Scenario 1: At your annual Christmas dinner, you tell your friends you’re going for seconds because you’ve resolved to make the coming year YOUR year in terms of fitness and you might as well make the most out of the Holidays before you officially go on a “diet”.

Scenario 2: You write a set of fitness goals at the start of the year, which includes losing at least 20lbs and getting those coveted abs.

A year later, you find yourself in scenarios 1 and 2 again. Not much has changed and you find yourself in a rut. Sound familiar? I wrote how, after getting trapped in this vicious cycle, I got to tick things off my list of fitness goals.

1. Don’t wait for Monday to start. In this case, don’t wait for a new year to start. Make a plan, stick to it and prepare to fall off—a hundred times or more. If you do, just jump back in. Make conscious, mindful choices when it comes to food and exercise. Making small, smart decisions go a long way.
2. Go bite-sized. Write big goals and break them down into smaller, more achievable ones. Doesn’t matter if you end up with a whole list of things to go after, what’s important is you get to tick off items from the list and you enjoy your journey as you go. Instead of making weight loss your only goal, aim to change habits that ultimately lead to you achieving that 20-pound weight loss such as eating more fruits and veggies regularly, meeting your daily water requirement or taking 250 steps every hour daily or as simple as cutting out refined sugar from your diet or doing your first pull-up.
3. Remember that “six-pack abs” is not a unit of measure. I hate to break it to you but some have it easy while others just might take longer (and will require a lot more effort) before actually getting those washboard abs. How your abs look cannot measure how much work you put in to eating properly and working out. Keep going. The physique is just a bonus.