It’s the time of the year where we’re all given a fresh start to set our goals for our New Year’s resolutions – find a new hobby, save more money, or improving our fitness. However, albeit a popular resolution, the latter can be particularly difficult.

Fortunately, experts at SET FOR SET have highlighted five ways to stay fit and healthy while enjoying the festivities. 

Plan exercise in advance 

While January is a quiet time for your social life after plenty of catch ups with family and friends over Christmas, returning to work and adjusting to a busy schedule can be hectic. When work gets in the way, it can be easy to make excuses to not exercise.

Block out your calendar with your work schedule and any extra-curricular plans – make sure to consider the times where you may finish work later, or it might be your turn to do the school run. Once you have added these to your calendar, you can figure out the days you have free time for exercise, whether that be a morning, afternoon, or even a whole day. By taking an organized approach, you avoid neglecting fitness while ensuring that you have time for other activities. 

Stick to full-body workouts 

If you’re just getting into fitness, it can be daunting to visit the gym almost every day. Doing too much too soon can also cause burn out if you’re a beginner, or even if you’ve just had a break over the holidays.

Full-body workouts are an excellent way to keep your physical activity up while also leaving room for resting. Doing so means you no longer need to make several trips to the gym during the week to train a different body area in each session. Exercise classes like Pilates and HIIT are a great way to target all muscles in an hour or less, so they’re perfect for when you’re on a time crunch. 

Socialize while you workout 

Not only does working out with a friend make exercise seem less intimidating, but a fitness partner can also be a great way to push yourself further and keep you motivated. 

Whether you head to the gym together, partake in a class, or go for a run, bringing a friend along makes you much less likely to cancel or make excuses, which, in turn, keeps you in the habit of exercising. As well as this, you can track one another’s fitness progress to recognize when either of you have met a goal, whether that be short-term or long-term.

Opt for home workouts 

The cold weather at the beginning of the year can make exercise much more of a burden, and the time it takes to travel to and from the gym might be inconvenient if you have a busy schedule – so home workouts are an excellent way to ensure that you can’t make excuses.

If you don’t have equipment like dumbbells, you can stick to bodyweight exercises like planks, push-ups, and side lunges – remember to adjust your rep range to around 25 to ensure that your muscles are adequately worn out. For cardio, exercises like star jumps, squat jumps, mountain climbers, and burpees are great to get your heart racing. 

Eat healthy foods to compensate for treats

If you’re holding back on indulging in treats due to your fitness goals, you can implement healthy foods into your daily routine to ensure you consume enough nutrients after having a treat. Without having a cheat meal or snack every now and then, you take the risk of quitting completely – so it’s perfectly fine to indulge on occasion.

Vegetables are a great way to consume nutrients from your meals if you’ve had a cheat day; for example, broccoli and carrots are both packed with nutrients, such as vitamin C, an antioxidant that protects your cells and keeps them healthy. It’s important to remember that steaming vegetables is the best way to cook them instead of boiling them, as doing so retains the nutrients that you need to stay healthy. Without doing so, you may miss out on an abundance of nutrients that would have made up for eating a treat.

A spokesperson from SET FOR SET has commented: “Many people across the nation will have fitness goals set in place as part of their New Year’s resolution, whether that be to lose weight, build muscle, or simply to exercise more often. However, with little planning into how to stick to the goals, lots of people might be second guessing their resolution, and may even be close to giving up.”

“With these tips, structuring workouts is much easier to give yourself lots of time and prevent excuses – as a result, you can enter the right mind of frame that is needed for fitness and keep on pushing.”

This information was provided by SET FOR SET, whose mission is to help you reach your fitness goals and become the best version of yourself by equipping you with knowledge and resources.