The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

97. Real Talk: Why a January Slow Start Can Lead to Making Resolutions That Stick

Kristy Castillo Season 1 Episode 97

I'm dishing out some real talk about those New Year's resolutions. You know, those promises we all make to ourselves as the previous year fades away? Well, it's time to check in. Are you still working hard toward your goals? Have you already given up?

I am somewhere in between, and if you are too... this episode is for you! I'm sharing my personal insights on why a January slow start isn't just okay—it's actually pretty smart. (If I do say so myself!!)

What happens when the excitement of a fresh start meets the reality of old habits? What happens when you realize you bit off more than you could handle? That's where we need to pivot to creating resolutions and standards that actually stick. I'll break down how to set goals that won't leave you feeling defeated by the rest of the year and the secret sauce to sustainable success (hint: it's not just about the grind). From taking on one habit at a time to finding accountability in unexpected places, this episode is packed with little game-changing strategies that have improved not just my fitness routine, but my business too. I hope you are ready to make this year truly count!


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the UnFuck your Fitness podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode.

Speaker 2:

I'm excited to chat with you today. This is it. January is almost over. We have, we are at the end. We have reached the end of January. The first month of the new year is over. So let's get real. Have you done well with everything that you set out to do on January 1st? How are you doing? Especially when it comes to health and fitness, how are you doing? Have you stuck with your plan? Are you crushing it or have you already given up? Have you already quit? Have you already failed? Are you already over it? Done, sucked, can't do it? Which one are you? Hopefully you are someone who has just crushed this year already and you're just killing it with your goals and you're feeling really, really refreshed. I would absolutely love that for you. I'm somewhere in the middle, I think.

Speaker 2:

Personally, I don't really set new year's resolutions. I take the entire month of January to kind of settle in. I remember in the past I would set new year's resolutions and I would actually break things up into categories and there's nothing wrong with this, don't take it that way but I would break my life, I guess, up into categories of, like, financial goals and fitness goals, and personal goals and goals as a mom and spiritual goals and emotional goals and all the things, and that was absolutely amazing. But I'm pretty sure I never went back to even look at those goals. I would set them and maybe look at them for the first week, or had them in mind for the first week of January, and then I never really went back to check on them. And that's on me. I figured out that that's not how I operate. I don't operate. Now, if someone was holding me accountable to those things and I was talking to someone every week or every month, or had a coach, had some accountability in place, absolutely I would have worked on those things, I think. But I didn't do that. Like, I just used to write it down these are my intentions, and then I would just go on. You know, I would make some progress, of course, and I would do better, of course, but it was never to the extent that I planned on in January 1, right.

Speaker 2:

So this episode is going to be for those of you, those of us, that maybe you're realizing that you need to take things a little bit slower right now, and this is me. So it happens. There are years, there are times where you have set yourself up for more than you could handle. You bit off more than you can chew. Right, and there are hopefully a lot of you listening to this episode and you're like, no, I'm actually crushing it, I am good to go, I'm feeling really great. That's absolutely amazing, and there will be more episodes to come on that.

Speaker 2:

But this, specifically this episode, is for those of you that have already feel like you failed or maybe you even forgot. You made New Year's resolutions. Like maybe that's seems like so long ago at this point that you're just over it, but I think a lot of us get stuck in. You know, this is the time of year when it we're settling back in to reality. The holidays are over, we've gotten past the excitement of the new year.

Speaker 2:

If you're in a cold state like me, if it can sucks here, it's cold, it's rainy, it's foggy, it's gross I Don't want to do anything. There have been plenty of days this week in particular that I have just wanted to sleep all day. So if I had set myself up on January 1st for like I'm gonna have a great attitude every day, I'm gonna hit my macros every day, I'm gonna work out every day, I'm gonna cut out this, this and this. If I would have been that kind of person this year, yes, I would have failed, because there are there have already been so many days actually I probably worked out less days this year than I have worked out. I probably had more rest days than workout days this year so far this month. So and Thankfully I don't I'm not really beating myself up for that at all, because I didn't have any intentions really coming into this year as far as my fitness.

Speaker 2:

I Intended, this year too and I've told some of my clients this I take, or I'm taking, the month of January to Really assess how I'm feeling, because the first week of January is madness. It's back to real life, it kids go back to school, it's back to sports, is back to the grind, it's back to everything, and I would fall off track and be so overwhelmed that I decided I'm going to very gradually ease my way Into life again. And that's exactly what I have done and I've had a lot of my clients do this too. I'm like let's not take January and, you know, hit the ground run in. Let's take January and do the opposite, because a lot of times when you hit the ground running in January, you have fallen flat on your face. So let's take the opposite route. Let's slow down, let's let's walk towards our goals in January, right? So I've had a lot of my clients that I'm like, let's slow down, let's take January to be really intentional. And actually some of my clients signed up with me For a 12 week program and we they tried to hit the ground running and they got sick or something happened or Whatever.

Speaker 2:

Something came up and they're like I'm really behind. I've already been like with you for three weeks and I haven't done shit. I'm feeling really bad. I have taken those clients and said, hey, we're gonna start over, we're gonna act like those three weeks didn't even happen, except for the lessons we learned from them, and we're gonna literally start their program over and move on in a different direction. And I love doing that because I'm like this is what we thought. Right, you think this program is all about health and fitness and Macros and water and steps and workouts, but what you really realize is that, like, all of that is too much, and I'm really good at helping people understand that you don't have to Do all that at once. We can pick a couple things to work on in January. You can start to see some results, gain some momentum and move on throughout the year.

Speaker 2:

And so I'm just being honest in this episode. That's what I've been doing in January is really taking a step back. And if I feel like I need a rest day, I'm taking it. If I feel like I'm on my period and I just want to chill out, I'm doing that. If I want to watch some extra shows on TV, I'm doing that. If I want to eat a little bit more, I'm doing that. But I'm also seeing how that makes me feel and I'm getting to the point and I do this every January when I'm getting fed up with myself. And this is what it really takes, because I feel, like a lot of the time when we set new year's resolutions, like we're in a really good place, we're like I'm really killing it, I'm Feeling really motivated and it's really easy to make goals when you're motivated. But when you fall in on your face and you can hardly get up, that's when it's really hard to set goals. But it's also really important to make goals when you're kind of down and either down us on yourself a little bit and you want to be someone better, or you've fallen flat on your face and you want to get up and be better. That's where I'm at right now.

Speaker 2:

I'm irritated because I'm not taking time for myself to work out. I'm irritated because my pants are fitting tighter and, yes, I'm in a bulk stage. That's a whole nother mental thing. But I'm also just eating like shit I'm. I literally just had an Oreo, oreo, two Oreos before I got on here to record this and I didn't need them. I did not need them. I can have them because I'm quote-unquote in a bulk phase, but I'm I don't need them.

Speaker 2:

I'm getting really fed up with these little things that I'm doing and when I get fed up I'm over it and I will stop. This is when it happens for me Like I'm getting pissed that I'm not taking time for myself to work out in the morning. I'm getting pissed that my clothes are not fitting right, not because I'm bulking, but because I'm just eating too much. I'm getting really annoyed and that's for me. I know myself well enough now because I've stepped back to taking the time to do that. I know myself well enough now that I know I'm getting irritated enough that I will stop the behavior. So that's one way to do it.

Speaker 2:

Another way is a little bit softer, and this is what I've been doing with myself is, first and foremost, to just realize that you shouldn't beat up on yourself. You took on more than you could handle on January 1st and this is pretty normal, and I used to do the same thing. So what we're going to do now is make new goals moving forward, and this is how I recommend handling that and this is how I'm going to do it. Even when I'm in a state of like I'm so mad at myself, I'm going to gradually fix it and get out of it. The other way to do that is to make new goals moving forward, realizing that there's no rush. There's no rush, pretty.

Speaker 2:

I can pretty confidently say that, whatever your goals were going into the first of the year, you don't even think about the end date. But it's going to take you all year to get to that goal regardless. And that could be like, honestly, it could be like losing and maintaining a 10 pound weight loss, or it could be losing and maintaining a 50 pound weight loss, or it could be spending more time intentionally, or it could be less time on your phone. Whatever it is, it's going to take you let's be honest, an entire year to really like see that through. And even if it won't technically take you that long, let's look at it that way. So, instead of feeling like you have to do it all now, instead of feeling like I have to set all these intentions and all these goals and hit my macros and all the things on the journal and the get up early and the drink more water and the walking more and the workout more, use the entire year, it's going to take that long anyway, so you might as well plan on it. So think about you where you could be at the end of this year. It's still really exciting. I don't want you to look at it as like, oh my God, it's going to take a whole year to get to my goal. I want you to look at it as like what could you accomplish in this entire year? A lot. So we break down the year into quarters and we look at it that way, so you could write down all of the things that you want to accomplish in the year, but then go back and break it down into quarters and then break those quarters down into months so that you can actually take some action on getting towards those goals.

Speaker 2:

So I even have had some clients recently that I'm like we're going to take this first month and we're just going to get your workouts in, like you are, just, I don't even care what you eat, we're not even going to track that, we're just going to get you very consistent with workouts. You're going to learn the moves, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to get familiar with that. That's all we're doing for like this month. The next month we'll add on tracking your macros. So all you're doing is getting in the habit of tracking those macros and then we'll go from there, because now you've built that habit. The next month we'll focus on hitting a certain amount of macros, like hitting certain macro targets that I have for you. The next month will add on drinking water. The next month will worry about steps and in between there we're doing lots of little things, of course, but most importantly, what we're doing is setting up a lot of goals for long-term success.

Speaker 2:

I think that is such a it's like such a calm way of looking at things, but in reality, like that's what's going to work now. If you aren't someone who's struggling with this right now, like I Remember times in my life when I wasn't the person that I am now, where I was like go, go, go, crush it, crush it, crush it Always going, and I could hit different goals and I could hit the workouts and I could get up early on time and like I, Whatever I could do all these things. It seems like, and I've just gotten to this place of like Maybe I'm a little more confident, obviously in my journey that like I don't I know I don't have to like do these things so obsessively so I can like take some time off and kind of Enjoy and like sink back and take my time setting these goals. It's also just an awareness of like I know this stuff is going to take time. I know that trying to change my entire routine and everything I do and eat and watch and listen to and say I'm changing that on like January 1st was not going to work. Like let's be real, I freaking just know that. I think we would all know that if we think about it logically instead of just news resolution time. But since I know it's gonna take this long anyway, like it's so much more sustainable to break it down and Just like calm down. That's like my theme in my head lately. It's like calm down, even when I get a little Spastic about certain things and I start crying or I feel really overwhelmed, I'm like calm down, Like there's nothing you can do about it right now. Like calm down, work it through, right, let's get to the bottom of this and then move on.

Speaker 2:

So if you've already failed at your New Year's resolution, it happens, it happens. It literally happens to everyone Pretty much every single year, which I that sucks. It sucks for us, but it is what it is, and so I I challenge you to take a look at what you've tried to do January 1st. Realize that it's fine. You literally took on more than you could handle. You tried to do too much. Is that on you yes, own it? Is that also on other forms of information that you've taken in trying to get you to do all the things? And you think you need to Do all the things? Yes, I, definitely that's some of their responsibility as well. But now you know, right now you know better. So let's do better. And telling you the truth right now and that's just what I would encourage you to do.

Speaker 2:

So If you've already failed and you're like I didn't even realize I failed or I didn't even set New Year's resolutions. That's fine too. Like take this episode and really take it all in and be like, okay, so I do need to maybe set some goals. And I really like the idea of Christy, of what you're saying, of taking the whole year and being like, okay, this is what I really want to do. But like, how can I actually do that sustainably? Right, so if I want to lose 20 pounds this year, well, it's people usually like I want to gain or I want to lose 20 pounds by summer. Okay, cool. But let's just say we have the whole year, so this year we're not saying like by summer, we're saying this year I want to lose 20 pounds. What do you need to actually do? That? It would be great if, along with that, you also had food freedom. You learned how to track your macros, you learned how to fuel your body, you learned how to work out. So you're not just losing the 20 pounds for summer, starving yourself. Then you start eating again during summer and you've gained it all back and you have this cycle, right? Let's like what could you really accomplish this year if you really set out to do so?

Speaker 2:

Like the things I just mentioned, and what that looks like is actually taking the time to set these habits in place, not beating yourself up, but also not going back and setting big goals and try to just start again in February and cut out all the things. It didn't work in January, it's not going to work in February, so we have to do something different, right? So that's my encouragement for you today in this episode. I know it was kind of brief, I know it was just me, basically kind of coaching you through this, but that's literally where I got the idea. I keep telling my clients like it's okay, we're going to start over this week. We're starting with just workouts, like forget everything else that you think you're supposed to be doing and just get your freaking workouts in, that's it. Then we'll move on to the next habit and the next habit and in between there, of course, I'm coaching them through different mindset tactics and different things they're going through and life changes and like all the things that come along with it.

Speaker 2:

But all that stuff is so necessary to do the work on finding an accountability partner. Let people know I'm not going to be going out to eat every single night this week or every single week this month or every single Saturday. I'm not coming to drink six beers with you every Saturday anymore. I'm not doing that Like. I'm making some changes. Use this time, like go slowly and set yourself up for so much more success instead of just cramming it all into January 1st and then failing. So use this as motivation to really get started again, but in a different way. Use this as motivation to not beat yourself up if you've already kind of fallen off the wagon and all the trains and all the things that you set yourself up for and then you failed. It's fine. Like move on. Christy says it's fine, and what we're going to do now is take the year as a whole, break it down into quarters, break it down into months, figure out habits that you can do for one whole month, like the time is going to pass anyway and it's going to pass pretty damn quickly actually. So let's figure out what we're going to add on every single month to be able to really really see some change.

Speaker 2:

I'm doing this personally in my business this year. I've done this before for my health and fitness journey, where I've broken it down into quarters and months and had different habits and mindset, things I was going to work on, and it's so amazing to take an entire month to work on a habit Like. I think that's underrated. Giving yourself more time is so fantastic. What I was saying was I'm doing this for my business because I think it's a really good way. I love the tactic of this and I love that it's so doable.

Speaker 2:

So I'm doing this in my business right now, where I'm taking my goals for the year and what I really want to create and what I want to help you guys with and what I want to talk about, and I'm breaking all of that down into what do I need to do? Who do I need to become to have those things happen? What kind of time do I need to figure out how to make in my day? What things do I need to get rid of so that I can make time in my day? Like, how do I need to do that? But I'm taking the entire year to figure that out. This can be done for any kind of a goal that you have in your life, so anything that you're wanting to change.

Speaker 2:

But, of course, we are on fucking your fitness right now. So that's what we're talking about in this episode. So I hope this gave you a little bit of just. I want to acknowledge the fact that it's okay to fall off track. It's also okay to get back on track, but get on a little bit differently. Get on with some different tools this time and use the whole year, and I really think it will make a really, really, really big difference in your journey and you will actually see some success this year and it will be freaking awesome to not have to repeat this cycle over and over and over. So thank you for being here, as usual. I always love hearing from you in the DMs on Instagram. I love it when I get a message saying you've been binging the podcast and it's really changing your life, or here's something maybe that you could talk about. That would help me, christy. I love that. I love hearing from you. So thank you for being here. I hope this episode was helpful and I'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time.