Setting your attitude for fitness — and life — in 2023 …

As soon as the calendar turns to January 1 of a new year, millions of people (at least) embark on their pursuit of New Year “resolutions” about getting physically fit.

“This is the year!” they tell themselves.

“I’m finally going to lose weight and really get fit!” they claim.

But shortly after that enthusiastic start come all the justifications as to why their efforts to achieve that New Year resolution didn’t last a single month.

A key reason for the failure (an annual one for many) is because they really didn’t set the right attitude with which to engage the New Year.

Your attitude can make or break about any endeavor you face. It was Victor Frankl, who survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp, who noted: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: To choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.”

Setting the right attitude about your personal physical fitness at the start of the year will help you actually achieve the results you’re planning to pursue. So let me suggest five elements for having the right attitude that can help you be fruitful and productive in your 2023 fitness endeavors:

Come ready. Whether you’re hitting the gym, joining a class, working out at home, pumping weights in your garage, or getting and staying active other ways, come ready to put in the work and sweat it will take to get and stay fit.

Fitness never comes to you, you must build and maintain it.

That means you have to do every set of every rep of every exercise as long as it takes to achieve those strength training goals; you’ll have to walk/jog/run and otherwise move and be active to burn every calorie necessary to lose weight.

If you’re not mentally ready to push yourself toward your goals, you’ll have a battle from the start … one which most people lose (but you don’t have to!).

Be consistent. Consistency is the “secret sauce” to getting and staying fit. You can begin to regress physically very quickly; it’s being consistent in pursing becoming fit, and staying fit, that helps you steadily progress in reaching your goals and maintaining your fitness.

Be persistent. You’ll have challenges along the way — interruptions, potential disruptions, temptation to discouragement, etc. — that you’ll need to push yourself through to attain your goals. But with persistence, you can overcome what may come your way to sideline your efforts. Persist!

Be insistent. To persist, you may have to be insistent with yourself — insist that you not try to cut corners, insist you do every rep even when no one is looking, insist you put in the last mile, or insist you maintain portion control. Insist that you exercise the God-given self-discipline (1 Tim. 1:7) that getting and staying fit will require of you. If you don’t insist of yourself that you be persistent and consistent, you won’t be.

Be patient. One important help to being patient with yourself as you pursue your goals is having realistic goals. If losing weight is a primary goal for the New Year, understand that healthy weight loss is losing about 1-2 pounds per week; if you’re losing weight at a faster pace than that, you’re probably doing it in a way that is less healthy and not sustainable. Want to build muscle? You can … but it takes time; time given to consistent, persistent strength training workouts. Simply put, all the work it takes to get and stay fit is just that — work that is accomplished by doing the right things, and eating well, over a sustained (and sustainable) period of time. That will require you to be patient with yourself.

If you think about these elements of a good attitude for getting and staying fit in 2023, they’re also wise insights for life in general in the coming year. You’ll need to come ready to engage what the New Year brings, and you’ll need to be consistent in character and practice, as well as persistent, even insistent at times, and always patient.

Scotty