Are Your Fitness Goals Too Complex?

What’s the fastest way to kill your New Year’s fitness goals?

Make too many. Put too much thought into them. Do too much research.

Seriously?

Yep.

According to Sheena Iyengar, Columbia professor and author of The Art of Choosing, having too many options can tank our ability to be productive. Sometimes we get confused and make bad choices. Other times, our brains freeze up and we do nothing at all.

So you could actually be dooming your fitness goals simply by trying to create the perfect exercise and diet to-do list.

Why Less Is More

In the bestseller Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell suggests that spontaneous decisions almost always turn out better than carefully meditated ones.

In the first case, we’re tapping our innate judgement and the information we already know (which is more than what we tend to give ourselves credit for) to make snap decisions.

But in the second case, says Gladwell, our judgment gets buried under an avalanche of expert advice and scientific information. We start weighing pros and cons and second-guessing ourselves.

How does this pertain to your fitness goals? Take all the new workouts you want to try. If, every time you go to the gym, you have to decide whether to do Zumba, P90X, hula hoop pilates, spinning, rock climbing and Bikram yoga, you’ll probably second-guess whichever one you choose and fret over your choice the whole workout. Or worse, you might get overwhelmed by all the choices and not even go.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to tackle Zumba, P90X, hula hoop pilates, spinning, rock climbing and Bikram yoga in the New Year.

And if your plan is to cut out sugar, processed foods and caffeine from your diet, while adding more fresh produce, protein and healthy supplements, then you're on the right track.

But plan to do it all at once, and statistically you're more likely to spend evenings watching "Castle" reruns and eating bonbons than working up a sweat at the gym.

How To Do It All

Variety is essential to your fitness regimen—it keeps it fun, ensures full-body conditioning and prevents the plateau effect. So how can you make a full list of fitness goals without dooming the whole list?

One possibility: start the year with a simple list of  resolutions, instead of a long, overly-structured one, and build on it throughout the year.

Another option is to spread out your goals. Focus on one of your fitness or nutrition goals in January, and add a new one to the mix each month.

But which first?

Well, you could compare programs down to the nano-calorie burned.

Malcolm Gladwell would probably say go with your gut.

Related Posts:

Roadmap for Adopting New Weight Loss Beliefs

The 10 Commandments of Physical Training

Resistance Bands: Deceptively Simple Exercise Equipment