on track with your fitness goals check out the FightCamp Blog and YouTube Channel for everything from fitness tips, boxing/kickboxing technique, workouts, drills, nutrition, and wellness. FightCamp is not just a fitness program, it’s a community of people just like you who took that first step to make a change in their life.