New year, same old workout goals but here’s some advice

Losing weight might be the most popular new year’s resolution.

If that’s the case, and it’s something new, the advice is to start with small goals and track your progress.

“Be specific and measurable because how do you know if you met your goal?” nutritionist Cindy Solis of Gundersen Health System in La Crosse said. “It needs to be something you can measure.”

Those steps should help you see progress and keep you motivated. Setting ridiculous goals could get discouraging and lead to giving up. Those goals can be exercised based or diet based.

“If you’re eating 1-2 servings of vegetables a day, aim for 3 to 4,” Solis said. “If you’re walking 10 minutes a day, try to up that by 5 minutes a day or 15 more minutes a week.”

Drastically changing diets isn’t recommended, either. The goals can be simple there, too. Subtracting a can of soda a day or switching the mid-day snack from chips to an apple.

“Diets that tell you to eat specific foods, that’s probably a bad diet,” Solis added. “Or, if its something that tells you to drastically cut back on calories or completely cut out carbs, those are all (diets) you want to stay away from.”

Perhaps the best advice to keeping motivated is to find someone that has similar goals and keep each other accountable. Whether that’s meeting at the gym at a specific time or tracking your daily steps with each other.