Starting the New Year Strong: How to Set Goals and Achieve Them in 2025

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Happy New Year! 2025 is another chance to tackle your health and wellness goals, to grow, to learn more about your body and how it loves to move, and the food that fuels you.

Unfortunately, my year started off with a weird cold. Although I wanted to kick off the year Jan 1, writing down new goals and setting my intentions for the year, this was stifled by a bad cold or virus that had me stuck in bed for days.

But now that I am feeling better, I am happy to start my 2025 fitness journey tomorrow morning.

With my background in fitness and health, and almost 15 years of setting health and fitness goals, here’s how I plan for the new year.

Setting my long-term and short-term goals

The beginning of the year is filled with so much energy and excitement, so I like to use that energy to set my long-term goals first. What are the big dreams and aspirations I have for myself that are possible over the course of 12 months.

I find it helpful to start with my long-term goals because meaningful change takes time. So if I want to get my bodyfat percentage close to 20% by the end of the year, this is much more realistic on a long-term scale, then trying to reach that goal in the first 3 months of the year.

Although I don’t write down my goals using the S.M.A.R.T. method, I still follow that principle to guide how I set my goals for the year. If you don’t know, S.M.A.R.T. stands for specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-oriented/time-constrained.

Using the example of the bodyfat percentage goal, I would write it down like this:

“In 2025, I would like to achieve a bodyfat percentage of 20% by the end of year. I’ll use my Renpho scale and app to track my progress, and will combine healthy nutrition and exercise practices to help me achieve this goal. I am currently at 29%, which means I will need to lose about 0.75% every month to achieve this by the end of the year.“

You can see that I include how I will keep track of this goal, what I will do to actually achieve the goal, and what that goal looks like broken down by month. All of this creates structure and a clear path to achieve my goal, which is very helpful for someone like me who loves a goal and loves structure.

Setting Short-Term Goals

Once I have my long-term goals set, I like to break them down into short-term goals, or milestones. This is a great mental exercise that will help me visualize the smaller steps I will have to take, and the mini-wins I can celebrate on the way to achieving my long-term goals.

The great thing about writing down your long-term goals using the format I mentioned above is that you can dig into the steps mentioned to help you set your goals.

Using the body-fat percentage goal again, a short-term goal or milestone will be to get to the gym 4x/week every week for the first quarter of 2025 (Jan – Mar). Because I am coming at this goal with a lot of historical data, and knowing when I have been at my best physically, I know that going 4x/week consistently has helped me stay on track with my nutrition goals, and helped me develop a more preferable body composition.

Here’s what that would look like written down:

“For the first quarter of 2025 (Jan – Mar) I will consistently go to the gym 4x/week, following a structured 12-week program that will be tracked using the Hevy app. I will hold myself accountable by posting my workouts to TikTok and sharing my progress on Pinterest and my website.”

Because this is a smaller goal, that is going to take daily practice, it is important to really emphasize what will make this goal attainable. In my case, keeping track of my workouts in the Hevy app, plus posting my workouts to social media and my website will add layers of accountability to make sure I am getting to the gym and working towards this milestone.

If you want, you can break these goals down even further. It all depends on how often you prefer to receive rewards or feedback as you work towards a goal.

In my case, I like to receive positive feedback or some kind of reward at least once per month. So I will be breaking down this goal one-step further to highlight how I will be rewarding myself every time I finish a month with 4 workouts every week.

I may use a specific training goal as my target for the month, such as increasing my bench press by 10% or getting to 3 unassisted pull-ups by the end of the month. Consistent workouts will help me achieve these smaller goals, but these smaller goals can be achieve in smaller units of time.

It is really all about figuring out your system for setting and tracking goals. Once you have those in place, you’re in a great place to start working towards those long-term goals you have set for the year.

Setting Intentions and Finding Resources

One of the biggest impacts on the success of your year is having clear intentions for the year, or setting yourself with a healthy mindset, and then figuring out what resources will help you stay on track.

Over time, I have learned that having a healthy mindset is crucial to my success. I want to set exciting goals for myself, but I always make to make sure they are rooted in growth, and not self-hatred or trying to change who I am fundamentally.

I used to set goals in my late teens and early twenties that were all about changing who I was fundamentally. I thought who I was wasn’t good enough, or couldn’t be the right version of me to achieve what I wanted to that year.

But over time, I learned that this is a rotten place to come from. Who you are is enough. Your body and mind are made of the genetics of generations before you who survived, innovated, loved, and grew into beautiful humans. We all have the potential, we just have to believe that we have that potential and then run with it.

For example, I learned in my mid-twenties that I am at my best when I have a goal, and when I am learning new things. Listening to an insightful podcast, or taking an interesting online course is really motivating and helps me stay on track in all other areas of my life.

When I can direct that energy towards my goals, I have been able to get out of deep depressions, rediscover the strength of my body, and ultimately inspires others around me to pursue healthy, happy, and balanced lifestyles.

So as you plan for this year, just remember that the potential to be great already exists within you. Start telling yourself this every day, and you’ll be amazed how over time, you really do start to believe it and it will bring you to new places you maybe never thought were possible. And when you need a helping hand, explore resources like podcasts, books, YouTube channels and communities that inspire you to keep growing and learning and pursuing that higher version of yourself.

Get Started

The final step is to just get started. Sometimes the planning phase can be more exciting than the actual doing phase, but you have to get started to know if the goals you’ve set are realistic for you.

Every day is a new day to experience your self-growth and to celebrate those mini-wins. But you have to get started to find out.

Trust that you can do this. Even if you’ve stumbled in the past, you made the choice to get back up again. Honour that and keep going. I believe you can do it because I have pulled myself out of some serious ruts and dark places and have surprised myself with what I am capable of. This is part of the human experience, so stick with it.

Here’s to your best year yet!