Let’s Talk About Fitness Goals!
Clickbait-y title success! Way to take the first step toward hitting your goals! Seriously, good for you – the first steps are always the hardest. Now that you’re here, let’s cover what to expect as you embark on your fitness journey.
I call the pursuit of fitness a journey because it’s an adventure that doesn’t stop when you meet your goal. You won’t reach a point and say, “I’m fit!” and be done. Instead, you’ll start off slow and steady to make sure that you don’t burn out, then push yourself to do a little bit more every day as you expand your goals.
Stop! Wait! Don’t leave – the fact that it doesn’t stop doesn’t make it bad! Exercising regularly can seem tedious and wasteful at first, sure, but the hardest part is making it through the initial weeks with regular exercise and diet control/awareness. Once the results start to show you’ll be amazed at how motivated you are to continue, and I can guarantee you that if you stick with it, you’ll look and feel better than you have in years (or ever!). You’ll have more confidence, energy, focus, and sex drive. While those sound great, though, they still leave out the most critical factor of success for your journey.
Why Do It In The First Place?
If you’ve read my other content, you know this is a staple for me. The best way to start (and stay) on your fitness journey is to identify your “why”. The start of the journey will be difficult, particularly if you’re someone that doesn’t get much regular physical activity right now. Having a driving reason to push through the transition and see the results is absolutely critical – and no, a New Year’s Resolution won’t cut it. I’ve seen so many new faces show up at the gym in the first weeks of the year, only to disappear forever shortly after.
Before getting into the 3 steps, take a moment to lock in your “why”, the driving reason you’re wanting to do this! It will help you, I promise.
Step 1. Identify Your Fitness Goals
All right, you’re armed with your “why”. The next things we need to address are your fitness goals – more specifically, what are they? Let’s dive into some of the more typical goals below.
Goal: Lose Weight
Losing weight is definitely the most common reason someone would look at exercise and diet nutrition. We live in a world where physical activity is no longer needed for our survival – we can work from home, snack whenever we want, and watch Netflix all night. It’s understandable that losing weight is a goal for so many people.
The basic science for losing weight is actually very simple – you just need to burn more calories than you consume. But we can do more than that! After all, when reducing calories without an exercise plan you’ll also be losing muscle, which actually weighs more than fat! This can result in weight loss that may still leave you with the dreaded “skinny fat” physique. So how can we avoid this?
I recommend focusing on a caloric deficit partnered with either regular weight lifting, cardio, or both. You should target an elevated heart rate that is optimal for fat burning. When you stay at this heart rate during a workout, your body prioritizes fat for energy instead of sugars and carbohydrates[mfn]https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/fat-burning-heart-rate[/mfn].
This can be determined using the equation below, but I’ve also provided a calculator to make things quicker for you.
Fat Burning Heart Rate = (220 – your age) * 70%
Weight Loss Recommendation
- Straight weight loss: Medium-to-heavy intensity cardio with caloric deficit, targeting fat loss target heart rate
- Cutting/toning muscle: Focused weight lifting with caloric deficit, targeting fat loss heart rate
- Use our Daily Calorie Target Calculator to see how many daily calories you should consume to meet your goals
Goal: Build Muscle
“Cultivating mass” (kudos if you get the reference) is a very common fitness goal as well! It helps to fill out your clothes, builds strength, and builds confidence quickly. One mistake a lot of people make, however is trying to lose weight and build muscle at the same time. There are varying opinions on this, but mine aligns with the idea that building muscle while in a caloric deficit is extremely unlikely. The body needs a caloric surplus to repair the torn muscles and build them back, bigger. Macronutrients are too significant to summarize here, so look forward a full post on those in the future.
Given the fact that the body needs a caloric surplus to pack on muscle, it’s generally recommended to have minimal cardio when trying to put on muscle, or “bulk”. Instead, you should focus on proper form and exercise weight targets (excellent information on that in our How To Avoid Workout Injuries article), with no more than 6 reps to failure for each set. Lower reps will help to fatigue the muscle quickly and allow for growth once repaired.
As for cardio, a 3 mph walk (ideally at a slight incline) for 20-45 minutes, twice a week, will be plenty! You’ll want to make sure you aren’t burning too many calories when keeping focused on your heart health.
Muscle Building Recommendation
- Weight lifting (4-6 reps to failure), low intensity cardio 2x/week, focusing on caloric surplus
- Use our Daily Calorie Target Calculator to see how much you need to meet your goals
Goal: Improve Cardiovascular Performance
Of all the fitness goals in this article, this one is the most challenging to me. Improving your overall endurance and cardiovascular performance really comes down to pushing yourself with medium- to high-intensity cardio. This can be through HIIT (high intensity interval training), which is a mix of high-intensity and medium-intensity bursts in a single workout, endurance training by pushing for greater distances with swimming/running/rowing/biking, or through competitive sports. The key here is to keep pushing yourself to go further and harder every session.
Cardiovascular Performance Recommendation
- Focus on HIIT, distance-based cardio, or high-intensity competitive sports
Goal: Just Feel Better Overall
This is the easiest one! You can improve your quality of life with any or the above recommendations, but they don’t need to be the highest intensity. If you aren’t getting much movement now, any regular exercise will pay dividends. A mix of body-weight workouts, yoga and stretching, light-to-medium intensity cardio, and a healthy, balanced diet will keep things interesting and help you feel much better every day!
All Around Better Recommendations
- Mix of body-weight workouts, yoga and stretching, and light- to medium-intensity cardio
- Highly recommend YouTube for workouts – there are so many to choose from that meet all workout and intensity levels. Some recommendations to get you started:
- Use our Daily Calorie Target Calculator to see how much you need to meet your goals
Step 2. Build a System to Meet Your Goals
Okay, so you know what you’re shooting for! But what will you need to help you meet the goal? When I started I was shooting in the dark, trying anything and everything under the sun. It took a loooong time for the results I wanted to come through, and that was only with calculated research and planning. Let’s take a look at what helped me find success – hopefully it will do the same for you!
Training Calendar
Planning your workouts is key to staying consistent and progressing. You don’t necessarily have to plot out a month or three, but plan out a rotation and do you best to stick to it. Don’t worry too much about missing a day either – just make sure you make up for it the next day. Missing once is a slip up, missing twice is stepping toward failure.
Diet/Food Prep Plan
Having healthy food options available is absolutely key when focusing on your fitness goals! If you have a bag of Cheetos and uncooked meat side by side, which will you choose if you’re strapped for time? Be honest – you’d probably choose the quickest option!
Food prep removes this obstacle by having healthy options available at a moment’s notice. Buy some awesome food prep containers from Amazon, cook up your meals in bulk, and distribute them evenly. Problem solved!
The other half of the food prep equation is nutrition. You can technically food prep pizza and macaroni, but those aren’t really helping you along, are they? This is where I’d recommend searching out nutritionally-balanced recipes (check out the FIThinking Recipes to start!)
Gym Membership or Home Gym
A question you might have is “Where do I start?” If you’ve noticed the trend in FIThinking articles and Instagram posts, I’m a huge advocate for home gyms. These allow for quick workouts, no commute, less opportunity to make excuses, and save you money in the long run. But are they right for you?
If you’re just getting started, I’d actually recommend getting a local gym membership. The community of a gym can be very motivating, and the act of driving to the gym can really help to pump you up if you have the right music going! It also has a lower barrier to entry, usually requiring a single up front fee then a recurring monthly fee. Just make sure to remember that everyone is self-conscious when they first start going to the gym. Rest assured, aside from seeing an unfamiliar face, no one will be watching you work out and judging you. We gym rats are all too focused on our own workouts to pay much attention!
I got started in 2008 with a Weider weight bench and some basic adjustable dumbbells. While it isn’t what I would do today, I do understand the desire to get up to speed at home before going in front of other people. If you are looking into building a home gym, the FIThinking Home Gym Shopping Guide will get you going with recommendations on where to start!
Step 3. Track Your Progress To Stay Motivated
The single greatest factor in making continuous progress is tracking that progress. If you don’t know how far you’ve come, or what to push past, how can you feel like you’ve done such awesome work? I recommend the following apps to keep tabs on how far you’ve come and where you can improve.
Workout Tracking Apps
- StrongLifts (iOS and Android)
- Free: Full use of the basic 5×5 workout programs available
- Paid (I use this, well worth it!): Customizable workouts with the ability to add your own exercises with any set/rep combination, progress charts, etc.
- Strong Workout Tracker (iOS and Android)
- Free: Unlimited workouts but limit of 3 custom routines
- Paid: Unlimited workouts, unlimited routines, and additional PRO features
- Stacked Workout Tracker (iOS)
- Free: Ability to create custom workouts, log progress, track progress with graphs, calculate weights with plates, etc.
Diet/Nutrition
- MyFitnessPal (iOS and Android)
- Free (does everything you should need): Tracks all food meals, macros, and calories. Ability to scan any product to pull up nutrition information
- Paid: Removes ads, allows tracking of macros by gram instead of just percentage, food analysis, day-specific calories and macros, etc.
- Noom (iOS and Android)
- Free: Only available with free 2-week trial
- Paid: Provides virtual coaching team, meal and exercise logging, biometric tracking, weekly challenges
- FIThinking Daily Calorie Target Calculator
- Free: Allows you to accurately forecast the calories you should be taking in for your goal and activity level.
- Re-evaluate every month or so to make sure you’re adjusting for your progress!
Conclusion
Congratulations on starting your fitness journey! I can confidently say that if you stick with it, you’ll be more confident, more energetic, and happier because of your hard work! Let’s have a quick recap of the topics:
- Step 1: Identify Your “Why” And Your Fitness Goals
- “Why”: What’s going to keep you on the right path when things get tough?
- Fitness Goals:
- Lose weight
- Build muscle
- Improve cardiovascular performance
- Just feel better overall
- Step 2: Build a System To Meet Your Fitness Goals
- Plan your training and stick to the schedule
- Prepare food so you aren’t tempted by quick unhealthy options
- Buy a gym membership or start building a home gym
- Step 3: Track Your Progress To Stay Motivated
- Workout tracking apps
- Diet/nutrition tracking apps
- FIThinking Daily Calorie Target Calculator
There you have it! Are you new to the world of fitness, or are you a veteran looking for some tips? Share your fitness journey updates in the comments!
