7 Ways To Hold Yourself Accountable in 2022
by Clark Hibbs
It’s the New Year. You’re coming out of 2ish years of ambiguity, and you’re looking to get back on the horse, crush your goals, and live your healthiest and best life.
And that’s usually pretty easy in January.
It gets a bit harder in February.
Then, March hits, and that new year motivation starts to slowly (or quickly) fade as trips come up, outings to the lake happen, and beach season comes a calling.
And let me be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying your life. Please please PLEASE take the trips, party at the lake, and have a beach cookout with your friends and family. Those events are exactly why we workout… so we can enjoy our lives to the fullest.
But how are you going to make sure you get back to the gym and your nutrition after spring break in Florida? Or that cruise to Cancun? Or that long weekend in Napa that turned your blood type into Pinot Noir?
Here are 10 ways to hold yourself accountable throughout the year 2022.
- Stay engaged with your community
And, most importantly, HAVING a community! If you want to keep up a healthy lifestyle, you need to have a community of folks who share your mindset. Find friends who like to lift weights and stay active.
- Get your workouts on the calendar
We don’t need to plan the entire 2022 year of workouts, but it is a great practice to schedule in your workouts to your calendar each week. Ideally, you schedule your workouts before anything else, then fit your work schedule around that. This is a bit easier now than ever in the work from home era!
- Prioritize a workout on your trips
One of the biggest struggles for folks is getting back into workouts after a vacation, mainly because we feel like we’ve “lost” our momentum. Well let’s keep the momentum going! While you might not have a full gym you can access, you always have your bodyweight and a bit of time. Here’s a tried and true short workout:
AMRAP 15
-20 sit ups
-15 air squats
-10 push ups
- Set Approach Goals vs Avoidance Goals
While this is number 4 on the list, it might be number one in my mind. Approach vs Avoidance is a mindset shift that we should all strive to have. For example, if you are trying to lose weight, and approach goal would be, “I’m going to eat more vegetables.” An avoidance goal would be, “I’m going to eat fewer deserts.”
By setting the approach goal, you are helping cultivate a positive habit rather than just thinking about depriving yourself of things you enjoy. Approach goals inherently frame changes in a more positive light, and have been associated with more positive emotions, thoughts, and self-evaluations which will lead to greater overall psychological well-being.
- Create 90 day action plans (and reward yourself!)
90 Day Action Plans are one of my favorite ways to hold myself accountable. A 90 day allows you time to actually see progress, but then gives you the ability to break things down into 30 day or 7 day chunks (months and weeks). For the 90 day plan, put the goal you’d like to achieve on day 90, then work backwards. If you want to hit your 36th workout by day 90, assign workout quotas at the end of each week working backwards. All of a sudden your 36 workouts is really only 3 times a week. Smaller bites help you build more momentum!
- Lean on your accountability buddy
While having a community is great, it’s even better to have someone close to you with the same goals. Lean on this person, ask for help when you need it, and let them know when you need a kick in the rear to get back to it!
- Embrace the dimmer switch mindset, not the all or nothing.
Too many of us treat health and fitness like a light switch. We’re either “on” or we’re “off.” This might look like working out and eating well Monday – Thursday, then eating like garbage and being sedentary Friday – Sunday. It could also look like you hitting it REALLY hard in January only to fall off and be miraculously sporadic February through December.
So think about health and fitness as a dimmer switch. When you have the capacity and the ability to be “bright,” turn the knob up and be bright. Be perfect with your food. Hit all of your workouts. Be the fitness role model!
But when things get tough, don’t turn it off. Let’s just bring down the brightness a bit. What’s the minimum acceptable output for you to stay healthy? Bring your 5 workouts a week back to 3, or even 2. Be a bit more loose with your meals on the weekends. Give yourself the mental permission to be a bit dimmer with this health and fitness stuff, knowing that a period of dimness will help you crank the light up all the brighter.
There are many other ways to keep yourself accountable, and maybe you’re already crushing it. However, If you ever feel like you’re struggling with your accountability using old tactics, don’t be afraid to switch it up and try something new. What worked once might not work forever.
Accountability is one of the main ingredients to long term consistency, and long term consistency is the absolute necessity if we are going to get healthy, and STAY healthy.
If you need help getting started on your health and wellness path, need an accountability buddy, or just need to chat some ideas through, please email me at [email protected] and I would be honored to help you. If you’re new here, you can also schedule a No-Sweat Intro with me so we can meet in person!
Here’s to a highly accountable 2022!
-Clark
