How Can I Avoid New Year’s Resolutions Burnout?

The excitement and prospect of a New Year leads many to adopt new exercise routines and diet plans. While a refreshed perspective and newly revived motivation to become healthier is a great thing, jumping into new routines too quickly and with too much vigor can often lead to burnout, and can make it hard to maintain any kind of healthy routine at all.

Calmer defines burnout as “the loss of meaning in one’s work, coupled with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion as the result of long-term, unresolved stress,” and symptoms of burnout often include “depleted energy levels, lower productivity, lower resistance to illness, demotivation [and detachment], and physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.” In order to help you avoid succumbing to burnout, we here at Healthpointe have compiled some of our best tips to help you maintain and achieve your New Year’s goals.

Create a Realistic Set of Goals

It’s great to reach for the stars when making a list of goals, but your long-term and life goals shouldn’t be on the same list as your short-term goals. For example, if one of your new year’s resolutions was to become more fit – but you haven’t worked out in weeks or months – it might be best to aim for working out a couple times a week, rather than setting a goal to run a marathon.

If you’re unsure about what your physical limits are, Healthpointe offers comprehensive physical exams, and can help you figure out what kinds of physical activities your body can safely handle. By learning your limits from the start and easing into a new physical routine instead of jumping into a more difficult or high-impact one from the start, you’ll be able to both avoid sustaining injuries, and maintain working toward your fitness goals for a longer period of time.

The idea of setting realistic goals can also be applied to dieting – rather than cutting carbs or your favorite snacks cold-turkey when starting a new diet-plan, try easing into one more slowly instead. This will help give your body more time to adjust, and will help you be less likely to break the restrictions of your plan. At Healthpointe, we also have a Medical Weight Loss Center, and can help you find the right weight management or diet program for you. Alternatively, our Nutrition Fridays blog series encompasses tips, tricks, recipes, and more, and can help spark new recipe ideas if you’re looking to freshen up your current meal plan.

Implement Stretching and Yoga to Protect & Strengthen Your Joints

Oftentimes, implementing a new exercise or diet routine alone isn’t enough. By creating more well-rounded routines and goals for yourself from the start, you’ll find it easier to avoid burnout. Physically speaking, implementing yoga positions and regular stretching will help “[increase] blood flow to [your] muscles to relieve…stiffness, lengthen muscles, and improve your flexibility for a greater range of motion,” according to Annie Mulgrew, a certified fitness instructor and yoga teacher. This will help you avoid injuries in the long run, and will help you grow stronger over time, so that you can attain your fitness goals with ease and continue working towards them well into the new year.

Healthpointe Can Help

Have you recently noticed issues with your health, that your new diet and fitness plans haven’t helped? Healthpointe  has a wide range of specialties, including weight management, orthopedic care, occupational medicine, physical therapy, and more. To learn more about what we have to offer and to find out if we’re right for your, call (888) 824-5580, or visit our website to schedule an appointment today.