New year resolutions. They work brilliantly at building the pressure and getting us going. We are all charged up at the start of the year. We push ourselves the first week and drag ourselves the next, and then some piled up work or unplanned evenings take over. Before you know it, it’s June and you are already planning your resolutions for the next year.
The statistics for success with new year resolutions are bleak. Only 8% of people who make New Year’s resolutions stick to them. If you feel you are one amongst the 92% who end up abandoning them after one week, then this blog is for you. YogaHive is all for healthy habits and fitness goals. We live by our mantra to ‘Keep moving’. But we look at fitness as a way of life, as life itself. It’s not just something you hold on to for the new year. Here’s why this year, you should ditch the resolutions about getting fit and adapt the idea of getting fit for life.
1. Slow and steady wins the race, remember?
Yogis should know this the best. Your 45 minutes of yoga might seem slow and boring to someone who is used to 45 minutes of mixed martial arts. You’d think MMA is more strenuous and will probably get you to your goals quicker. But no, yoga heals you slowly. It builds your muscles and enhances your core. In the long term, you will have the body of an MMA expert, the soul of a yogi and the wealth of great health.
Giving yourself a tough goal in the start of the new year and then punishing yourself mentally for not achieving it is the worst way to begin. Don’t plan for the year. Plan for life and start small and slow. Give yourself smaller goals that together give you a great lifestyle.
2. New year resolutions often force us to take up fad diets.
When we miss our first goal, we are still optimistic and believe that we can get to our second one. In the rush, we often succumb to quick fixes, like 10 days to power-abs, or 7 days of the GM diet. We become vulnerable to anything that can help us get to our missed goals. Do you remember Googling ‘magic pills’ that you can pop to get fit? These fad diets to gain muscle or lose weight, might just work if you are resilient and crazy enough (for instance, crazy enough to eat 10 bananas every day!) But as soon as you will be off the diet and on to your normal routine habits, you will undo all the good. Not only will the fad diets harm your health, whatever benefit you got from them, will also vanish.
Which is why we believe, getting fit is not a quick fix. Think of it as a life-term relationship. Just resolve to yourself, to exercise every day, 5 days a week for 45 minutes. To not eat unhealthy foods for 5 days a week. To switch from soda to juice, for life! To remove carbs from your dinner, for life! To excel in yoga alignment and all those complicated asanas, for life! If you set for yourself such goals, you will notice a healthy change inside you. You will not stress about them but accept them as a part of your healthy lifestyle.
3. It’s a new year. But what about a new day, every day?
Come to think of it, we get a new day every day. A new year begins every new day. We are blessed to wake up and witness the beauty of this new day. If we start living life, one day a time, we will notice how our worries cease to exist and how every day is like a super-packed year which needs us to be fit. Get fit. Every new day.
Get fit for life.
If you have given yourself unrealistic goals this new year, look at them again from a larger perspective and try to give yourself a goal for life. Then break down your goal for life into smaller doable actions every day. If you have given yourself realistic goals and are determined to get to them this year, no matter what? Then we sincerely wish you fall in that 8% which is successful.
Keep us posted on your fitness stories on Facebook and Instagram by following our hashtag #GetFitForLife. And remember, goals or no goals, just keep moving. Feel alive and feel grateful. If you are having trouble with that, our yoga pants will surely help. 🙂
