2810: Why January Fitness Resolutions Fail

there's only one place to go. Mind, on mind, on with your hosts. Sal, to Stefano, Adam, Shafar, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, and today's episode, we're going to talk about why most January transformations fail.

We're going to break it all down for you and help you improve your odds of long term success. By the way, we have a guide that helps people with nutrition. And it's three phases, it's three steps. It's called the maps transformation diet guide. So it's maps transformation diet.com.

Go there, get the guide. It'll take you all the way through all three phases to help you build muscle and burn body fat. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor.

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Head on over to minepumpstored.com. That's it. Join the rest of the show. You had a goal in January. You started along the path towards that goal.

Guess what? Your fail rate. 95%. That's what the data shows. We're going to talk about why most of these January transformations fail.

And what you could do to not be one of those statistics. This is a... Don't be a failure. We're coming around the corner, or maybe we've just passed actually. That's statistic, as far as the time and the year.

Yeah. I believe it's right around right now. Yeah. When everybody stops. Yeah.

“Most people, first of all, I think, they can be burned out.”

They don't. This is on average. Obviously, I'm over generalizing. They start to membership about mid January. They either purchase it beginning or middle.

And there's your gyms' statistics. Yeah. And then they get going. And they really don't start going. Until about February.

Make it through February. Some of March, if not start to fall off by March, end of March. April. And then by May, everybody's pretty much going. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. By the way, this is just... This is like consistent, yeah. Jim industry figures.

You see, like, you can bank on it. Like a 30 to 50% in some cases. Sometimes more. About 30 to 50% increase in membership enrollments. In January and February, you'll see this as well.

And it just explodes. And then they come and they show up and they work out. And then they stop. And it's very predictable. And a very small percentage of them stick around.

And even smaller percentage of them use the gym. So what I mean by that is, they're still a small percentage of keep their membership. They just don't cancel. They're not coming. Yeah.

And the ones that do keep it and show up are even smaller. And then if you look at larger broader data on weight loss, for example, which we have the best statistics on. A good 90% of people fail or gain the weight back, I should say, within a year. And that's dismal. That's dismal, you guys.

In other words, if you, and by the way, if you're listening to this, you've probably done this yourself. If you're trying to lose weight, you've probably lost weight in the past and gained it back. That's the odds. Yeah. So the real problem here that we need to solve is not the weight loss goal.

That's not the problem. That's not the challenge.

The problem is maintaining and staying consistent.

That's the real challenge adherence. Because it's a much larger percentage actually succeed in losing the weight, even though it's not a huge percentage. It's still much larger than the amount of people that actually keep it off. So we have to do is look at this problem properly. And a good trainer and a good good coach understands this.

We see the real problem. What's that saying? A problem well defined as half solved. Yeah. And so to really define the problem, it's how do we maintain this?

“Because success isn't losing weight, success is keeping it off for the rest of your life.”

That's how we have to define it. And so I think it's important. We talk about the main reasons as coaches and trainers. We saw that why people failed.

And then how can we fix this?

So I'll start with number one.

“And this one, it sounds simple, but it actually makes a big difference.”

People set the wrong goal. So I'm not talking about it's too big of a goal or they're doing more that they, you know, bite off more than they can chew. We'll get there because that's part of it. What I mean is someone says my goal is to lose 30 pounds. Rather than my goal is to just work out two days a week or three days a week.

In other words, if you set the goal on the actions, the results are more likely to follow than if I just set the goal as the result. And then try to scramble along the way. Yeah.

Another way to say that too is that they're focused on the outcome versus the root cause.

Right. A lot of people show up and they say things like I'm 30 pounds over. 30 pounds over weight or 50 pounds over weight. And that's the problem. That's the issue and it's like that's not the root cause.

“And so I think you have to understand the root cause that got there to then first set the proper plan in place.”

Because if you focus just on the 30 to 50 pounds that I need to lose, then a lot of the things that you take action towards. End up setting you in the wrong direction completely or cost things like burnout or just a terrible plan is a terrible strategy. So to give you an example, like, you know, just to make it kind of basic and simple and clear. You could have one person that says my goal is to lose 30 pounds. You could have another person who says my goal is to strength train two days a week and make sure that I get at least a 30 minute walk five days a week.

There's no no results goal. It's just the goal is I'm going to strength train twice a week. That's how I'm going to be consistent with that. And I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk and enjoy the process. They are far more likely to actually accomplish the the 30 pound weight loss and the person who says my goal is to lose 30 pounds.

Right far more likely. So it's about the process. So this is where you set your goals because remember the process is what leads to the goal that you're after or the results that you're after. The results don't lead to the proper process. In fact, if we focus too heavily on the result, then what ends up happening with the process is we go all over the place with it.

And we change it up when the result ends and happening fast enough. We overcorrect or we you know do things that aren't going to get us toward where to go or we do things that are not sustainable. And so it's the process.

“This is where you should set your goal and then don't worry about the result it takes care of.”

Well, not to mention the the result can be very misleading sometimes. We just had an example of this right now. I'm coaching current. And if we were just focused on the result of or just looking at body fat percentage or just looking at muscle that we gain. And we get back a test that isn't ideal or doesn't show us this an amazing result.

Yeah. Then easily could throw up our arms and go like we're doing the wrong thing or effort just give up or course correct really hard and just doesn't work that way. So it many times focus on the result. You in in the wrong direction and it's not as simple as the scale and how we look all the time that those aren't the best indicators or signals that you're doing the right things so you're far better off from out the gate. Not having a goal that is focused on that and having a goal more like I'm going to become a person this year.

Who works out twice a week always just that's going to I'm going to be like that.

My goal is at the end of this show here I am at the beginning of the year and December come Christmas time I'm still a person who all year long lifted weights. Twice a week and I just didn't miss that was my thing like I made sure I lifted way to find a way in those workouts to really start to enjoy working out that's enjoy lifting weights. How can I get there have to mentally tell myself and really like reiterate how what I enjoyed from that say that's right. So so to go deeper with that if the goal is I'm going to lift weights twice a week.

Let's just say and I know this is what I want to be consistent doing so the goals through that. What ends up happening is you start to find ways to do it in a way to where you enjoy it. You're not even thinking about the destination you're just like if I'm going to do this. For the rest of the year twice a week and that's the goal and the result I'm not worried about I don't probably take care of yourself I'm not worried about that. Then what it's going to happen with my workout is it's going to change appropriately to fit what I enjoy because again what's the problem the problem is consistency the problem isn't.

The problem isn't losing the weight it's consistency that's the problem when you tackle the other thing that's really important about letting go the result and just focusing on that is that's the first step in you being able to connect the dots to the other things that are so powerful. So if you're just so focused on on the weight on the scale or how I look in the mirror. Then a lot of times you ignore all these other benefits that are happening it's like well if I if I let go of the result and I go okay I'm just going to just do be the person who's out then it starts to open my eyes to the other things that these workouts start to give me it's like oh wow more energy I've got more energy throughout my day or oh wow I'm much stronger oh wow I'm sleeping better oh wow I'm less irritable oh wow I'm more productive all of a sudden it starts to broaden your perspective on all the other things that.

It gives you all these and that makes this far easier to make it a sustainable thing that you do for the rest of your life you can't do that until you let go of the result piece so much and then start to open your eyes to the other thing right the person who loves working out is going to work out forever versus the person who just loves the result all right so next up is.

“people will start in an unsustainable way and this is this is very innocent and I don't think people.”

Even think that they're starting in an unsustainable way and motivated brain that's right so you know January comes around and you've got this state of mind. This hyper motivated you just come out of the holidays you know you may be gained some way like cool new year new me and whenever you make whenever you set a plan in a motivated state of mind.

It's always assuming even if you don't think of this you're assuming that this is going to be your state of mind always we've all done this we've all set.

goals when we're motivated and then later when we fell out of motivation which will happen suddenly it seems unsustainable like man I know I was hyped. I'm just not feeling it right now and so we have to understand is a motivated state of mind is a temporary state of mind there nobody is always hyper motivated or to put it differently very rare that you find someone that's super hyper motivated all the time I never had to get and I never had to convince somebody to exercise and eat right when they were motivated it was always when they were feeling.

“So whenever you take a step you have to ask yourself is this something that I will do even when I don't feel nearly as motivated when I feel unmotivated.”

Is this something I'm going to stick to and if the answer is no take a smaller step.

Take the step that you know you can maintain for the rest of your life start there by the way when you do that and if you're able to stay consistent with that which if you do this right your odds are pretty high. Then what happens naturally is you want to take another step moving forward and it just happened naturally I'm consistent I said 10 minute walks a day that's what I thought I could do consistently.

“Next thing else is like a part of my life and I'm like cool I want to I want to add one day at the gym I think I can maintain that and then you do that and then you end up building momentum and by the way this is a great part of this.”

That motivated state of mind occurs more frequently when you do this right so if you love feeling motivated which we all do.

To get more of that more often if you start the way that we're saying but if you bite off way more than you can chew right out the gates you're sitting yourself up for failure and this and the data shows us and we've experiences. If you fail enough times if you lose weight and gain it back enough times there's a number that you'll stop and eventually give up. Well then it's truly adopting this as a lifestyle change which I think is thrown out there a lot like people say like you know I'm going to change my life so I'm going to work out but really they're in it to fix a problem and I think that it's very short term thinking of weight wise or body fat wise or aesthetic wise.

Like they want to achieve this thing and then get there and then be like okay and I can come back to you know how I was living whereas if I'm taking this methodically this is one thing I know that I can repeat consistently going here on out and then build upon that it's it's all this like maybe it's slow in the beginning but it's it's definitely a long term trajectory of like going forward and progressing versus looking back. So this is the difference between the person that we said goes you know I'm going to become this person who works out twice a week for the whole year you know every single week versus the person who's like I'm going to train seven days a week like and you're both these people are coming off the previous year of not doing anything or very little or never staying because this is with anything.

So to overcome it yourself to something like seven days a week is very unrealistic in fact you committing to two days a week from the entire year consistently would be more consistent and more than you have ever done. Yeah, so so the goal is set yourself up that is going to stretch you beyond what you're currently doing which is pretty much anything because you're not doing anything you know prior to this. And go I'm going to build on that so like just because you have the availability or maybe you even start with you know five days you know you're going to the gym and stuff like that because you are in that state of mind so.

But you didn't commit to that you said I'm going to at least go to so I've seen this where you go I'm going to do at least that and hey this week is the beginning and you're motivated so you show up there five times or you whatever the next week after that we know two is the minimum right you tell yourself this is the minimum and so set the set the bar. That is stretching your capacity that it's more than what you've done in the past but not so much more that it's unrealistic that you can do this even when you're not motivated even when you have a hard week even when you have some setbacks even when maybe you get sick.

Stronger version of myself, but that's not the right mentality but you're trying to transform into is somebody who likes to exercise and someone who likes to eat healthy.

That's what you're that's a transformation how do I transform myself into somebody that values exercise and likes it and values eating healthy and likes it by the way what's the side effect of that right somebody who likes exercise somebody who enjoys eating healthy. What does that person look like well that's the person that you're trying to physically transform into so rather than focusing on the result or the end of the equation focus on what happens in the beginning.

“So so that's why it's a slower process because when I when I try to convey this message to people oftentimes they get impatient.”

But I want to do this now like what do you talking about is going to take a long time. I get that and I get the excitement around it, but you're going to fail if instead you say okay I need to turn myself into somebody that values this and enjoys doing it a few days a week that values. Eating healthier. What does that look like well like any real transformation takes a little bit of time so you take that first step that's challenging like Adam said but not something that isn't sustainable and start there.

And it will build upon itself it does every single time by the way the other option is a 100% fail so there isn't fast fast option and slow option there's a one that works and one that doesn't.

“The next thing is that there's no plan right you don't have any plan it's just go move and I guess I'll just eat less you know type of deal.”

Structure it out give yourself a little bit of plan when it comes to your workout okay this day and this day at this time these are the blocks in my schedule I'm going to go exercise on those days what about your diet start very slow and give yourself a bit of a plan like a plan is a big deal here everybody having no plan with this boy. Here's what happened if you don't have a plan you tend to just do a lot of everything and either you see some progress initially and then you plateau or you see some progress and you want to accelerate that progress but because you're already doing so many other things.

You want to add more of and I don't really like doing this and this is sustainable and you end up feeling just like they same business right where they say feeling the plan is planning to fail it's so true this as well yeah I would I would argue that it's it's 50 50 there's no plan and then the other 50 or it's a bad plan. I'm going to do this as much as I can all the time cut it like it's it's a lot of times you ask when you have a plan they they'll say yes they do but the plan is so bad it's just like this it's destined to fail it's like I'm going to build a house what's your plan I'm just going to swing and hammer as hard as I can.

Every day every day every day everything else in every day that I have a moment of time free time I'm going to do this this thing you're right and it's this like it's going to build a house without a plan no and you'll eventually get burnt out you're going to make a bunch of mistakes you're going to have setbacks and then you'll get burnt out then you'll quit it's a a lot of times it's either no plan at all or the plan is really a terrible plan because it's literally just goes hard and do as much as you can when you can it's like that's a terrible plan and then back to diet nutrition often times people adopt a diet.

“I'm going to try this one specific type of diet or this plan the fail rates on the is through the roof instead just do this just take one or two steps and I'll give you two I'll give you two steps.”

That will get you 85 to 90% of the way there for most people for most people number one avoid heavily processed foods. I know that's not a diet but I'm going to tell you right now for most people if you just did that lots of things would change you build a little bit of muscle and you definitely lose some body fat most people I've done this with just this one step. lose 10 to 15 pounds alone all they did was avoid heavily processed foods and they just made as much as they wanted.

The second one eat your target body weight and grams of protein from whole food add those two together you have yourself a plan that includes whatever you want to throw in there.

Eat until you're satisfied and you follow that long enough consistent enough. Guys you're going to fall into a nice body fat percentage with good muscle and strength ladies same for you and it's two steps. It's two very, basically everybody that's heard us talk about anything as a bit like raising their hand right now like oh I know I know like we just reiterate that the death for a reason. Yeah, it's those two things are like so impactful you can't deny like what that does in terms of like you know how it really just like shapes your behaviors like nutritionally.

I mean it's it's a similar concept as the approach to the workout thing it's really distilling down no doubt.

Strength train a minimal effective dose as consistently as you possibly can so what does that look like a couple days a week that's it has strength.

“When it comes to nutrition like pick one or two things that you can do differently in your diet that will make a huge difference over time and do that consistently what's that process foods hit your protein.”

You do those two things those are the bangers for the nutrition side just you do those things for the strength training side and a lot of the other the main the 80% of all of what you ever want to get out come from a comes just from that. And then to your point that you made earlier about the the exercise the dieting works the same way too this out I've just had this conversation I just got back from a family trip and my my my cousin's husband.

I was sitting down with me and said hey man what I really want to make an effort to get to get healthier and he's a relatively he's the one who I sent the blood work to you.

Oh yeah, that's something's right. And I said listen I'm I'm going to send you a map's 15 program and then literally all I want you to do is is to count your grams of protein and and cut out as much process food as you can you do and that is like it and just do those two things consistently. And then I said I promise if you do that for 60 to 90 days you this is either going to it's going to be a thing that you love and you want to do it and then I'll give you the next layer and it's like nutrition is the same way it's like.

Just go do those things you're going to get so much results from that and then that doesn't mean that we can't take this to another level but that's going to take you so far it you I know that person comes back to me goes like oh my god this is amazing. 7% like then you can get the next level and we can tweak some more things but most people find if they were to just do that they achieve that in fact they achieve beyond work because most people that have gotten 50 pounds overweight don't even think it's possible they could ever.

You know look like somebody who really works out they're just like I just don't want to be that I just want to get rid of this being healthy and cycle if you just do that I'm going to get you pass that fact I'm going to get you really good shape and there's a whole other level to this if you really want to get that that's right lastly this is a huge mistake just because most people's goals or lose weight if they don't focus on building first right they want to lose weight so this is what they focus on right off the gates and I get it sounds like it makes sense.

“But building strength is the best place to start obviously if you want to build muscle but I don't know you can see of that if you're going to build muscle.”

But if your goal is to lose weight it's hard to convince you what do you mean bill well here's a deal. Getting stronger building muscle is going to make fat loss a lot easier it's going to speed up your metabolism. You're going to make your body burn more calories on its own and it's going to make the fat loss way easier if you start right out the gates with just trying to lose weight. You end up in this hard place where you end up plateauing oftentimes your calories get real low you've gotten some results but you haven't got all the results.

“And then you're stuck eating very little feeling like you're doing all the exercise and it just doesn't feel like it's worth it versus we start with the build.”

Let's get strong let's focus for the next three months let's just get strong don't worry about anything else just get strong. And then after that let's focus on getting leaner suddenly that comes off your body you're eating more food than you thought you needed to and it'll lose weight and it's an sustainable place. That's the part that's so magical about this is to think that you can go get to a place where you get in the shape that you want to be in and you're eating as much or more food than you ever thought you could.

And that and that's the difference between the person who decides to get on their fitness journey and do nothing but cut calories and move more versus the person that's decides I'm going to be a person who lifts weights get strong and then follow those steps and build muscle.

It makes this so much easier and what do we always end up finding out how often do you get somebody who messages back to you and goes like I'm winning out.

Yeah, yeah, even though that's not the goal the goals to build muscle build the metabolism I'm still getting leaner but they find themselves waste is coming in getting stronger eating more food it's just it makes this whole process so so much easier and so much better by doing this but it's not the for it's not it's not common knowledge it seems counter productive when here somebody who needs to lose a bunch of weight. To actually think I'm going to go to the gym and try and build when they think I need to shrink it's really counter intuitive so I think that's why so many people fail here and this is again back to my point of why I think some people have a plan it's just a really bad plan a lot of times the plan is cut all this stuff.

Go to the gym as much as I possibly can run on the treadmill much fans like that's a horrible plan a much better strategy would be for us go to the gym two days to three days a week lift weights get strong hit your protein and take eat in either in a maintenance to a surplus to try and build muscle and watch what happened. Yeah, which leads me to this we have a transformation diet guide that takes you through three phases phase one is what's known as a reverse diet and so this is kind of like what we said eliminate.

And we have this available for everybody right now go to maps transformation diet dot com it's a guide breaks it all down for you it's very inexpensive once again maps transformation diet dot com you can also find us on Instagram it's my put media will see you thank you for listening to mind.

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