Our guide to achieving your 2021 health and fitness goals
Step-by-step guide to finding a long-lasting change - not just a quick fix
Have you ever started the Fall or the New year with so much ambition that you decided to cut out most of your bad habits and exercised more than ever? Have you also found yourself a few weeks later with less ambition, less motivation, and maybe back to similar habits as before the new year started?
January and September are the most popular months to start working out. But they are only the first step in building new and healthier habits. The real change happens during the following months, where you turn your new habits into long-lasting change. What would a journey like this look like?
About this guide
The ideas in this guide are most well known and battle-tested by me personally and hundreds of women I have coached. This guide is in three parts and a summary. You can read it holistically or deep dive into each specific topic.
1. Set reasonable goals and a strategy to reach them
Setting a goal is very important, and I bet you already have one or more in mind. The easy part is setting goals, it’s more complex formulating a mental strategy on how to reach them. It’s all about your way of thinking. Great results do not happen overnight. They come from small changes that are applied consistently over time.
1. Small daily actions, over a long period is the key
“Take small steps towards your health and fitness goal, consistently over time, and you will reach what you are after”. This mantra comes from the book The Slight Edge. The path towards your goals is many small steps. Each positive daily action might feel insignificant, but add them together over time and you will have made great progress towards your goal. If you are able to spare 30 minutes, three times a week, for a workout, you will have finished 156 workouts in a year.
2. Things are easy to do, and also easy not to do
Many people push themselves to do something for a short time, but not many will do the things they should do over an extended period of time. When the little things we do are looked at individually, we don’t value their importance. But we should. The most important key to success is having the discipline to do what you know you should do even though you don’t feel like doing it.
2. Implement a balanced diet
Have you decided to limit sugar and carbs in the new year? Or maybe want to eat more plant-based? Whatever it is you want to try, go for it. But do it in a way that is sustainable in the long run. Eating healthy, eating clean, is all about a balanced journey. And eating well most of the time is the key to getting the results you seek.
1. Restricting all your favorite food might not be the best way
A common diet method for many women I talk to is to completely deny themselves the food they love - “Bad food”. Research has shown that this approach is not a recipe for success and it also creates a negative relationship with the food you eat. You need to change your eating habits in small steps in order for it to last longer. Put your focus on what you are eating healthy, rather than think obsessively what the “bad food” you had. By focusing on healthy eating and allow the “bad eating” to take less space in your head you might slowly start to change your perspective.
2. Eat clean (most of the time)
There is so much information out there about diets, what to avoid, and what you have to eat to become healthier. It's a jungle of information and it may be confusing to make "correct" nutritional decisions. But, it is not that complicated. It is actually simple. Below are three best practices that are great to start with to implement healthier eating habits into your life.
Avoiding processed food is important, the more ingredients a food includes the more you should limit the intake. Added salt, sugar, low-quality oils and so much else are ingredients to limit. If it's pre-cooked, canned, frozen, or packaged, it is most likely processed.
Eating plant-based does not mean becoming vegan or vegetarian. It means that you include more plant-based food into your life, such as greens, grains, nuts, legumes, and beans. If you choose to have meat, then pick quality meat.
By variety I mean be creative with your diet, eat colorful dishes, and add different kinds of good fat, protein, and carbohydrates into your meals.
3. Balanced workouts
It is very common to start the new year by exercising very frequently. Even though it can be good to kick start a new year with force, our goal with such efforts is to make working out a part of the routine. The risk is always that too much too quickly will be what causes you to feel overwhelmed and drop out. Let’s explore how you can pass that January hype, and continue onward with a reasonable workout schedule that can be sustained in the long run and become a part of your lifestyle.
1. Follow a plan, have a schedule
This is perhaps the single most important step in a journey towards any health and fitness goal. Having a workout plan creates accountability towards yourself and provides you with structure so that you aren't wondering what to do next. It can be a system you keep in your mind, but for the best result, have something written down. How many workouts you think you can do during the week, what type of workout and the time you have for each one. On Withsara we offer our members their Weekly Schedule to solve exactly this problem. We plan the week for you with the freshest workouts on Withsara, so you only have to show up and work out, and reap the rewards. This is now the most popular feature on Withsara.
2. Add variety to your workout routine
While physical workouts are the core of Withsara, our goal is to nourish the body and the mind. Moving, breathing and keeping the body and mind in a healthy balance is what I think is the most beneficial combination for overall health. We have found that our members enjoy doing a 30-min home workout one day for the sweat and burn, but the next day select a Yoga session to decompress and release stress. Whatever your workout platform is, a running trail, a gym or online workouts, make sure to add variety for a balanced body and mind.
3. Having a partner increases accountability
Workout partners provide a powerful combination of support, accountability, motivation and, in some cases, healthy competition. In this day and age, this can mean planning a run together with a friend, or inviting a family member to join you on your online workout platform.
4. Conclusion
There is no better feeling than being in a good workout routine, eating healthy most of the time and experiencing progress towards your goals. The most efficient way to reach a healthy balance in your diet and workout plan is to have clear goals and understand what steps are needed to accomplish them over time.
The guide to reaching your health and fitness goals in 2021 is rather simple. Think further than January and use the first month of the year to create a sustainable routine. Eat healthy and clean most of the time, add variety to your dish and don’t be too hard on yourself for having a treat every now and then. Work out regularly and consistently throughout the year, with a plan that you can follow, exercises you enjoy and preferably with a friend on the journey with you.
2021 has for sure been a year with a lot of challenges for many so let’s enter the next month with a strong physical and mental mindset, ready to take on whatever the next months have to bring.
Hi! I'm Sara, the founder of Withsara. I have been a fitness group instructor, Barre teacher and Yoga teacher for over 10 years. I am also a certified Nutritional Health Coach from IIN in New York, USA.
After giving birth to my two beautiful daughters, I have had to build up my body twice after my pregnancies. With my experience, I have created a workout that is a great combination of low impact, functional movement, pilates, barre, and yoga. It builds up deep core strength, creates sustainable and lasting change, relieves physical tension and mental stress, and gives you an overall healthier and happier body.
