How to Make Your Fitness Resolutions Stick
With the most wonderful time of year behind us, it’s now time for the most blunderful—at least, that is, when it comes to sticking to those New Year’s resolutions. About a quarter of all perennial promises of self-improvement are broken within the first week, the New York Times recently reported. By the end of the year, less than 10 percent will still be going strong.
I started the Second Half on July 14th, so I’m about halfway to the one-year mark. I admit that six months of clean, healthy living doesn’t make me the next Jack Lalanne. Nevertheless, I thought I’d share what’s helped me stay the course. If you’re setting out on a self-help journey of your own, I hope you’ll find some value in what I like to call my Second Half manifesto. As always, if you have other pointers, let's chat about them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Keep it Light. Fitness and fun don’t always go hand in hand. It’s a workout, after all, not a playout. It’s true, getting in peak shape is a grind, requiring hours of exercise each week over the course of many months. That’s why it pays to spend all that time doing something you love.
For me, soccer was the source. I’ve played the game my whole life, but because my career fizzled in college, I never trained that hard at it. So I decided to step up my commitment and make soccer the primary tool for reaching peak fitness. At the height of The Second Half, I was training twice a week with a personal coach and playing in another two to three pickup games. That’s the hardest I’ve ever trained, enough that I was dropping three pounds a week on average, but it didn’t feel like work because I was having such a good time.
Soccer also connects me to my childhood, which has the effect of making me feel younger. This is something I’ve actively nurtured, for example through conversations with old coaches and teammates, and by reflecting on my early playing days in my writing. To reference the Second Half tagline, it’s all about turning lost youth into full grown discovery. In my case, soccer was the vehicle for discovery. Whatever yours is, I encourage you to go after it hard.
Be Holistic. Soccer is the foundation of my Second Half, but I’ve built many other disciplines into the program. Yoga adds strength of body and mind. Acupuncture helps with pain relief and injury prevention. Meditation quiets any anxiety. Jogging increases stamina. And a commitment to healthy eating helps with weight control and nutrition recovery.
It sounds overwhelming, but once I found a rhythm, the various elements of my program started to work together, plus the multitude of activities allowed me to shift around focus as needed. For example, when a nasty foot bruise kept me off the soccer field for several weeks, I doubled down on the strength training with more yoga classes and a 30-day core workout challenge.
One note: I’m a big believer in the value of expert guidance, which means I’ve had to spend some money on my holistic program. But having the right skin in the game has been another positive source of motivation. We’ve all heard stories of people spending big bucks on fancy exercise equipment that ends up collecting dust in the basement. Paying for quality training and instruction has the opposite effect, motivating you to want to work harder.
With my "broga" instructor Kahlila Kramer in her Brooklyn studio, following our final class of 2017.
Set Specific Goals. I knew I wanted to get into the best shape of my life. But what did that mean exactly? Weight is the most measureable metric, so I started there, working with my doctor and nutritionist to come up with a target optimal body weight of 180 pounds, down from 205. This very specific goal gave me something to work towards during the first phase of the Second Half. Now that I’ve reached it, the challenge is keeping the weight from coming back.
The lab work from my annual physical helped me establish other specific targets around internal body metrics, like cholesterol and liver health. Read “Four Months to a Clean Bill of Health” for more details.
Make Yourself Accountable. Will power is not enough for me. I need to have the feeling that others are watching (and judging, even). This website is one part of my accountability plan. So is the extensive sharing I do on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Who knows how many of my friends and followers are paying attention to my fitness journey? But going public with the experience public has forced me to persevere. And all the likes and encouraging comments are a major motivator. With all the negatives around social media, the accountability it can afford is, in my mind, a major upside.
Build Community. There’s no shortage of studies showing the benefits of social interaction on mental and physical well-being. When the socializing is fitness-based (as opposed to a book club or weekly poker game), the positive impact becomes that much greater. No wonder taking group exercise classes is the number two fitness trend for 2018, behind high-intensity interval training, according to a recent NPR segment.
Team sports are a natural source of community. I don’t even know the last names of most of the guys I play pickup soccer with, but seeing them on a regular basis, chatting during warm ups, slapping hands after the match, those regular interactions help keep me centered. The same goes for my weekly “broga” class, with half a dozen middle-aged dudes coming together to unleash their inner warriors without pulling an oblique.
As with soccer, yoga is good for the body, but in both cases the soul is also nourished through the group dynamic and communal bonding. Plus, being in it with others is another incentive for living the very best version of myself, now and forever.