New Years, otherwise known as the Black Friday of the fitness industry

New Years is essentially the Black Friday of the fitness industry.

Everyone is rushing to find something new and exciting and every fitness professional under the sun is trying to lure you in with great deals and opportunities.

With that in mind, I want to make a few recommendations.

1. You don’t actually need to wait until New Years.

You can actually start right now making positive changes. You can make a commitment not to eat an entire box of holiday chocolates in a single sitting. You can simply decide to be mindful of how much you consume at a single meal rather than eating to the point of having a food baby or sugar coma. Or maybe you can simply decide to be more reasonable with your alcohol consumption on New Years eve thereby reducing the number of calories consumed. Whatever the case, you can start to moderate your intake right now.

2. Don’t take on too much too soon.

Despite what you may have heard, you don’t need to go to the gym 6 days per week and eat salad all day every day to lose body fat. Start with a minimum effective dose. Though this may result in more rapid results initially, this type of plan is destined to fail because is it ultimately not sustainable.

Instead of trying to do as much as you can tolerate, my suggestion would be to do as little as possible while still making progress. In terms of fat loss this might mean starting to work out 3 days per week and having a much more moderate calorie deficit.

While this might provide slower results in the short term, it will be more sustainable in the long term.

3. Don’t cut out all of your carbs.

Seriously, don’t do that. Carbs are also required to fuel your hard workouts and are necessary for optimal thyroid function. Calories, not carbs, are the primary driver of fat loss.

4. Don’t fall prey to cleanses.

Just don’t. The results of these are short-term and not sustainable. If the program you’re thinking of doing is associated with any multi-level marketing program, I would suggest you look elsewhere.

5. Be prepared to do this for the long haul.

If you want for your results to stick around, you have to go into a lifestyle change with the mindset that this is going to be forever because the second you start to go back to what you’re currently doing you’re also going to go right back to how you currently look.

Great physiques are built over months and years not days and weeks. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

Hope that helps!