Podcast Transcription: How Can I Finally Make My New Year Resolution Stick in 2022?  

Ted Ryce: So, it’s New Year’s, and I bet you have some New Year’s resolutions if you’re like most people, but did you know that approximately 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions drop them by the second week of February? If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ve heard me share that statistic, maybe you’ve heard me share other statistics. So, it’s not looking good for your goals.

And that’s why today in this Real Talk Friday, we’re going to talk about why resolutions fail and three things you need to do differently to make your resolutions a success. What is up, my friends, welcome back to the show. And if you’re just tuning in, for the first time, I’m your host, Ted Ryce, coach to executives and entrepreneurs and other high-performing professionals.

And in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the best way to set your fitness goals for success. And this one tweak can change your losing strategy, which it probably is now, just being honest, into a process that makes it impossible to fail. So, make sure you do this, make sure you listen to this and follow through with what I share with you before you set any goals or maybe go back and change your goals after listening to this.

The second thing we’re going to go into is how to turn weak goals like “I want to lose 20 pounds” into powerful goals that will last long after you lose the weight that you want. And if you do it the way that I’ll show you, or share with you, you will transform your goal into something that will transform your life, instead of something short term that will probably just go back—just regain the weight and go backwards.

And the third thing is what to do when you get busy and start to fall off the wagon. So, skipping this will set you up for failure. And as I mentioned at the beginning, 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions, drop them by the second week of February. But what I didn’t mention, what I want to share with you now is most don’t even make it that far.

The wearable company, Strava, did some number crunching with their users data and found that January 19 was the day most people give up on their New Year’s goals. They even gave it a name, they called it Quitters Day as a result. And I’m sharing this not to dissuade you or to discourage you, but to encourage you to do this correctly and to do this the right way.

Because I do have good news: after helping hundreds of clients achieve lasting change with their health and fitness, I can tell you, there are crucial elements to how do you go about making fat loss a success, a long-term success.

So, let’s jump in: number one, set specific and measurable goals. And I want to ask you, what is your goal right now. Because if it’s too, “Oh, I just want to get in better shape, I just want to lose some weight,” that’s not going to work. Get clear on what you want to do.

For example, in our coaching program, we set the expectation for our clients that they’re going to lose 20 to 30 pounds in 90 days. In fact, they lose four to six pounds in the first two weeks, it’s really easy with our strategies to get 20-pound weight loss. Now if you’re doing this on your own, I wouldn’t set a goal like that, the average is one pound per week.

So if we’re setting a 90 day goal, for example, then I would say one pound per week, so 12 pounds in 90 days. 12 pounds in 12 weeks, 12 pounds in 90 days, however you want to think about it. That’s what I would set for yourself. Don’t try to accomplish what I accomplish, because you don’t have the skills, the knowledge and experience that I do.

Basically, you wouldn’t want to represent yourself in court or do your own taxes, right? So don’t use my standard as yours. This is crucial. And it goes beyond just setting specific and measurable goals; you need to base them in reality. And the reality is if you’re getting one pound of weight loss per week consistently, you’re doing a great job, that’s great progress.

Now we get extra great progress, but then again, it’s a paid coaching group. I get paid for results. And that’s why people keep coming back and signing up with me because I get way better results than what people can do on their own. So set your goal specific and measurable.

And by the way, in case you want to know my goal, my goal is to get down to 10% body fat by February 2, my birthday, so I’ve got about a little bit more than a month to make that happen.

So that’s a specific and measurable goal. Now once we have that specific and measurable outcome goal, we need to set habit goals to make the outcome goal inevitable. What do I mean by that? Well, how do you lose 20 pounds in 90 days or 12 pounds in 90 days or whatever it is? What are you going to do?

Because what you do on a daily or weekly basis or maybe monthly basis is crucial. So, here’s what we need to do. We need to set some habit goals. What are the habits, what are the daily or weekly habits that you need to do to hit your health and fitness goals, to hit your fat loss goal? And maybe to help you do that, I want to share with you what we do in our coaching group.

Number one, track your nutrition daily. We use My Fitness Pal. I’ve tried a lot of other apps, and My Fitness Pal is one that I think is the best. So, we have our clients track daily on My Fitness Pal. That’s the standard. That’s the habit. How do we make them lose 20 to 30 pounds in 90 days? Well, this is the number one habit.

The number two habit is do three workouts per week; three resistance workouts per week. Walking on the treadmill isn’t resistance training; it doesn’t matter if they’re doing Pilates or doing bands or kettlebells or whatever it is—actually, we write their programs, but it needs to be resistance training three times a week. It doesn’t have to be 90 minutes or 20 minutes or 43 minutes, but they need to hit three workouts per week, whatever time they have to dedicate to resistance training, to their workouts.

Those are the three things that they need to do. So, we have our daily goal of tracking nutrition, our weekly goal, three workouts, and I’ll give you a monthly one as well, monthly habit goal, just to give you an example of the different timeframes around these habit goals. We have our clients, when possible, do a DEXA scan every month.

And I say when possible because sometimes a DEXA scan or embody, you know, with the opening and closing – with Coronavirus, it might be hard to do it, but when possible, we have them do a DEXA scan every month. Now why do we do that? Because it tells you a lot more than what’s going on with your body, it tells you a lot more than the scale will. It tells you not just how much weight you’ve lost but how much muscle you’ve gained and how much fat you’ve lost.

So those are examples of three habit goals, tracking nutrition daily with My Fitness Pal, three weekly workouts and one monthly body scan, body fat scan.

The third thing that we need to do is to expect setbacks or relapses. We need to expect setbacks.

So, we set the goal of tracking nutrition daily, we set the goal of three weekly workouts, we set the goal of one monthly DEXA scan.

But the thing is, do you think any of our clients are 100% with their habits, they track from when they started the program to when the program ended? Do you think they did everything every week, every day they tracked, every week they worked out three times, every month they did the DEXA scan? No, things come up, unexpected circumstances happen. It’s part of life, and it’s part of training your adaptability.

So when you expect setbacks, it takes the sting out of when it happens because what happens to a lot of my clients, especially when they start working with me, ooh, they are on fire. They’re already motivated, because only very motivated people sign up for a coaching group like mine. And then they get results quickly, they feel like, “Wow, this is the exactly the thing that I needed. I feel unstoppable now,” and they just keep losing weight, keep crushing it, which is great.

But I always tell them, “Look, it’s only a matter of time before life throws you a curveball, and it’s going to take you off track so expect the setbacks and prepare for them. And the setback may not be a negative thing, by the way. It could be a positive. It could be, “Wow, I went on vacation, I drank a little bit more than I thought and I started eating a bit more because my inhibitions were disinhibited by alcohol.”

And it may be kind of a good thing, a positive thing; you’re hanging out with your friends and having some drinks and eating some more food than you thought.

But what’s important here is what did you learn from the setback, and how can you do better moving forward? So two things here, number one, expect setbacks and number two, when they do happen, don’t take it personally and think that you’re a failure, because that’s what a lot of people do: “Oh, I was perfect and then I went on vacation and now I’m not perfect, and I just fucked everything up.”

No, you didn’t it. That’s normal. Nobody has a perfect record. Not me. Trust me. I’m way better than you at this stuff and I may still mess up.

So, expect the setbacks and when they happen, learn from them so that you’re more prepared next time. So that is what I want you to do. Those are the three big ones today. Let’s just go over each one more time. So set a specific and measurable goal.

So in our coaching program, we tell our clients 20 to 30 pounds in 90 days. For you doing it on your own, I would say 12 pounds in 90 days. And if you do more, great! But be realistic, because what you don’t want to do is set a high standard and not be able to reach it and then feel like a failure. So set specific and measurable goals. And I want to ask you, do you have a specific and measurable goal? If not, pause this and write one down right now.

Then the next thing you want to do is set your habit goals to support that outcome goal. The outcome might be losing 20 pounds, or let’s say 12 pounds in 90 days, but what are you going to do to make that happen? What are the daily, weekly or monthly things that you need to do to make that happen? Write them down, and a little bonus tip, put them in your schedule, don’t try to remember, put them in your schedule. What gets scheduled, gets done.

And three, expect setbacks and learn from them when they happen so that you’re better prepared for the next one.

And if you do these three things, you are going to crush it, you are not going to fail. But most people, they don’t do this, they set a goal to lose some weight, they go to the gym a bunch of times, “Bro, I’m going to go to the gym every day, I’m going to eat low carb or go on a diet,” and then they burn out, instead of pacing themselves with some habit goals and expecting the setbacks.

And it’s not even a bad thing if you start off that crazy. But then when the setback happens, when you’re starting to feel burned out, you don’t give up, you adjust. And if you do this, you’re going to succeed, you’re going to succeed!

So yeah, we knocked it out of the park today. I hope you enjoyed today. Make sure you follow through on this. And I would ask you, what is the big takeaway from today that you can go on and take action on? So what is the big takeaway from this episode that you can go and take action on right now? Because it’s the action that is going to build the habit of action.

And if you start to build those habits and do it the way that I’m telling you, success is going to happen. You’re going to hit your goal, you’re going to hit your goal and then some. You’re going to turn it from a habit into a lifestyle, into an identity, and you get to put it on autopilot and enjoy your life. It’s as simple and as hard as that, folks. And if you’re looking for some help, you know who to talk to.

Hope you have an amazing weekend and speak to you on Monday! key