Hello, hello, happy weekend!…

And Happy New Year!

I hope you had an amazing time celebrating with friends and family, filled with joy and happiness.

Now that January’s kicked in, most of us are looking forward to a fresh start whilst making NY resolutions: I want to lose weight, I want to quit smoking, I want to exercise more, I want to spend more time with my loved ones … just to list a few of the most popular ones.

What’s the one thing that all of these have in common? You guessed it, health.

Both, physical and mental health & wellbeing, are what most of us are aspiring to with the advent of a new year. Now, the question is: why do we always set ourselves the same health goals every, single, year? Are we so bad at achieving them? Are we just incapable of sticking to our resolutions? I don’t think so.

The following is most likely true: during the festive seasons we probably have been overindulging in a lot of delicious food whilst celebrating with friends and family on multiple occasions. By the end of it, we find ourselves happier and potentially heavier. Now January here, our clothes fit a bit tighter as we’re getting back to business, catching up with all the unread emails, running errands… whilst running out of time to dedicate to our loved ones.

Soon enough we’ll be dreaming of the next holiday, preferably somewhere warm – it’s so cold here – and we set ourselves the aim to shred a few pounds/kg: ‘I want to lose weight, I want to exercise more’. And as we’re all too busy working out, we inevitably see our friends and family less. Thus, on the wave of nostalgia of the great time spent together we decide that this year ‘I want to spend more time with my loved ones’. There you have it, the traditional NY resolution.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate that this is nothing but a cyclical process: every year we celebrate with lots of friends and lots of food. We gain weight and memories, so we want to lose weight and create even more memories to cherish. To lose weight we give up on dinner parties and exercise more, we see our friends less. As the end of the year approaches, we get back celebrating with lots of friends and lots of food… a vicious cycle that is as simple as that.

This year, why not try break this vicious cycle by setting ourselves different goals? (Promise you’ll shred the extra weight nonetheless 😉).

So, here’s your #FridayFitTip: make a resolution that breaks the circle.

Learn a new skill, attend a new masterclass… Make it the month of renewal and soon you’ll realise that it’s not so depressing, after all.

What good New Years choices will you make, then?

Wishing you all a successful start of the year!

If you enjoyed this post, share it with friends and family to inspire them, too.

Elena ( fitness trainer and marketeer)