Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2810: Why January Fitness Resolutions Fail

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

 Why Most January Transformations Fail Success isn't losing weight; it's keeping it off for the rest of your life. (1:56) 5 Reasons Why Most January Transformations Fail 1. People set the wrong goal. (5:09) 2. People will start in an unsustainable way. (10:48) 3. No plan. (17:13) 4. They adopt a "diet." (19:03) 5. They don't focus on building strength first. (22:54) Related Links/Products Mentioned MAPS Transformation Diet Guide – Visit: www.mapstransformationdiet.com  Visit Troscriptions for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP for 10% off your first order. ** March Spring Sale: Symmetry ($187), Prime ($107), Advanced Training Techniques Guide ($47), all for $147! (Over 50% off!) Visit: www.mapsmarch.com  Mind Pump Store Mind Pump # 2220: How to Stay Consistent With Your Workouts Mind Pump # 2257: Why Hitting Fitness Goals is a Bad Idea Mind Pump # 2763: Eat as Much as You Want, but Don't Get Fat (JUST follow these 2 rules) Mind Pump # 2442: How Strong Should You Be? The Fastest Way to Get Bigger & Stronger at the Same Time Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Corinne Schmiedhauser (@mindpumpcorinne) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness, Health, and Entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we're going to talk about why most January transformations fail. We're going to break it all down for you and help you improve your odds of long-term success. By the way, we have a guide that helps people with nutrition.

And it's three phases. It's three steps. It's called the Maps Transformation Diet Guide. So it's Maps Transformation Diet.com. Go there, get the guide. It'll take you all the way through all three phases to help you build muscle and burn body fat. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Troscriptions. So they were the first makers of methylin blue dramatically increase your.

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Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstor. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. You had a goal in January. You started along the path towards that goal. Guess what? Your fail rate, 95%.

That's what the data shows. We're going to talk about why most of these January transformations fail and what you could do to not be one of those statistics. This is a- Don't be a failure. We're coming around the corner or maybe we've just passed actually that statistic as far as the time in the year. Yeah. I believe it's right around right now. Yeah.

It's when everybody's thought. Yeah, most people, first of all, I think they don't, this is on average. Obviously, I'm over generalizing. They start the membership about mid-January. They either purchase it beginning or middle. These are gym statistics. Yeah, and they get going. And they really don't start going until about February.

Make it through February some of March, if not start to fall off by March, end of March. Yep, April. And then by May, everybody's pretty much going. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, this is just, this is like consistent, yeah, gym industry figures. You see like a, you can bank on it. Like a 30 to 50 percent in some cases, sometimes more, but 30 to 50 percent increase in membership enrollments in January and February.

You'll see this as well. So, and it just explodes. And then they come and they show up and they work out and then they stop. And it's very predictable. and a very small percentage of them stick around and even smaller percentage of them use the gym. So what I mean by that is there's still a small percentage that keep their membership.

They just don't cancel. They're not coming. And the ones that do keep it and show up or even smaller. Then if you look at larger, broader data on weight loss, for example, which we have the best statistics on, a good 90% of people fail or gain the weight back, I should say, within a year. And that's dismal.

That's dismal, you guys. In other words, if you, and by the way, if you're listening to this, you've probably done this yourself. If you're trying to lose weight, you've probably lost weight in the past and gained it back. That's the odds. So the real problem here that we need to solve is not the weight loss goal. That's not the problem. That's not the challenge. The problem is maintaining and staying consistent.

That's the real challenge. It's the adherence. Because it's a much larger percentage actually. succeed in losing the weight, even though it's not a huge percentage, it's still much larger than the amount of people that actually keep it off. So what we have to do is look at this problem properly. And a good trainer and a good, good coach understands this. We see the real problem. What's that saying? A problem well defined is half solved. And so to really define the problem, it's how do we maintain this? Because success isn't losing weight. Success is keeping it

off for the rest of your life. That's how we have to define this. And so I think it's a important we talk about the main reasons. As coaches and trainers, we saw that why people failed. What was it that people did that led to this terrible success rate or this super high fail rate? And then how can we fix this? So I'll start with number one. And this one, it sounds simple, but actually makes a big difference. People set the wrong goal. So I'm not talking about it's too big of a goal or they're doing more that they bite off more than they can chew. We'll get there because That's part of it. What I mean is someone says, my goal is to lose 30 pounds rather than my goal is to just work out two days a week or three days a week.

In other words, if you set the goal on the actions, the results are more likely to follow than if I just set the goal as the result and then try to scramble along the way. Yeah, another way to say that too is that they're focused on the outcome versus the root cause. Right. Like a lot of people, a lot of people show up and they say things like, I'm 30 pounds overweight or I'm 50 pounds overweight. That's the problem. That's the issue. And it's like, that's not the root cause. And so I think you have to understand the root cause that got there to then first set the proper plan in place.

Because if you focus just on the 30 to 50 pounds that I need to lose, then a lot of the things that you take action towards end up setting you in the wrong direction. completely or cause things like burnout or it's just a terrible plan. It's a terrible strategy. So to give you an example, like, you know, just to make it kind of basic and simple and clear, you could have one person that says, my goal is to lose 30 pounds. You could have another person who says, my goal is to strength train two days a week and make sure that I get at least a 30 minute walk five days a week. There's no, no results goal. It's just the goal is I'm going to strength train twice a week. That's all I'm going to do. I'm going to be consistent with that. And I'm going to go for a 30-minute walk five days away.

And learn to enjoy the process. They are far more likely to actually accomplish the 30-pound weight loss. And the person who says, my goal is lose 30 pounds. Far more likely. So it's about the process. So this is where you set your goals. Because remember, the process is what leads to the goal that you're after or the results that you're after.

The results don't lead to the proper process. In fact, if we focus too heavily on the result, then what ends up happening with the process, is we go all over the place with it. And we change it up when the result isn't happening fast enough, we overcorrect, or we do things that aren't going to get us toward going to go, or we do things that are not sustainable. And so it's the process.

This is where you should set your goal. And then don't worry about the result. It takes care of its own. Well, not to mention, the result can be very misleading sometimes. We just had an example of this right now on coaching Corinne. And if we were just focused on the result of or just looking at body, fat percentage or we're just looking at muscle that we gain. And we get back a test that isn't ideal or doesn't show us this amazing results, then easily could throw up our arms and go like,

we're doing the wrong thing or effort, just give up or course correct really hard and just doesn't work that way. So many times focusing on the result sends you in the wrong direction. And it's not as simple as the scale and how we look all the time. Those aren't the best indicators or signals that you're doing the right things. So you're far better off from out the gate, not having a goal that is focused on that and having a goal more like, I'm going to become a person this year

who works out twice a week, always. That's going to, I'm going to be like... That's the goal. My goal is at the end of this show, here I am at the beginning of the year, in December come Christmas time, I'm still a person who all year long lifted weights twice a week. And I just didn't miss.

That was my thing. Like, I made sure I lifted weights. I find a way in those workouts to really start to enjoy working out. That's it. I enjoy lifting weights. How can I get there? I have to mentally tell myself and really like reiterate what I enjoyed from that session. That's right. So to go deeper with that, if the goal is I'm going to lift weights twice a week, let's just say. And I know this is what I want to be consistent in doing. So the goal is to do that. What ends up happening is you start to find ways

to do it in a way to where you enjoy it. You're not even thinking about the destination. You're just like, If I'm going to do this for the rest of the year twice a week, and that's the goal. And the result, I'm not worried about it. I don't probably take care of himself. I'm not worried about that. Then what it's going to happen with my workout is it's going to change appropriately to fit what I enjoy. Because again, what's the problem? The problem is consistency.

The problem isn't losing the weight. It's consistency. That's the problem we need to tackle. The other thing that's really important about letting go of the result and just focusing on that is that's the first step in you being able to connect the dots to the other things that are so powerful. Totally. So if you're just so focused on the weight on the scale or how I look in the mirror, then a lot of times you ignore all these other benefits that are happening.

It's like, well, if I'm, if I let go of the result and I go, okay, I'm just going to just be the person who works out, then it starts to open my eyes to the other things that these workouts start to give me. It's like, oh, wow. More energy. I've got, yeah, I've got more energy throughout my day. Or, oh, wow, I'm much stronger. Oh, wow, I'm sleeping better. Oh, wow.

I'm less irritable. Oh, wow. I'm more productive. all of a sudden it starts to broaden your perspective on all the other things that becoming a person who lifts weights two days a week gives you besides just how much better you may look in the mirror down the road or how much weight you might lose on the scale. It gives you all these. And that makes this far easier to make it a sustainable thing that you do for the rest of your life. You can't do that until you let go of the result piece so much and then start to open your eyes to the other things. Right.

The person who loves working out is going to work out forever. versus the person who just loves the result. All right. So next up is people will start in an unsustainable way. And this is very innocent. And I don't think people even think that they're starting in an unsustainable way. It's the motivated brain.

That's right. So, you know, January comes around, and you've got this state of mind, this hyper-motivated. You just come out of the holidays. You know, you maybe gain some way, like cool New Year, new me. And whenever you make,

whenever you set a plan in a motivated state of mind, it's always assuming, even if you don't think of this, you're assuming that this is going to be your state of mind always. We've all done this. We've all set goals when we were motivated and then later when we fell out of motivation, which will happen. Suddenly it seems unsustainable. Like, man, I know I was hyped to work out five days a week, but I'm just not feeling it right now. And so you have to understand is a motivated state of mind is a temporary state of mind. Nobody is always hyper-motivated or, to put it differently, it's very rare that you find someone that's super hyper-motivated all the time. I never had to convince somebody to exercise and eat right when they were motivated. It was always when they were feeling unmotivated.

So whenever you take a step, you have to ask yourself, is this something that I will do even when I don't feel nearly as motivated? When I feel unmotivated, is this something I'm going to stick to? and if the answer is no, take a smaller step. Take the step that you know you can maintain for the rest of your life. Start there. By the way, when you do that, and if you're able to stay consistent with that,

which if you do this right, your odds are pretty high, then what happens naturally is you'll want to take another step moving forward. And it just happened naturally. I'm consistent. I said 10 minute walks a day. That's what I thought I could do consistently.

Next thing you know, it's like a part of my life. And I'm like, cool, I want to add one day at the gym. I think I can maintain that. And then you do that. And then you end up building momentum. And by the way, this is a great part of this. That motivated state of mind occurs more frequently when you do this right.

So if you love feeling motivated, which we all do, you'll actually get more of that more often if you start the way that we're saying. But if you bite off way more than you can chew right out the gates, you're setting itself up for failure. And the data shows us, and we've experienced this, if you fail enough times, if you lose weight and gain it back enough times, there's a number that you'll stop at and eventually give up. Yeah, well, then it's truly adopting this as a lifestyle change, which I think is thrown out there a lot. Like people say like, you know, I'm going to change my lifestyle. I'm going to work out. But really, they're in it to fix a problem. And I think that it's very short-term thinking of weight-wise or body fat wise or aesthetic-wise.

Like, they want to achieve this thing and then get there and then be like, okay, and I can come back to, you know, how I was living. Whereas if I'm taking this methodically. this is one thing I know that I can repeat consistently going here on out and then build upon that. It's all this like maybe it's slow in the beginning, but it's definitely a long-term trajectory of like going forward and progressing. That's right. Versus looking back. Well, this is the difference between the person that we said goes, you know, I'm going to become this person who works out twice a week for the whole year, you know, every single week. versus a person who's like, I'm going to train seven days a week.

Yeah, yeah. Like, and you're, you're, both these people are coming off the previous year of not doing anything or very little or never staying consistent with anything. And to overcommit yourself to something like seven days a week is very unrealistic. In fact, you committing to two days a week from the entire year consistently would be more consistent and more than you have ever done. Yeah. So, so the goal is set yourself up that is going to stretch you beyond what you're currently doing, which is pretty much anything because you're not doing anything, you know, prior to this, and go, I'm going to build on that. So, like, just because you have the availability or maybe you even start with, you know, five days, you know, you're going to the gym and stuff like that because

you are in that state of mind. So you didn't commit to that. You said, I'm going to at least go to. So I've seen this where you go, I'm going to do at least that. And, hey, this week is the beginning and you're motivated. So you show up there five times or you whatever. The next week after that. But you know, two is the minimum. Right. You tell yourself, this is the minimum. And so set the bar that is stretching your capacity that it's more than what you've done in the past, but not so much more that it's unrealistic that you can do this even when you're not motivated,

even when you have a hard week, even when you have some setbacks, even when maybe you get sick. And so set it to where it's like, okay, I know that even in a bad week and when I'm traveling for work and I'm doing this thing, I could still get to the gym two times. When we think of transformation in this context,

people typically visualize themselves in a physical transformation. I'm going to transform into a leaner, stronger version of myself. But that's not the right mentality. What you're trying to transform into is somebody who likes to exercise and someone who likes to eat healthy. That's what you're, that's a transformation. How do I transform myself into somebody that values exercise and likes it and values eating healthy and likes it. By the way, what's the side effect of that, right? Somebody who likes

exercise, somebody who enjoys eating healthy, what does that person look like? Well, that's the person that you're trying to physically transform into. So rather than focusing on the result or the end of the equation, focus on what happens in the beginning. So that's why it's a slower process. Because when I try to convey this message to people, oftentimes they get impatient. But I want to do this now. Like, what are you talking about? It's going to take a long time. I get that and I get the excitement around it, but you're going to fail. If instead you say, okay, I need to turn myself into somebody that values this and enjoys doing it a few days a week, that values eating healthier. What does that look like?

Well, like any real transformation takes a little bit of time. So you take that first step that's challenging, like Adam said, but not something that isn't sustainable. And start there. And it will build upon itself. It does every single time. By the way, the other option is a 100% fail. So there isn't a fast option, a slow option. There's one that works and one that doesn't.

The next thing is there's no plan, right? You don't have any plan. It's just go move and I guess I'll just eat less, you know, type of deal. Structure it out. Give yourself a little bit of a plan when it comes to your workout. Okay, this day and this day at this time, these are the blocks in my schedule. I'm going to go exercise on those days. What about your diet?

Start very slow. And give yourself a bit of a plan. Like a plan is a big deal here, everybody. Having no plan with this, boy, here's what will happen. If you don't have a plan, you tend to just do a lot of everything. And either, A, you see some progress initially and then you plateau. Or you see some progress and you want to accelerate that progress. But because you're already doing so many other things, well, which one do I add more of?

and I don't really like doing this and this isn't sustainable, and you end up failing. Just like they say in business, right? Where they say failing to plan is planning to fail. It's so true with this as well. Yeah, I would argue that it's 50-50.

There's no plan. And then the other 50 or it's a bad plan. Yeah. Because a lot of times there's a plan, but the plan's really a bad plan. It's like, yeah, I'm going to do, I'm going to do this as much as I can all the time. Cut it.

Like it's a lot of times if you ask someone, do you have a plan. They'll say yes, they do. But the plan is so bad. It's just like, it's destined to fail. Well, it's like, I'm going to go build a house. What's your plan? I'm just going to swing a hammer as hard as I can.

Right, right. Every day, every day, every day. Every day that I have a moment of time, free time, I'm going to do this thing. You're right. And it's just like. You're not going to build a house without a plan. No. And you'll eventually get burnt out.

You're going to make a bunch of mistakes. You're going to have setbacks. And then you'll get burnt out and then you'll quit. And so it's a lot of times it's either no plan at all or the plan is really a terrible plan because it's literally just go as hard and do as much as you can when you can. And it's like, that's a terrible plan. Totally. And then back to diet nutrition, oftentimes people adopt a diet. I'm going to try this one specific type of diet or this plan. The fail rates on the, is through the roof. Instead, just do this. Just take one or two steps. And I'll give you two.

I'll give you two steps that will get you 85 to 90 percent of the way there for most people. For most people, number one, avoid heavily processed foods. I know that's not a diet, but I'm going to tell you right now, for most people, if you just did that, lots of things would change. You'd build a little bit of muscle and you definitely lose some body fat. Most people I've done this with just this one step, lose 10 to 15 pounds alone. All they did was avoid heavily processed foods and they just ate as much as they wanted. The second one, eat your target body weight and grams of protein from whole food. Add those two together.

You have yourself a plan that includes whatever you want to throw in there, eat until you're satisfied, and you follow that long enough, consistently enough. Guys, you're going to fall into a nice body fat percentage with good muscle and strength. Ladies, same for you. And it's two steps. It's two very basic simple stuff. I feel like everybody that's heard us talk about anything is like raising their hand right now. Like, oh, I know, I know.

Like we just reiterate that to death for a reason. Yeah. It's those two things are like so impactful. Like you can't deny like what that does in terms of like, you know, how it really just like shapes your behaviors like nutritionally. I mean, it's it's a similar concept as the approach to the workout thing. it's really distilling down, no doubt, nutrition and strain training are the two biggest levers that we have to pull. And then the next thing you look at when you look at those two things, well, what are the simplest things that we could possibly do? Strength train, a minimal effective dose as consistently as you possibly can.

So what does that look like? A couple days a couple days a week, that's it. And strength training. When it comes to nutrition, like pick one or two things that you can do differently in your diet that will make a huge difference. over time and do that consistently. What's that? Process foods, hit your protein thing. You do those two things. Those are the bangers.

For the nutrition side, you do those things for the strength training side. And a lot of the other, the main, 80% of all of what you ever want to get out. Come from that. Comes just from that. And then to your point that you made earlier about the exercising, the diet thing works the same way too.

I've just had this conversation. I just got back from a family trip. And my, my cousin's husband, was sitting down with me and said, hey, man, I really want to make an effort to get, to get healthier. And he's relatively, he's the one who I sent the blood work to you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, listen, I'm going to send you a MAPS 15 program.

And then literally all I want you to do is to count your grams of protein and cut out as much processed food as you can your diet. And that is like it. I said, and just do those two things consistently. And then I said, I promise if you do that for, 60 to 90 days, this is either going to, it's going to be a thing that you love and you want to do, and then I'll give you the next layer. And it's like nutrition is the same way. It's like, just go do those things. You're going to get so much results from that. And then that doesn't

mean that we can't take this to another level, but that's going to take you so far. I know that person comes back to me, goes like, oh my God, this is amazing. I've seen so much, what if I wanted to get on stage now? Or what if I wanted to get seven percent, like, then you can get the next level and we can tweak some more things. But, Most people find if they were to just do that, they achieve that. In fact, they achieve beyond what? Because most people that have gotten 50 pounds overweight don't even think it's possible they could ever look like somebody who really works out. They're just like, I just don't want to be fat.

I just want to get rid of this being a healthy marker. And it's like, well, if you just do that, I'm going to get you past that. In fact, I'm going to get you in really good shape. And there's a whole other level to this if you really want to get there. That's right. Lastly, this is a huge mistake. Just because most people's goals are to lose weight is they don't full. focus on building first, right? They want to lose weight. So this is what they focus on right

out the gates. And I get it. Sounds like it makes sense. But building strength is the best place to start. Obviously, if you want to build muscle, but I don't need to convince you of that if your goals of build muscle. But if your goal is lose weight, it's hard to convince you. What do you mean bill? Well, here's a deal. Getting stronger, building muscle is going to make fat loss a lot easier. It's going to speed up your metabolism. It's going to make your body burn more calories on its own, and it's going to make the fat loss weight easier. If you start right out the gates with just trying to lose weight, you end up in this hard place where you end up plateauing oftentimes.

Your calories get real low. You've gotten some results, but you haven't gotten all the results. And then you're stuck eating very little, feeling like you're doing all this exercise, and it just doesn't feel like it's worth it. Versus, we start with the build. Let's get strong. Let's focus for the next three months. Let's just get strong.

Don't worry about anything else. Just get strong. And then after that, let's focus on. getting leaner. Suddenly, fat comes off your body. You're eating more food than you thought you needed to and are lose weight. And it's in a sustainable place. That's the part that's so magical about this is to think that you can go get to a place where you get in the shape that you want to be in and you're eating as much or more food than you ever thought you could have. And that's the difference between the person who decides to get on their fitness journey and do nothing but cut calories and move more versus the

person that decides, I'm going to be a person who lifts weights, get strong, and then follow those steps and build muscle, it makes this so much easier. And what do we always end up finding out? How often do you get somebody who messages back to you and goes like, I'm waning out? Yeah. Even though that's not the goal,

the goal is to build muscle, build the metabolism. I'm still getting leaner. But they find themselves, waste is coming in, getting stronger, eating more food. It's just, it makes this whole process so, so much easier and so much better by doing this. But it's not common knowledge.

It seems counterproductive when you're somebody who needs to lose a bunch of weight to actually think I'm going to go to the gym and try and build when they think I need to shrink. It's really counterintuitive. So I think that's why so many people fail here. And this is again back to my point of why I think some people have a plan. It's just a really bad plan. A lot of times the plan is cut all this stuff, go to the gym as much as I possibly can, run on the treadmill as much plan. It's like that's a horrible plan. A much better strategy would be for us.

Go to the gym two days to three days a week. Lift weights. Get strong. hit your protein intake, eat either in a maintenance to a surplus to try and build muscle and watch what happened. Yeah, which leads me to this. We have a transformation diet guide that takes you through three phases. Phase one is what's known as a reverse diet. And so this is kind of like what we said, eliminate heavily processed foods, eat a high protein diet in combination with strength training.

We're building the fat burning machinery. Phase two takes you through calorie cuts and calorie surpluses. going a little bit of calorie surplus, a little bit of calorie cut. And what you're doing is you're moving through fat loss, muscle gain, fat loss, muscle gain. Phase three is pure fat loss. And it really takes you through step by step. And we have this available for everybody right now. Go to Maps TransformationDiet.com.

It's a guide. It breaks it all down for you. It's very inexpensive. Once again, Maps Transformation Diet.com. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump media. We'll see you this. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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