ADVICE How to stick to your fitness goals in the New Year

Lucy Matthews presents some top tips on creating healthy exercise habits this January

Lucy Matthews Advice Editor

The inside of a gym in January mirrors London Waterloo at rush hour. As queues for machines build up, squabbles over dumbbells commence and you find yourself cornering in the toilets afraid to face the sweaty mob. Yet as months drift by, we find ourselves skipping time on the treadmill and trading lunges for liquor. Our relationship with the gym gets more and more distant until one of us decides that it’s time to cut it off for good, the great break up with your membership takes place. Symbolising a month of new beginnings and setting new habits, it is easy to use the ebbing month of January as a fresh start to fitness, but the real marathon is keeping it up all year round.

Allocating time to fitness sessions throughout the week is the first hurdle you will encounter along the way. You ended up staying over time at work listening to your coworker complain about her toxic boyfriend, meaning you now have no time to make it to the gym and get back home all in time to watch the Call The Midwife- I’ve got you! The internet is now over-populated with gym workouts that are tailored specifically to your, meaning that if you don’t quite make it to the gym then you can still get moving in your kitchen, bedroom or even bath. The gairrhyddadvice@gmail.com

Fitness Goals: Jumping on the New Year trend of increasing your exercise can be overwhelming. However, there are more ways to acheive your goal than you think.

Source: Victor Freitas (via Pexels) whole point of fitness in general is just to get your body moving and you shouldn’t entirely rely on one space to do this. Trade dumbbells for bags of rice, and yoga mats for towels, any household item can do the job and get you in the same sweaty space as any gym.

Dopamine is the diesel that will keep you going during the hardest of fitness days. This handy little hormone moulds an overall motivation-