Happy new year and welcome back! 🥳 I hope the transition into 2024 has been nothing but delightful for you. I’m grateful for another year of Moving and Improving, and excited that you’re along for the ride! Let’s hit 2025 incredibly proud of what we made of this year.

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New Year, Same Resolutions?

I love the “fresh start” that the new year brings. I’ve always been one to make resolutions, and this year is no different. Even when I first think of them in December and say to myself, “Hmm, maybe I don’t need them this year. Maybe I’ll just vibe and see where it goes,” I still inevitably end up with a categorized, bullet-pointed list by January 1st.

Some resolutions, however, just seem to keep coming back year after year. I bet if I were to go back and find my resolutions from a decade ago, they’d be similar—albeit not as sophisticated—as 2024’s resolutions. Particularly in the realm of health and fitness.

The goalposts move, but the aims stay the same.

Though I’ve never yet checked off the resolution goal of “visible 6-pack abs!!” that inevitably weasels its way onto my list every year, I’ve probably reached and surpassed many of previous years’ resolutions by now! There may be those sticky few that stay around that I’ve never been able to accomplish. 

At the end of the day, there are only so many categories in fitness to improve: body composition, strength, speed, power, muscular endurance, cardiovascular fitness (for both low intensity long duration and peak performance). Maybe throw in things like balance, coordination, movement skill. But there’s really not much more. You can have new goals to work toward every year (or whatever time period you choose), but the basic tenets stay the same.

The concepts are few, and the methods are many. 

Whether it’s a 5k time or a deadlift weight or a body composition goal, maybe it doesn’t matter as much if we actually achieve our resolutions. Maybe the process of working toward them is what really counts.

Because without the resolutions or goals in the first place, I may have never engaged in the behaviors that aimed to get me there. Just taking the past decade as an example, I’ve certainly completed over 1,000 workouts in the past 10 years. Good chance it might be 2,000+. Without the race deadlines or strength goals or body comp dreams laid out ahead of me, I may have never endured all that exercise.

When it comes to our health, sometimes the activities are more important than the results. For example, who do you think is in better health and better shape? A naturally “skinny” guy who has great genetics and has always been semi-fit, but never engages in intentional exercise and eats what he wants? Or the guy for whom his health and fitness goals have always been a challenge, so he’s put in hundreds or thousands of hours exercising and eats 80% of his meals with healthy intention?

• There’s a clear winner here. I don’t care if you’re 20 pounds heavier than the sedentary person who’s your goal weight. Because you have been and will continue training your body and caring for it, you are likely in far better health than they are. 

Our bodies don’t just “decide” to “become healthy” once we reach a certain outcome, like the flip of a switch. The process that takes us on a journey to health is making us fitter and healthier all along the way. It’s about continually building on a solid foundation—brick by brick—for bone health, metabolism, muscle strength and size, mitochondrial health, capillary density, immune function, motor unit activation, balance and proprioception, cardiac stroke volume, and myriad other results of consistent exercise and proper diet. 

Is it that we’re healthy when we’re fit, or that we’re healthy because we engage in the behaviors that make one fit? I lean strongly toward the latter.

So maybe you haven’t attained the 6-pack yet. Maybe you haven’t run the marathon or PRed your back squat. But maybe just having the goal in the first place has built a better body than if you had never aspired to any improvements from the start.

Take the resolution of reading books for example. Whether you reach your reading goal of 20 books this year or not, every book you read made a difference. In each one, you experienced or learned something associated with the accomplishment of getting through it. 

And if you did reach your goal, that doesn’t mean you just stop reading and don’t read anything next year. Odds are, you’ll set a similar goal or aim for even more. Accomplishing X isn’t the end goal. It’s the process, day in and day out, that makes us more into the person we aspire to be. That’s what resolutions are truly for. 

Don’t be discouraged if you see the same health & fitness resolutions appearing on your list every year. There’s a reason they keep resurfacing! They matter to you. And that’s a good thing! 

Keep caring about the important things in life. Commit to working toward them this year. And regardless of whatever outcome you’ve reached by December 31, 2024, know that the work you put in all year long made you better off.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Did you make any resolutions this year? If not, what’s one that you “failed” in a previous year? What can you learn from that goal your ideal self created to act on behaviors that will lead to habits this year?

Level 2: Facing a similar resolution as last year that you didn’t quite hit? Or maybe you did? Either way, identify why it’s important to you. Set a new resolution this year and adjust your target based on how last year went.

Level 3: Do this for multiple categories of your life! Health & fitness, finances, relationships, career, learning/reading, etc.

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✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Watch: I might’ve shared this before, but this Youtube video about mind traps and mental fallacies we all make is as insightful as it gets. I bet at least a few will make a lightbulb go off in your mind. 💡 

Happy new year once again, folks, and here’s to those repeat resolutions. Invest in the process, and the outcome just might be better than you could’ve imagined. 🍾 

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).