New Year, New Me 

Firstly, Happy New Year from TeamNJ! How many of you have started the new year following a new diet or joined a gym? If you haven’t, I bet you have thought about it? In fact, 12% of gym members sign up in January. 

Most of us tend to write December off, no food or exercise rules are followed, leaving us all feeling pretty deflated by January. This leads to us setting unachievable new year's resolutions to lose weight and get fit. According to the Fitness Industry Association, most of the 12% of January new gym members have quit or stop going after 24 weeks.

Setting these unachievable resolutions can damage our mental health. We all feel deflated if we haven’t achieved something that we set out to do, so why do we set such high goals for ourselves at the start of a new year? 

Unfortunately, marketing plays a big part in this thought process, ‘New year, new me’ springs to mind. In 2017, Kwick Fit launched a ‘Fit Kwick’ campaign, advertised to help you lose the spare tyre that you had gained over the Christmas period. It happens to the best of us. This campaign is a great example of how brands can piggyback on cultural sayings such as "new year, new me". What would have been even better, in our opinion, is if they'd partnered with a gym or an athlete, imagine the content they'd have created?

An example of a non fitness campaign but one that plays on the ‘New Year, New Me’ is Twitter. In 2016, they launched new stickers and as you can see below, used ‘New Year, New Me’ to advertise them

Society pressures us into feeling that the new year is the perfect time to set new goals and work on ourselves, this is true, both myself and Lindsay have written down our personal and business goals for 2023, have you? 

If getting fit and losing weight is a goal of yours, set a goal that you know is achievable. Going from no exercise at all, to expecting yourself to attend the gym at least three times a week, is a big ask on your mental and physical health. In fact, Equinox, a luxury fitness club in New York, have banned new members from joining in January to make sure their members are dedicated and attending the gym for all of the right reasons. And if that isn't an excuse not to go, we don't know what is!!

Go ahead and set your achievable 2023 goals and make it a year to remember for all of the right reasons!