How To Make Sure Your New Year’s Resolution Doesn’t Fail

Making Gains and Keeping Them in the New Year

Making gains and keeping them in the new year.

After the first of the year, every year, fitness facilities nationwide are overrun by people seeking to change their physiques. The infamous New Year’s resolution is all about habit modification. Regardless of the resolution, by definition we are resolving to change our current behavior.

I believe I once saw a statistic claiming that a large percentage of resolutions were aimed at improving the body. The exact figure should be source-checked before preserving it as fact. The larger point stands: body-oriented resolutions seek something profound, a total and complete physical transformation. All the exercise devices, all the fad diet books, all the workouts, all the time, money and concentrated effort are aimed at sparking a dramatic body makeover.

To put a finer point on it, a dramatic physical makeover has two component parts: a radical reduction in body fat and a radical increase in lean muscle mass. Many desired traits, better endurance, more strength, improved athletic ability, vitality and confidence, are helped when the trainee becomes leaner, stronger and more muscular. The goal is clear. The confusion arises over mode and method.

How do we become leaner and more muscular? One useful way to answer that is to first describe the land mines and pitfalls, the dead ends and reasons why we fail. The Taoist sect of Wu Wei would arrive at the truth by examining “wrong” actions. Here are the major reasons your fitness resolutions fail and what the proper remedial solution is: do the opposite.

The Major Reasons Fitness Resolutions Fail

1. Fragmentation: there are four core elements to any successful physical transformation: progressive resistance training, cardiovascular training, nutrition and the psychological aspects. Weight training with barbells and dumbbells builds muscle. Cardio strengthens the guts. Nutrition, coordinated with intense exercise, makes us leaner. We need a mental approach. Normal people ignore one or more of the four critical disciplines. You need a game plan that has a plan of attack for all four disciplines and is executed simultaneously.
2. Starvation dieting: anyone can lose body weight by starving. The problem is that severe dieting can cost muscle, crush training performance, distort appetite and make long-term adherence nearly impossible. Slashing calories too hard is a bad bargain if the scale drops while muscle, strength, and enthusiasm are burned up. Don’t starve yourself. The goal is not merely to weigh less. The goal is to carry more muscle and less body fat.
3. Diet devoid of exercise: dieting without exercise makes true transformation a half-measure. Further, the exercise needs to be intense, consistent and progressive. Sophisticated transformational templates weave together separate and distinct cardio, lifting and nutrition game plans enacted simultaneously. Realistic goals in weightlifting, cardio, body composition and bodyweight are established. Small weekly benchmark goals are established and achieved. Periodized cycles are often 8 to 12 weeks in length.
4. The need to reset the diet: we consume vast amounts of industrial food, highly refined carbs, pastries, candy, sugar foods, canned foods, trans-fat-laden frozen foods, high-fructose corn syrup, and alcohol. The old wording called this “detox.” Use caution with that word. This is not a medical detox claim. The practical point is simpler: stop eating junk, get in touch with real hunger, regain the sense of taste, and reintroduce potent, nutrient-dense foods slowly and deliberately. Some experienced trainees use a brief fast or strict food reset to mark the start of a diet, but fasting is not automatically safe or necessary for everyone.
5. Willpower and enthusiasm: the resolution maker uses willpower to initiate the process. Since willpower is finite, at some point enthusiasm needs to take over from willpower to power the process. Enthusiasm is born out of tangible results. When measurable physical results appear, we become enthused for the process and adherence becomes easier. The key is finding a cohesive, comprehensive transformational system, one that delivers results before willpower gives out. Lacking tangible results, we quit.
6. Lack of workout structure: what is the best division of available training time? To mount a serious transformational effort, resistance training and cardiovascular training each need weekly time and attention. If resistance training is done with sufficient intensity, 2 to 3 short sessions per week can suffice for many trainees. Naturally, if you have the time and inclination to lift more often, the program can be adjusted. Aerobic training creates a different flavor of intensity: sustained intensity. As a rough example, if you have 45 minutes to devote to training, use part of the session for progressive resistance training and part for aerobic training.
7. Everyone plays to their strengths: we are slaves to our preferences and biases. We love to do the things we are good at while avoiding the things we dislike and are not good at. Naturally, the big gains lie in bringing up weak points. A lagging body part suddenly trained hard and often comes up fast. It goes against every fiber of our being to go against our nature, but that is where the big gains lie. You could be a great weightlifter that hates cardio, a great runner that hates weightlifting, a great athlete that ignores nutrition. Attack your weaknesses.
8. Switch out lite, low-fat and fat-free for nutrient-dense: the public has been taught to be fat-phobic. The real enemy is not one single macronutrient in isolation. The problem is fake food: empty carbs, industrial carbs, sugar-heavy packaged foods, and foods engineered to look healthy while delivering little nourishment. Many “fat-free” foods are simply processed foods wearing a halo. The transformational athlete eats nutrient-dense power foods that support a body shattered by high-intensity training. Food volume is determined by the weekly bodyweight and body-composition goals. Whatever the goal, switch out artificial for natural.

Safety Note for Fitness Resolutions, Dieting, and Training

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on New Year’s fitness resolutions, physical transformation, resistance training, cardio, nutrition, and mindset. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, fat-loss, cardiovascular, rehabilitation, mental-health, or programming advice.

Major diet changes, fasting, severe calorie restriction, aggressive fat-loss goals, hard cardio, heavy lifting, and sudden training increases are not automatically appropriate for every person. Age, medications, cardiovascular health, blood pressure, diabetes, eating-disorder history, orthopedic issues, injury history, sleep, stress, and recovery capacity all matter.

Build gradually. Choose realistic goals. Do not starve. Do not use “detox” as an excuse for extreme dieting. Stop or scale back for chest pain, faintness, dizziness, unusual shortness of breath, sharp pain, numbness, confusion, hypoglycemia symptoms, severe fatigue, sleep disruption, disordered eating patterns, uncontrolled technique, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for a Resolution That Lasts

Equipment does not keep a New Year’s resolution. The plan, the logbook, the food, the cardio, the lifting, the mindset, and the adherence keep the resolution. Equipment simply gives the trainee useful tools.

For the resistance-training side of the resolution, readers and facilities can compare dumbbells, Olympic weightlifting bars, selectorized gym equipment, and plate-loaded leverage gym equipment. Specific strength options such as IRON COMPANY urethane dumbbells and the Iron Grip OB-7 industrial chrome Olympic weightlifting bar may fit certain training spaces when the lifter, room, floor, and intended use align.

For the cardiovascular side of the resolution, compare exercise bikes and indoor rowing machines. Specific cardio options such as the Spirit Fitness CU800 commercial upright fitness bike and BodyCraft VR500 Pro commercial rower with air and magnetic resistance may fit some home or facility settings.

The equipment supports the resolution. It does not replace the resolution.

Related New Year’s Resolution Reading

For a companion article focused specifically on turning a New Year’s resolution into a lasting habit, read Making New Year’s Resolutions Stick. It pairs directly with this article’s message: a resolution only works when it becomes a structured plan built around training, nutrition, cardio, and mindset.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of numerous books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.