Well, kids, looks like we made it! 2021 is just around the corner and it’s time to celebrate! We know for some of you, that means tossing back a few beverages. And. That’s. OK. But come Jan-One, don’t forget how hard we worked all year to get our bods in shape. We need to keep it all going, girl! That’s why I created a full-body workout for you to try right now! (Kudos to all of you who signed up for my 30-Day Challenge starting Jan. 2 to keep the momentum going strong!)
Indulged In One Too Many Holiday Sweets?
Some of us didn’t miss a day of being fitness-forward during the holidays. Way to stay focused on your health goals! But let’s face it, others of us truly had the best intentions of staying super strong during the holiday season, but we got a little Fah-Lah-Lackadaisical. (If you need a little extra help saying so long to sweets, try our 7-Day Sugar Detox guide.)
So if you’re planning to continue to indulge a bit, you need to do this killer full-body sweat sesh before the NYE fun begins! We know you can do it! (Also, you might want to check out some of our toast-worthy healthy drink recipes, like this Healthy Mimosa or our Merry and Bright Holiday cocktail LINK TBD) We are gonna push hard together and build that stamina back up again, girl. This full-body workout adds an extra challenge to your routine so you can burn more fat and tone up. And it’s dumbbell free! So get ready to twist, tuck and slide your way right on into 2021.
Grab a yoga mat, or two!
Now, if you were lucky enough to get some LSF gear and apparel for the holidays, girl, grab your garb and that cool apparatus, and Let’s Go! It’s time to bring on you’re A-Game–and look super cool while you go Next Level. If not, OMG seriously you have got to check out our shop. We have it all here, girl. From the hottest apparel to the best fitness equipment. Personally, I’m in love with our new yoga mat that features ultra cushioning for extra support on my booty! Grab one for you and your bff to have the ULIMATE goals af workout together! Yasss.
So have an amazing NYE and try and squeeze this full-body workout in before you start to celebrate. We’ll see all of you babes in 2021! Happy New Year!
Sharing this barre booty workout you can do anywhere. All you need is a sturdy chair or countertop to hold onto for balance. This workout targets the muscles in your lower body, especially your inner thighs, outer thighs, glutes and hamstrings.
Hi friends! How’s the morning going? I hope you’re having a wonderful day! I’m still enjoying the blur between Christmas and New Years and staying up way too late each night watching Schitt’s Creek. David is my very fave.
For today’s post, I have an all-new workout for you! This one is a barre booty workout and is an INTENSE and fun lower body burner. We work your entire body, focusing on strengthening adductors, abductors, glutes, and hamstrings. I also included some cardio blasts to get your heart rate up and a nice sweat.
Let’s get right to it so you can start rocking 2021!
Why do we suck At Building Healthy Habits?
“I know what I’m supposed to do, I just can’t get myself to do it!” Welcome to the club – we all know what we need to do, but we just can’t get ourselves to make the important changes.
And yet, we can’t get ourselves to stick with ANY of these things for longer than a few weeks.
Why?
Simple: Building new healthy habits is tough, our lizard brains crave instant gratification, we don’t fully understand how habits are built, life gets busy, and our default behavior is often as unhealthy as it is easy.
As a result, we don’t put the right systems in place in order to make changes stick.
If you’re somebody that eats a typically poor diet, never runs, and hasn’t set foot in a gym since grade-school dodgeball with Mr. Wazowski, changing alllll of these at once is almost a surefire way to succeed at precisely NONE of them.
We’re conditioned these days to expect and receive instant gratification. If we want food we can get it from a drive-through, stick a frozen meal in a microwave, or sit down at a restaurant that’s open 24 hours. If we want a game we can download it to our computers/phones/PS5s within a matter of seconds. If we want to watch a TV show, it’s a few clicks away.
Hell, Netflix even starts the next episode for you without any action required!
We expect getting in shape to go the same way.
And this is why we suck at building healthy habits that stick.
We tell ourselves “Hey, I’ve been dedicated for a whole two weeks, why don’t I look like Ryan Reynolds yet?”, not remembering that it took us decades of unhealthy living to get where we are, which means it’s going to take more than a few weeks to reverse the trend.
And then we miss a workout because life was busy or our kid got sick. And we get disheartened that exercise or giving up candy is not nearly as fun as Netflix and video games and Peanut M&M’s.
This is where everybody gives up:
They try to change too many habits too soon
They get impatient the results don’t come more quickly
We’ll cover the specific healthy habits and resolutions you SHOULD be picking later in this article, but I have a big damn question to ask you first: “But why though?”
The First Step of Building Healthy Habits (Know Your “Big Why”)
Before we do ANYTHING with actually building habits, you need a damn good reason as to why you want to build them in the first place or the changes will never stick.
This whole “change who I am” stuff needs to be at the center of your decision making moving forward.
And if you don’t have a good reason, you’re dead in the water:
If you’re here because you decided you “should” get in shape, you’re going to fail the second life gets busy.
If you are dragging yourself to the gym because you think you “should” run on a treadmill five days a week even though you hate it, you’re screwed!
As you’re determining the habits or resolutions you’re trying to set, make the habit part of a bigger cause that’s worth the struggle.
You’re not just going to the gym, you’re building a new body that you’re not ashamed of so you can start dating again.
You’re not just learning to like vegetables, you’re losing weight so you can fit into your dream wedding dress.
You’re not just dragging yourself out of bed early, you’re getting up earlier so you can work on your side business before your kids get up so you can set money aside for their college education.
In our 1-on-1 Coaching Program and throughout Nerd Fitness Prime, we refer to this as your “Big Why.” Without it, you’re just forcing yourself to do things you don’t like to do – that’ll never last.
Tie it to a greater cause and you’re infinitely more likely to push through the muck and mire to get it done.
So dig 3 levels deep and ask “why” until you get to the root cause of WHY you want to build a new healthy habit or change a bad one. Write it down. And hang it up somewhere you can see it every day.
Got your reason? Great.
Now let’s get into the science of habits.
How to Build Healthy Habits (The Three Parts)
As Charles Duhigg points out in The Power of Habit (a must-read for anybody interested in behavior change), there are three parts to a habit:
#1) Cue (what triggers the action): It can be a feeling: I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m bored, I’m sad. Or it can be a time of day: it’s Monday at 9am, work is done, etc.
#2) Routine (the action itself): This can either be a negative action you want to cut back: I drink soda, I eat cake, I snack, I drink alcohol, I smoke cigarettes, I watch TV – or a positive one: I go to the gym, I go for a run, I do push-ups, I read a book.
#3) Reward (the positive result because of the action): I’m now awake. I am temporarily happy. My hands/mind are occupied. I can forget the bad day I had. I feel energized. I feel good about myself.
Depending on your routine/action above, habits can either be empowering and amazing, or part of a negative downward spiral. Your body isn’t smart enough to KNOW what it needs to do: it just wants to fix the pain or chase the pleasure of the cue, and whichever way you choose to respond will become the habit when it’s done enough times.
Factor in genius marketing, behavioral psychology, and an environment set up for us to fail – and bad habits rule us.
It’s why we crave certain foods, why we can’t help but check our phone every time it vibrates, and why we can’t keep ourselves from watching one more episode or grinding one more level in World of Warcraft.
Duhigg lays things out very clearly:
“There is nothing programmed into our brains that makes us see a box of doughnuts and automatically want a sugary treat.
But once our brain learns that a doughnut box contains yummy sugar and other carbohydrates, it will start anticipating the sugar high. Our brains will push us toward the box. Then, if we don’t eat the doughnut, we’ll feel disappointed.”
Picture this:
We have trained your brain to take a cue (you see a doughnut), anticipate a reward (a sugar high), and make the behavior automatic (nom nom that donut).
Compare that to a cue (you see your running shoes), anticipate a reward (a runner’s high), and make the behavior automatic (go for a run!).
The Dark Knight himself said it best: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”
Let’s take a look at each part of the habit-building process and start to hack the sh** out of it!
Learn Your Cues: Recognize the triggers.
Whether you are trying to change an old habit, stop an unhealthy habit, or begin a healthy habit, it starts with the first step in the process:
“The Cue.”
If you want to stop drinking soda, but feel like you need it every afternoon to get through work, your brain has been wired to think SODA after the cue:
Cue: I’m tired, thirsty, and have no energy.
Routine: I drink a soda around 3pm.
Reward: Weeeeee caffeine! Sugar! Happy! My life has meaning!
When identifying bad habits to avoid, it starts by becoming aware of the cue that sets the habit in motion. Simply being aware of the cue is a great start to breaking the cycle:
When I get bored (cue), I eat snacks (routine), and it fills the void with a happy stomach (reward).
When I come home from work (cue), I plop down on the couch and play video games (routine), and it helps me forget about work (reward).
When I get nervous (cue), I start to bite my nails (routine), to take my mind off the awkwardness (reward).
So if you are looking to break a bad habit, it begins by identifying what the cues are that make you take the action that you’re trying to stop.
At the same time, you can mentally train yourself, just like Pavlov’s dog, to build a new healthy habit by identifying the habit you want to build and the cue you want to use to proceed it:
When I wake up (cue), I will go for a walk (routine), and reward myself with an audiobook on the walk (reward)
When I get tired (cue), I will drink black coffee instead of soda (routine), and along with the caffeine boost (reward), I’ll get new running shoes after 30 soda-free days (reward), and satisfaction from the weight loss thanks to fewer calories (reward).
When I come home from work (cue), I will walk straight to my computer to work on my novel for 30 minutes (routine), and reward myself with Netflix after I have written 500 words (reward).
So, whether you’re breaking a bad habit or starting a new one, it begins by recognizing the cue that triggers the habit.
Once you recognize or pick the cue, you can start working on fixing the routine (action).
The Key to Sustainable Healthy Habits: Use Systems
“Steve, I get it, but I still struggle with the ‘building the routine’ part…for some reason I just can’t bring myself to do it.”
Yup – welcome to the toughest part of a habit:
The Routine (the action itself!).
This is where we’re going to start thinking and acting like nerds and scientists.
Whether we’re trying to stop a negative routine (stop drinking soda) or start doing a healthy routine (start running), both need to be addressed with a different plan of attack.
For starters, we’re going to stop relying on two things:
Willpower: if you have to get yourself to exercise, you’ll give up when you get too busy or it’s too cold.
Motivation: if you need to be motivated, you’re going to give up and then beat yourself up for not being more motivated!
Both motivation and willpower are finite and fickle resources that will abandon you when you need them most. Suckers and chumps hope and pray that they have enough motivation and willpower to build a habit. That’s clearly a:
Not us though!
We’re going to remove both from the equation and use systems and outside forces to make the routine even easier to build (or tougher to build if it’s a bad habit you’re trying to swap!).
This can be done in a few ways:
Environmental hacks: making the routine easier by removing steps needed to complete it, or adding steps between you and a bad habit.
Programming hacks: add your habit to your daily calendar, track your progress daily with a journal, and make it part of your day.
We are products of our environment. We can use this information to our advantage and make the process of building a new habit or changing a bad habit easier by modifying our environment. I dig into this more fully in our article: “Build your Batcave for Habit Change,” but I’ll cover the basics here.
Look at the places you spend your time. Reduce the steps between you and a good habit, and increase the steps between you and a bad habit. You’ll be less reliant on willpower and motivation and more likely to do the healthy habit or skip the bad habit.
Here are five examples of environmental hacks you can use:
RUN EVERY MORNING: Go to sleep with your running shoes at the foot of your bed, with your running uniform laid out already. Hell, you can sleep in your running/workout clothes. Put your alarm clock on the other side of the room so you HAVE to get out of bed to turn it off.
GO TO THE GYM AFTER WORK: Pack your gym bag BEFORE going to sleep the night before. That way, every morning you already have a bag to throw in your car or bring with you. As soon as 5pm hits, you are in your car on your way to the gym. (Gym currently closed? Here’s how to build a gym in your home).
EAT HEALTHIER: Don’t give yourself the option of not eating healthy – throw out the junk food in your house and start preparing meals the night before. Put a lock on your web browser from ordering pizza online (yes, you can do that now), and don’t drive down the street full of fast food places.
WATCH LESS TV/PLAY FEWER GAMES: Use your laziness in your favor. Unplug the TV/system. Increase the steps between you and watching the TV. Put parental controls on your own system and have your friend set the time limit and the password. I knew somebody who put his TV in his closet and cut his TV viewing by close to 100%. Don’t rely on willpower – make it more difficult!
CHECK YOUR PHONE LESS: Turn off your notifications and uninstall the apps that waste your time. Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode when you are at work, and put it in your desk drawer. Don’t rely on willpower to get yourself to not check your phone when it buzzes – get rid of the buzz.
You can also use programming hacks to help build NEW healthy habits:
EXERCISE: If you want to exercise more, set calendar alerts at the beginning of your week so that every day at 8AM you receive a cue (ding! on your phone) and a reminder to do the activity. You’re much more likely to stay on target when the activity has been scheduled ahead of time.
HEALTHY EATING: Consider batch cooking! If cooking healthy meals every night sounds like way too much work (I hear you on that), consider doing it all on ONE day – it’s a significant time-saver, and it also will reduce the steps between you and healthy eating because the meal is already cooked and in the fridge!
WRITING: If you want to write a book, tell yourself you have to write 500 crappy words every day. This is how I wrote Level Up Your Life. Buy a calendar, and draw a big red X on every day you complete your task. Make your singular focus every day continuing the streak[1].
Make the Reward Momentum-Building
And we are finally at the third part of the habit:
“The Reward.”
When looking to replace bad habits, do some reward analysis on your bad habits:
Soda gives you a caffeine kick and a burst of energy in the afternoon when you’re tired.
Can you replicate that energy boost for your body in a healthier way? Perhaps you can switch to black coffee and go for an afternoon walk.
Here’s another example:
You find you spend too much time watching TV because you love escaping into worlds, and it’s affecting your health.
Can you listen to your favorite audiobook only when you walk?
This step will require some analysis, by digging into the reward you’re trying to recreate, without the negative action. This can lead your brain to some tough places, but it’s healthy to dig into it.
For example, if you want to start drinking less (or give up completely), you might discover that the reward you’re chasing is actually “escape from a job I hate” and “avoiding social anxiety.”
Dig into your reward and what your brain is craving, and then see if you can reverse engineer a healthier routine with the same reward.
And then use outright bribery to get yourself to actually do the new healthier and choose the better action/routine.
What works for science and physics also holds true to building habits: inertia and momentum will work against you when it comes to building habits…until it starts to work for you as the habit becomes automatic.
We can fix the third part of the habit-building loop, the reward, with momentum-building prizes or results to bribe ourselves to continue. With each healthy and positive reward, with each completed routine, we make the habit sliiiiightly more likely to become more automatic the next time.
In other words, create rewards that reward you back!
DO reward your routine (running for 5 minutes every day for 30 days straight) with a reward that makes you want to keep running (a snazzy new pair of running shoes).
Our new app, Nerd Fitness Journey, specifically follows this “cue, routine, and reward” format to help build new habits. In the app, we “reward” you with cool loot and XP, so you can level up (literally) while you getting lean and strong.
If you’re interested, you can try it for free right here:
5 Hacks for Effortless Healthy Habit building
Your life will get busy.
There will be days when you don’t want to do your new habit. Or you want to backslide and go back to old habits. Actually, that will pretty much be every day, especially early on.
So don’t leave it up to yourself!!!
Stop relying on yourself and start relying on outside forces. Here are the best tips you can use to get yourself to actually follow through with a habit:
1) RECRUIT ALLIES: find a friend or group of friends to build the habits with you. A recent study [2] showed that:
Among the weight loss patients recruited alone and given behavioral therapy, 24% maintained their weight loss in full from Months 4 to 10.
Among those recruited with friends and given therapy plus social support, 95% completed treatment and 66% maintained their weight loss in full.
You do not have to go on this habit-building journey alone. Building a guild or recruiting a group of people to support you and help you and make you better could be the difference-maker in building habits!
When your friend is already at the gym waiting for you, you HAVE to go. If it was up to you, skipping out and watching Netflix has no negative consequences. Recruit friends and allies!
Remember, those first few weeks are the toughest, which means they’ll require the most effort to get started.
2) CULTIVATE DISCIPLINE WITH ACCOUNTABILITY: When you can’t get yourself to follow through on a new healthy habit you’re desperately trying to build, make the pain of skipping the habit more severe than the satisfaction you get from skipping it.
Allow me to introduce some BRUTAL consequences:
Every time I skip ______________ this month, I will pay $50 to my wife/husband/friend who will donate my money to a cause I HATE.
Every time I decide not to _______________ this month, I have to run around my house naked.
Every time I do ____________ when I shouldn’t, I will let my three-year-old do my makeup before work.
Do any of these results sound like fun? If you can’t afford to pay your friend $50, if running naked around your house might get you arrested, and if you’ll get fired looking like a drunk clown thanks to your kid’s makeup skills…maybe you just do what you know you need to do. The more painful it is to skip something, the more likely you’ll be to actually suck it up and do it.
3) NEVER MISS TWO IN A ROW. What happens if you miss a day? Who cares! One day won’t ruin you – but two days will, because 2 becomes 30 in the blink of an eye.
As pointed out in a research summary: “Missing the occasional opportunity to perform the behavior did not seriously impair the habit formation process: automaticity gains soon resumed after one missed performance.[3].
4) DON’T PICK HABITS YOU HATE: “Steve I know I should run so I’m trying to build a running habit even though I hate running.” Stop.
Can you get the same results with a different habit, like rock climbing or hiking or swing dancing? Pick a habit that isn’t miserable and you’re more likely to follow through on it.
At the same time, we have tons of success stories of people who went from hating exercise to loving how it feels.
It’s because they made the habit part of a bigger picture: “I am working out because I am building a kickass body so I can start dating again!”
It’s because they had a BIG enough why to overcome their initial dislike of exercise until they learned to love how exercise made them feel.
5) TRY TEMPTATION BUNDLING: Consider combining a habit you dislike with something you LOVE, and you’ll be more likely to build the habit.
If you hate cleaning your apartment, only allow yourself to listen to your favorite podcast when you are cleaning or doing the dishes.
Want to go to the gym more? Allow yourself an hour of watching Netflix, but ONLY while you’re on the elliptical.
The Secret to Fulfilling Your Resolution (Do Less)
Now that you’re educated like a boss on the different parts of a habit, it’s time to build one!
I’ll leave you with a final bit of advice: if you decide that you want to run a marathon or save the world or lose hundreds of pounds, you’re going to screw up unless you internalize the following information:
DO WAY LESS.
Or in the immortal words of Kunu from Forgetting Sarah Marshall: “The less you do, the more you do”:
Pick ONE habit, make it small, and make it binary.Something that at the end of every day you can say “yes I did it” or “no I didn’t.”
Habits that are nebulous like “I am going to exercise more” or “I’m going to start eating better” are more useless than a Soulcycle membership for Jabba the Hutt.
Here are big examples. Be specific. Be small. And track it:
Want to start exercising more? Awesome. For that first week, ONLY go for a walk for just 5 minutes every morning. Literally 5 minutes.
Want to start cooking your own healthy meals? Just aim for one meal per day or one meal per week. Whatever works for you and your schedule.
Want to stop drinking a 2 liter of Mountain Dew every day? Scale it back to 1.9 liters a day for a week. Then 1.8 for a week. Then 1.7…
Want to get out of debt and build the habit of frugality? Start by saving an extra five bucks a day, or finding a way to earn an extra 5 bucks a day.
Want to learn a new language? Speak your new language out loud for 10 minutes per day. That’s it!
Keep your goals SMALL and simple. The smaller and simpler they are, the more likely you are to keep them. And the habit itself pales in comparison to the momentum you build from actually creating a new habit.
I don’t care how many calories you burn in a 5-minute walk, just that you can prove to the new YOU that you can build the habit of walking, and only then can you up the difficulty.
We’re thinking in terms of years and decades here! So think small.
My real-life example: I wanted to build the habit of learning the violin at age 31, but couldn’t get myself to do it because I told myself I was too busy, which is a lie (“I only have 25 minutes; I need 30 minutes to practice…might as well not practice at all”), and thus I never played!
Once I lowered the threshold to “I have to only play for 5 minutes per day,” it gave me permission to pick it up here and there – and I ended up practicing WAY more frequently, and got better much faster.
I still suck, mind you, but I’m lightyears ahead of where I was before!
And please: DON’T BUILD ALL THE HABITS AT THE SAME TIME.
If you’re new to building habits, or you have never stuck with anything long enough to make it automatic, it’s because you did too much. Habits are compound interest.
As you build a new habit, it bleeds over to other parts of your life and makes future habits easier to build too – momentum!
“Willpower is like a muscle. It can be exercised and practiced and built up. It can also be forgotten, weakened and atrophied.
Just like going to the gym and building up strength and endurance, you can build up your discipline and willpower over a long period of time by setting and accomplishing a series of tasks on a consistent basis.”
You’ve probably tried the whole “build all the habits at once” and it doesn’t work. So try building ONE habit for 30 days. And then pick a habit that stacks on top of that one and helps you build more and more progress and more and more momentum.
Start today: Pick Your Habit and Go
I’ll leave you with a final quote from Duhigg’s The Power of Habit:
“If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you chose them to be. Once that choice occurs – and becomes automatic – it’s not only real, it starts to seem inevitable, the thing…that bears us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.”
You’ll need more brainpower initially, until your default behavior becomes the automatic habit-building you’re chasing.
With each day of you building your new habit, you’re overcoming any self-limiting belief, building momentum, and becoming a habit-building badass! And then those habits become automatic. Then, we rejoice:
So today, I want you to look at just ONE habit you want to change:
Identify the cue that spurs it on – Is it the time of day? Boredom? Hunger? After work? Stress?
Identify the potential rewards – Happiness? Energy? Satisfaction?
Identify a new routine you’d like to establish that results in the same “reward” from the negative behavior…but in a more productive and healthy way.
And I know this journey is tough – it’s the reason I’ve been working with a coach myself for the past 4 years. Having somebody else to help me pick the right habits and focus, somebody to keep me accountable, and somebody to learn from has been HUGE!
If want expert guidance on your healthy habit building in 2021, let’s make it happen! You can sign up for a free call with our coaching team in the box below to learn more about the program and see if it’s the right fit:
I want you to leave a comment below: pick ONE habit that you’re going to build this month and identify the three portions of the habit you’re looking to build.
Good luck – now go build some momentum.
And ONE habit.
-Steve
PS:Our new app, Nerd Fitness Journey, is all about creating new habits! It’s designed so when you wake up in the morning, you have a “cue” on exactly what “routine” to get started with. Plus, we “reward” you with cool loot and XP, so you can literally level up.
Hi friends! How’s the day going? I hope you’re having a great one so far. It’s pouring today, so we’ll prob snuggle up with some movies and I’ll catch a BODYPUMP workout in the garage. I’ve also had fresh planner nearby so I can jot down ideas for our upcoming fitness challenge and content for the new year.
As I set my intentions for the upcoming year, I always like to go back and check out my blog posts to see which ones performed well. Some of these are usually expected, and some are complete surprises! It gives me a little glimpse into the type of content that you’re looking for and I like to use some of these ideas to plan future posts.
When I’m planning my content for the next year, I also use your survey suggestions and topic requests. If you haven’t done this year’s survey yet, please take 3 minutes here! Your feedback is invaluable to me (and yes I’ll have a sneaky giveaway to celebrate this week!).
This was the house project I was most excited about! It made such a huge difference in our kitchen and really brightened everything up. It took quite a while (I think it was 5 days total??) but saved us a ton of money and the results were so worth it.
I had a feeling when I wrote this post that it would do well because it’s something that I had to research SO much before we got our guinea pigs. We knew we were getting them for the kiddos, but I was adamant that our house would not smell like a barn. We’ve had them for over a year now and the method has worked well for keeping their habitat clean and smell-free.
Peloton was a huge theme with my top posts because I think so many people are Googling for Peloton-related content. If you have any Peloton specific post requests, please let me know! I’d be happy to create some more sample plans with workouts from the app.
This was from that one time my mom and nana potty trained Liv in 24 hours. It was glorious, I tell ya. The funny thing is that I can’t really give potty training tips to anyone because I’ve never really done it. Mom and nana helped Liv and it was super easy and fast, and P potty trained herself when she was two and we lived in Georgia. She screamed at me to not put a diaper on her, so I didn’t, and she was fine. I definitely got lucky with that whole situation.
My heart is still broken from losing our sweet, sassy, fur baby. I feel like I’ve pushed a lot of my grief aside (not healthy, I know) because I can’t think about it too much. I miss her every single day and I can’t believe she’s not here anymore.
This is still one of the best things I’ve ever done. I feel SO much better without them in my body and my energy levels are great and my hormone levels are stabilized. I truly think my body was giving me the sign that it was done with them, and I’m so happy I decided to go for it.
This is another one of the posts I wrote because I felt like there was a lack of info out there. These are my tips for setting up your bike properly and safely unclipping.
Seriously, who else is excited about the fresh beginning we get on Friday? I am SO READY. I always love the new year, and this year I’m particularly antsy for the change.
The January 1 start is so awesome because it really invites us all to make big changes. I know people don’t usually stick to their new year’s resolutions for very long, but I think it’s so cool that we get this time where everyone thinks about their 2021 goal setting together.
How do you want to improve the year ahead? What changes do you want to make? How do you want to wrap up 2021 feeling?
It’s exciting to think about! But it’s even more exciting to actually accomplish all the things you’re dreaming about now. That’s hard to do, for sure, but it IS possible, I swear! I know because I’ve literally changed my life by setting goals and sticking to them.
To show you what’s worked for me, I thought I’d lay out my resolutions for the new year — and my tips for keeping them.
My 2021 goal setting
I’ve been thinking about my New Year’s resolutions for a while now. I have like 50 things I want to make happen this year, but I’ve been narrowing it down. The thing about goals is that if you have too many or they’re too hard to track, you’re going to have a really hard time making it happen. So I’ve narrowed down my 2021 goal setting to these four things:
Complete LSF 30 100%
If you’ve been a part of our LSF community for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about microgoals. Setting really big goals is awesome, but it’s SO hard to climb a mountain without charting your course. So I love breaking major things up into smaller, more achievable microgoals.
For me, the major goal of staying fit and finishing 2021 feeling stronger and healthier is key. But I’m going to take things step-by-step. I’m breaking that bigger 2021 goal setting into microgoals throughout the year. In January, that means finishing our LSF 30 Challenge. My goal is that for all 30 days, I’m going to do 100% and mark off my calendar in the LSF App each day. I know that if I start the year that way, I’m setting myself up for success all 2021 long!
I’m using two things to help me here. The app, obv, but I’m also using my LSF 2021 #GOALS Planner. Because it’s a visual reminder when I have it out on my desk or counter, it helps me stay accountable.
Create more video content
This piece of my 2021 goal setting is for you, babes! I LOVE how much you all engage with my videos, and I know that this year, connecting over video has been extra important. So I want to create a bunch more videos on a really regular cadence throughout the new year. Here are my goals, girls, so help me stick to it!
In 2021, I want to create:
2-3 workouts for Instagram each week
1-2 TikToks every day
1 additional YouTube vlog each week
Lots of good video content is coming your way! I’m scheduling the video creation out in my LSF Planner to help myself stay on track and on top of it.
Improve my posture
Real talk: I have always struggled with my posture. It’s so hard to change something you’ve been doing your whole life, you know? But next year, I really want to correct it. I have an old shoulder injury and the pain from it keeps popping up. I think it’s because I’ve spent so much of 2020 sitting at my computer and on my phone.
I’m including posture correction in my 2021 goal setting, for sure, but this is something I’m going to have to chip away at over time. I’m putting reminders in my LSF Planner to keep working on it throughout the year. Without those little reminders, it would be easy to forget. With my planner, I’ll have my posture at the top of my mind all the time so I can keep improving it!
Launch 2 HUGE secret projects!!
Ooh, babes, do I have something cooking for you in the new year! We’ve launched so much this year, it’s been honestly amazing. But it’s like, why stop there? I want to make my 2021 goal setting big so I have two MASSIVE things in store for 2021. Stay tuned!!!
Tips for your 2021 goal setting
Okay, you can probably tell that my LSF Planner is a huge part of my resolutions. And that’s because it helps me do things that I know help my New Year’s resolutions stick. Here are a few of my top tips for your 2021 goal setting — and sticking to them!
Don’t forget
The thing about resolutions is that they’re really exciting in January, but come November, you’re probably totally over them. If you really want to work on something throughout the year, it’s important to keep it on your brain. My recommendation is to go through your LSF Planner and write that goal on random pages throughout so you keep getting reminders.
Break it up
Again, micro goals! Say you want to lose 10 pounds this year. Instead of just hoping you make it by December, resolve to lose a pound a month. Again, you can write this in your 2021 #GOALS Planner to keep track.
Get help
You don’t have to do your 2021 goal setting or keeping alone! Get involved with our LSF community on Insta to get a bunch of women cheering you on!
Hi friends! Happy Monday and welcome to the blur between Christmas and New Years, where time doesn’t really matter. I personally love this week as a chance to regroup and clean after Christmas festivities – our house is a toy store explosion – and also plan for the upcoming year. While I’m not setting my hopes or productivity goals TOO high for 2021 (lesson learned from last year), I’m definitely taking time to assess and plan what I can.
I hope that my friends who were celebrating last week enjoyed a wonderful Christmas! Ours was more key than previous years, but still absolutely lovely. Instead of having the huge Christmas Eve dinner with my dad’s entire side of the family, it was much smaller.
My stepmom set up beautiful outdoor seating areas so we could be spaced out and the kiddos could play on their playground. The weather was perfection!! We ate Chinese takeout, desserts, opened gifts, chatted around the outdoor fireplace, and my dad set up a race track on his putting green so the boys could race remote controlled cars. It was pretty hilarious.
We headed back home and I prepped the egg casserole and cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. The girls put out their treats for Santa and the Pilot and I drank wine and watched Christmas Vacation before calling it a night. (Because we were home so much more this year, we had all of the gifts wrapped and hidden so all we had to do was set everything out!! Usually we’re up until crazy hours of the mornings prepping and assembling, and this year was a pleasant surprise. I’m going to try and do this again for future years!)
A huge Christmas gift: the girls let us sleep until 8am. They were watching TV in the playroom and playing, SO excited to open their gifts, but didn’t wake us up. I can’t even handle their sweetness.
We listened to Christmas music while they opened their gifts, and then mom, nana, my stepdad, Trevor, Uncle E and our cousins were over just in time for breakfast: cinnamon rolls, egg casserole, tamales, picadillo, and ALL the sweet treats. I set out a tray of cookies and peppermint bark, and madre brought over cookies, coffee cake, and grammies (I’ve had a hundred this weekend).
My fave pics from the day:
Mrs. Claus and Christmas Carol
P the explorer,
the Pilot, making his famous eggnog,
and Livi with her favorite: Uncle Jesse.
The kids spent the afternoon playing with their toys and we sat around eating sweets and watching movies. I caught a quick ride on the Peloton and we made dinner: roasted lemon and garlic asparagus, steak (a mix of NY strip and filet mignon), BBQ salmon, roasted potatoes, and mulled wine in the slow cooker.
The rest of the weekend was spent taking down decorations (wah), cleaning up, and taking a break for some time at the pool since it was 75 degrees (and the pool is heated). I’m back in the swing of things today, but before I sign off to get Fit Guides sent, I wanted to share the winner of my favorite things giveaway!
Instagram comment #9: @ksfitzpatrick
I’ll be getting all of the goodies on the way this week and stay tuned for more giveaway fun 🙂
THANK YOU so much to those of you who entered and those of you who completed the annual survey. I’m so excited to plan 2021 content using your amazing requests and feedback. I’m working on a special challenge for January based on many of your survey responses, current struggles (and things I’ve experienced myself!), so I’ll have the details on how to join next Monday. If you want to make sure you get the info first, be sure to sign up for my newsletter here.
