The 12 best fitness tips for health and wellness

Only nine percent of people who make New Year’s Resolutions are successful. Why is the failure rate so high? Because: Marketing. On January 1st, all the habits you’ve spent a year, or even a lifetime, creating are magically replaced by lean and mean lifestyles.

Most people give up within the first month.

At the end of one year, 91% of New Year’s resolutions are as relevant as last year’s fruitcake. 

So why even bother? 

The reality is that New Year’s is a wonderful time to reflect and create goals for what you’d like to achieve by this time next year. There is a lot of collective energy around self-improvement that supports the repetition needed to create new habits. The key is to set achievable, process-oriented goals that don’t lock you into an all-or-nothing mindset. 

Twenty-two years as a trainer, seven years as a neuro coach, and a lifetime of learning about health have inspired me to share some of the most important things I study and teach.

So here are the dirty dozen: 12 tips for better health, fitness, and wellness in 2023

  1. To activate your core, try training your diaphragm. Yes, that means breathing exercises can increase your core activation. 

  2. The key to weight loss is to speed up your metabolism. You can do this by increasing your resistance training and decreasing neural threats.

  3. Stretch your muscles. Mobilize your joints.

  4. The site where you have pain may not actually be the problem.

  5. Your feet need to move!

  6. The best workout plan is the one that you’ll actually do. Militant and extreme programs are not sustainable in the long term.  

  7. A little bit of soreness does not mean you’re injured. Gentle movement will take care of most of it.

  8. Life pulls you forward and down. Resistance training will help strengthen the muscles that oppose this. 

  9. Much of posture is set in the brainstem. You can’t push around your brainstem. You have to outsmart it. 

  10. Morning sunlight is the best medicine for mood.

  11. Exercise doesn’t injure you. Bad form does.

  12. Fitness is not about 6-pack abs or a magic number on the scale. It’s about feeling good (mentally and physically) and being able to do the things that are meaningful to you. 

    It’s always a good time to commit to your health and happiness. Pick one idea and see how other things in your life shift. Cheers to a happy, healthy, abundant New Year! 🥂