The holidays are an excellent time for family and friends, delicious food, and making memories, but let’s be accurate: they are not the best time for reaching your fitness goals. It’s essential to focus on reconnecting with your fitness routine or starting a new one so you can show up as your best self.
Keep reading for tips on starting small, easing back into exercise, fueling your body the right way, and reaching your fitness goals in 2025.
Focus on setting small goals at first. If you typically only get 4,000 steps a day, aiming for 15,000 steps a day might be too much of a jump. If you’re drinking 32 ounces of water daily, trying to drink a gallon of water may work for a few days, but after a week or two, you’ll return to where you started.
Instead of jumping from zero to one hundred, aim for 6,000 steps during the first week of the new year, and slowly work up to your 15,000-step goal week by week. Aim to increase your water intake by 8 ounces each week; before you know it, you’ll drink a gallon. We take the same approach to hit your fitness and nutrition goals at Solstice Fitness and Nutrition!
What’s an easy way to get injured? Jumping straight back into high-intensity workouts without any preparation. If you weren’t moving a lot during the holiday, start easy. Focus on low-intensity workouts that increase your heart rate; this can look like fast walking on the treadmill, yoga, stretching, or even swimming if you have access to a pool!
When you return to lifting and HIIT workouts, focus on form first to avoid overexertion, injuries, and unnecessary discomfort.
When you fail to plan, you plan to fail! We know you’ve heard that before, but it’s true! Whether you plan to walk thirty minutes each morning before work and follow a specific nutrition routine or commit to our combined fitness and nutrition program, having a plan is better than setting an arbitrary goal.
Special Tip: Use an app or a notebook to track your workouts and nutrition so you can improve and adapt as you go along. When tracking your workouts, you can focus on progressive overload or increasing your weights incrementally each time you workout. On the contrary, when you track your eating, you can see if you need to increase your protein intake, decrease your calories, etc.
Motivation and accountability will look different for everyone, but here are a few ideas. Pick what interests you! Consider creating a vision board with your fitness goals for the 2025 season. Are you interested in tightening your core? Do you want to run a 5K? Whatever your goals are, create a reminder you can see daily to serve as motivation.
Consider one of our group fitness classes if you thrive on connection and a little competition. Group fitness classes give you a chance to meet others with goals similar to your own and can serve as a great place to foster new friendships and even find an accountability partner.
If you’ve been working out for a while and are tired of the same routine, consider trying something different that helps keep your body moving. This can involve joining a pickleball league, a virtual challenge, signing up for a salsa class, finding a new trail to hike on, signing up for a fitness event like a 5K, or anything else that speaks to you.
Fitness shouldn’t be monotonous or boring! You deserve to move your body in ways that are fun for you.
The most important reminder is that you don’t have to be perfect! Instead, it’s essential to consistently follow an easy-to-handle routine instead of trying to tackle everything at once. Create a realistic timeline for your goals so you can achieve sustainable results. Lastly, focus on celebrating your effort, not just results! Remember, it’s about creating a lifestyle.
At Solstice Fitness and Nutrition, we are committed to helping our clients approach their goals holistically. If you’re ready to leap in 2025, click the link to book a no-sweat intro call!