One of the best things about the holiday season is that we all get a free pass on self-indulgence, enjoying a well-deserved break after a year of hard work always goes in hand with family dinners, eating out with friends, a huge feast over Christmas, or multiple if you celebrate with family, friends and your partner’s family all in one the one month! and closing it off with a lovely dinner on the New Year. It’s probably the one time of the year when we all think it’s ok to have that extra serve, or to skip the gym because well… ‘Tis the season to indulge.

However, along with the good memories and a few presents, we might start the new year with a few extra kilos we’d like to drop. Many of us make some sort of New Year’s resolution to look after our physique better, eat healthier, lose weight, or just be healthier in general. While we might hit the gym or start a diet with all the motivation we need at the start of the year, it can be quite easy to let it drift and forget about those goals.

The reality is that even though it can be challenging to stick with it, we can make it a bit easier if we know how to tackle it. Whether you’re used to hitting the gym, or this 2025 is the year you decided to start your fitness journey, we’ve put together some tips that will prove useful in the long run.

Set Realistic Goals

Everyone works at a different pace, while some want to look at the top of the mountain and charge on, others might want to take it step by step, looking ahead and not upwards. In a very literal sense, this will stop us from tripping (look where you’re going), in a much deeper sense it’ll allow us to take things at our own rhythm without getting overwhelmed. It’ll also make it easier to stick to it. Thinking “I’m gonna go for a walk” sounds more realistic than “I’m gonna go for a 20km run”. Can’t do 10 push-ups? Start with 5. Can’t do 5? Start with 1, and try until they’re 2. 

A realistic goal should be just hard enough for us to stay motivated, but not too hard that it feels unachievable. If we plan to lose some weight, not only should the number be doable, but also a healthy one. Trying to take shortcuts could harm our health.

Realistic goals will not only move us towards the main goal, they will also strengthen our self-confidence and resilience. 

Make It Easier With Small Changes

While hard work always pays off, we want to give ourselves the best chance at accomplishing what we want. Making it as easy as possible for ourselves to get to work is key to sticking to the good fight. 

Something as little as having our training clothes, water bottle and unique world-crushing heavy-metal playlist ready from the night before, won’t give our sleepy morning self any room for sabotaging our plans in the morning. This also applies to simpler things like reading more before bed. We’re more likely to pick up the book and start reading if it’s on the nightstand and not in the studio or the living room.

If we simplify our routines as much as we can, we’ll not only save a bit of time, we’ll also make it easier to just get up and go work on ourselves. It’s all about reducing friction.

Don't Diet

Counter intuitive? Maybe—but who cares? A diet has a start date and an end date. A diet is a temporary fix that will give us a temporary reward. What we ought to do is to look at it as a lifestyle change.

We can adjust the way we eat in a way that makes it easier to maintain. There’s no need for drastic changes that will only be around for a month. It’s always better to have something sustainable with steady lasting results. 

Look into quick and easy tweaks that can become habits. For example, opt for 1 teaspoon of sugar instead of 2 for the morning coffee. Get medium chips instead of large. Skip now and then the wish to order fast food. Small things like these are not hard to get used to, and once we’re used to it, it becomes a lot easier to make more changes. This will strengthen our willpower and improve our discipline.

Planning meals and batch cooking can go a long way too. If we can’t be bothered or are too busy to cook, there are some good healthy prepped meal options out there. 

Feel like snacking?—Have all healthy snacks such as fruits and nuts easily accessible on the bench. Store unhealthy snacks in places that are harder to reach or don’t buy them at all. 

If we can simplify routines for us to improve, we can also make the path to temptations harder so that it’s easier to avoid them.

We’re creatures of habit, and a diet is not a habit, if we make changes to the way we eat and turn it into a habit we’ll start seeing results that last.

Work Out & Don't Give Up

There’s no shortcut for this one, unfortunately, but we don’t need to be too hard on ourselves. Having a workout routine and a well-balanced nutrition plan is essential to getting fit, yes, but thinking of starting with a 5-day workout straight off the bat might prove too difficult to maintain if we’re only starting. If you’re experienced, you know how easy one can fall of the back of that horse, but consistency is key.

We can start slow with one or two sessions a week as long as we stick to it. Some might like running, some might like weights, boxing, or swimming. We should aim for a type of exercise we can enjoy (or at least tolerate), but most importantly, we have to go easy on ourselves. If we skip one session, that’s ok, as long as we make the next one. Losing motivation to work out can be as quick and easy as hitting snooze on the alarm, but we need to keep ourselves accountable while recognising that missing a session is not failing, provided we keep moving forward.

Trust The Process

“Nothing is easy, nothing good is free”—Lyrics to a good song by Triumph. Anything good and worth doing requires a level of commitment, hard work, and dedication. But most importantly: Trust and patience. It might seem difficult at the start, and at times it might look like things aren’t moving at the pace we’d like. But the results will come. They’re a consequence of our resilience. An effect of every single one of those small and big decisions we make along the way, of every time we didn’t hit snooze or give up after a missed session. We’re taking a bet on ourselves because one else can take us over that bridge but us. It’s that compound daily work that shapes our journey, fitness or otherwise.

Day by day and bit by bit we get closer to our goal, and once we’re there, we might realise that the goal itself wasn’t as important as the work we do today.

As the GOAT once said:

— Muhammad Ali