Summary
Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? Many people say they’re going to make healthier choices and exercise more, but not many of them stick with it for very long. In this episode, Josh Delgado talks to Jordan Tam, fitness trainer at Centennial College’s Athletics and Wellness Centre, about the right way to make a healthy New Year’s resolution, and how to stick to it. They also discuss their own successes and failures when it comes to New Year’s fitness resolutions, and what they learned from them.
Josh Delgado: Welcome to Centennial College Fit and Healthy on campus podcast. The podcast that gives you tips and resources on how to live a fit and healthy life on campus. I'm your host, Joshua Delgado. Thanks for joining us for episode one's topic, the New Year's Resolution Myth. I'm joined today by our guest Jordan Tam. Jordan's a trainer. He's worked with us for two years here in the Athletic Center. Jordan's actually a Centennial alumni. He studied fitness and health promotion here, then went on to study his sports studies undergrad in the University of West England. He works with individuals as well as groups to help meet their health and fitness goals. Mostly here in the Athletic Center, but he does work elsewhere as well. Jordan, thanks for joining us today.
Jordan Tam: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here to discuss about the topic of New Year's resolutions, can't wait to get get started.
Josh Delgado: Awesome. I want to start by defining what this is. New Year's resolution according to the Cambridge Dictionary is, "A promise that you make to yourself to start doing something new or to start doing something good or to stop doing something bad on the first day of the year." The example that they give is, "Have you made any New Year's resolutions?" And the answer being, "Yes, I'm going to start eating more healthily and give up smoking." My question for you Jordan is be honest, have you had any New Year's resolutions in recent years?
Jordan Tam: That's a great question. No. No I haven't set any kind of New Year's resolution goal. Me being a full-time athlete in the sport of Olympic weight lifting, I set myself a big goal. Which is my goal is to compete in the Commonwealth Games in 2022 in Birmingham. That's where pretty much where I studied, not in Birmingham, but in the UK. For me to kind of study in the UK last year and be able to compete and work up to my goal to compete in the UK, that would mean a lot to me to be able to see my friends, and teachers, and professors there.
Josh Delgado: For sure.
Jordan Tam: It means a lot. So for me to kind of hey, it's like New Year's okay, I'll set a new years goal to kind of wait for it to happen. It doesn't work that way.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: For me, myself. How I see it is that when you're setting a goal, you can't wait for it to happen. You have to make it happen, you have to act on it. For people who kind of wait for New Year's to happen and kind of set, set myself with goals like, oh I want to lose 30 pounds and for New Year's resolution.
Josh Delgado: Sure.
Jordan Tam: 99% of the time it's not going to happen because the time that they're waiting, they could already achieve that or at least take smaller steps to work towards that goal.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: For someone to wait on something to happen, 99% of the time it's not going to happen. Even though if it's going to happen, you're probably going to relapse back to where you started. Just because you need to have that mindset of being disciplined and committed to that goal. So for myself, I set a big goal and for me to achieve that big goal, I set myself smaller goals to help reach the bigger one, which is to compete in the UK. It's almost like you're walking on a 24 building. The steps resemble the small little goals. Each floor kind of represents something that the small to medium goals and then the top floor of the 20th floor, represents the main goal.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: Not every goal is going to always going to get to what you want it to be, but there's small little steps to get there.
Josh Delgado: Sure.
Jordan Tam: So it's not always kind of inclining up to like a mountain.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: There's always the ups and downs. For me setting a goal for New Year's resolution, it doesn't sit really well with me.
Josh Delgado: Right, awesome. You definitely have that competitive athlete mindset when it comes to goal setting. I'll tell you a story. I had my last New Year's resolution goal in 2018 January 2018 so not this January, but the past one. What happened was I told myself, and I've always been fit and active and healthy that sense, but I wanted to be able to lift a certain amount of poundage by my birthday. Wanted to have a certain level of strength. From January to my birthday, which is in June, I had six months to sort of reach my goal. By April of that year, four months in, I was nowhere closer to my goal. I was a bit embarrassed and so for whatever reason, okay, last year, and I remember looking up different articles online and a lot of them were about how people fail their New Year's resolution goals within the first couple of months and I was part of that group. I didn't feel good about it. I knew I had to make a change, I had to do something that I'd never done before. What I ended up doing is I ended up hiring a coach. I'm a coach myself, but I hired a coach to help me reach my goals. I worked with that coach for nine months and it was the best decision I could ever make. I had been working with the coach ever since. It's been about 18 months total now. It's something that I'm not going to stop doing. It's something that I budget for. It's something that it's a no brainer for me. I learned so much about myself in the process. It's stress-free because I don't have to build my own program. I don't have to worry about all the logistics. Someone else deals with that. I just have to go and put in the work. For me, that worked. We'll talk a bit more about that approach in a bit, but I want to know so in the gym, we work in the gym. We see it every year. It's like Groundhog day. We see it coming, the New Year's resolutioners and it's a huge deal for people increasing their physical activity in the gym. Jordan, why do you feel that physical activity and increasing physical activity is such a big part in people's resolutions?
Jordan Tam: I think especially during the new year it symbolizes a fresh start during like the new quote unquote New Year's resolution. Symbolizes a fresh start. So it's almost like it's a clean slate. You can kind of have more leeway to starting wherever you want as opposed to kind of continuing what you're doing from last year. It's almost like it's something fresh to start over again. Again, I think that doesn't really exist because if you're kind of waiting for that time to start all over again, you're 99% of the time like I mentioned before, it's not going to happen.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: In terms of someone's a health, physical activity, it's life. We move, we stand. We're creatures of habits. So being physically active is so important for us and I think that a lot of people don't realize that. Some people will value their health first. Some people will put their health last.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: For the people who kind of prioritize their health first, it's really important for them to set goals, to really achieve their goals, essentially. To be able to get to their weight. If they want to feel better. Do they want to lose 30 pounds? Do they want to look better by the time summer comes? Or just simply they just want to be healthier. A good example of this is I have a client that came to me and she's obese, a little bit overweight, but she realized that she was looking at pictures from five years ago and saying that, "Oh, I was this amount of weight." That kind of clicked with her.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: Looking back at that picture of five years ago, it kind of really kind of triggered a sense in her that, you know what I need to take care of my health because I have three kids and I really need to make sure that I'm there for them when I'm older.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: So for that, some people will need something to kind of trigger them to really notice that hey, I need to put my health first.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: For the opposite spectrum, the people that don't put their health first it's more or less that they're not managing their time or they just don't prioritize their health because they have either have nine to five jobs and by the time they kind of come home, they're kind of too tired or something like that. Or just simply they just need to prioritize their family first just because they need to put food on their table, things like that. Everyone's different, but at the end of the day, everyone has time. You just need to make a time for that to happen. Again, it just depending on each person, if they really want to prioritize their health. Whether they want to get to their goals. I think at the end of the day, it just takes someone to have that moment where they realize they really need to get physically active in order for them to really make it happen.
Josh Delgado: For sure that one defining moment.
Jordan Tam: Yeah.
Josh Delgado: Yeah, because and I agree 100%. That ties into the myth that we all know that if we want the results to be permanent, there's long-term planning. There are long-term goals, there's small steps towards bigger lifestyle habits that have to be achieved on a permanent basis for those results to remain permanent. We're not going to rely on a short-term plan to be successful and that's with anything. We see that a lot in the gym. We see a lot of short-term goals. People come in and they say, "I want to look good for convocation for award ceremony or for a wedding that's coming up." The trainers, of course, we do our best to create a plan that helps them become successful, but we're always very clear that the results will not be sustainable in the four, six, eight week time period. They're not going to last unless you make these changes. Okay, and that can happen anytime a year.
Jordan Tam: Yeah, for sure.
Josh Delgado: Doesn't have to be January 1st. You mentioned the why. You mentioned that motivation and you mentioned client goals.
Jordan Tam: Another thing too that I wanted to mention is that physical activity is important, but why are you doing that in the first place? What that means is the purpose. If you're kind of going to the gym and you have a goal of losing 30 pounds, or want to gain 20 pounds of muscle mass. Why is that you want to get to that goal? What will make you feel better once you get to that goal? It's not about setting that goal, it's also about why do you want to get to this goal in the first place. You really have to ask yourself this questions like what life changes will happen if I get to this goal? It's not about setting that one goal and kind of just working on it, but what will benefit yourself from achieving that goal? I always ask all my clients, when they first come in, why is that you want personal training? Why do you want to reach to that goal? As trainers, we provide the tools for them, but if they're not capable of using our tools, then the responsibility of themselves it's on them, it's not us. I always ask them that question, why do you want to do this? What will happen if you achieve your goal? It all comes down to their why and what's the purpose of their life. Why do they want to achieve this goal?
Josh Delgado: For sure, and I agree, having that and knowing that why is such a huge part of the long-term success and using that why as a motivation. We've all heard that it takes 30, 60, or 90 days to build a habit, but one thing we've learned is that everyone's different. Everyone's going to do it in a different amount of time and everyone's going to be motivated in a different way. Everyone's why is going to be a little bit different. Take money as a motivation for example. We've seen lots of challenges on TV where there's prize money at the end to motivate people to do well in weight loss for example. There are similar programs we've seen in gyms as well as in the workplace that use a prize or some sort of money to motivate people to do well. It works up to a certain point. We've seen it from another angle as trainers. We've seen it because we've offered lots of free programs here on campus for years. We've offered tons of free programs that are high quality, good stuff and people when it's free, when the program is free, they're always more likely to cancel, to show up late, to not show the same amount of attention and respect that the program deserves. As soon as we say the program costs $1,000. All of a sudden things change for participants because now it's an investment for them. Their hard-earned dollars are at stake and they don't want it to go to waste. The program quality has not changed. It's just we put a price tag on it. So money can play a huge motivation, for example. That brings us back to, it's different for everyone and we really have to find that why and what works for people.
Jordan Tam: Yeah. What you mentioned is exactly what some of my clients are going through. It's like they put thousands of dollars for personal training and instantly like their mindset changes because they put their hard-earned money into training.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: If they don't show up, they're using up their time and they're [crosstalk 00:14:05].
Josh Delgado: It's a waste of money yeah.
Jordan Tam: Exactly. It's a good point of using money. Some people would invest in their health in terms of putting the money. Some people put as much money as they want because they know they need this. They need to create a lifestyle change in order for them to reach their goal. Yeah, it's a good point, but again, everyone's different in terms of their motivation and what external kind of factors affects how they achieve their goal and how they feel.
Josh Delgado: Right. Honestly speaking, do you feel that there's a certain time of year or date on the calendar where if people start their goals at that point, gym-related goals, that they're more successful? Is there a certain time a year where people are more successful?
Jordan Tam: No. No, I don't believe in time as a factor to achieve their goal. I mean, you have some people saying I want to look a certain time this way during the summer, but at the end of the day, if you're waiting for that goal, like I said, from the very beginning, 99% of the time you're not going to achieve that goal because you're using that time to wait to just sit there and just wait for that time.
Josh Delgado: Sure.
Jordan Tam: Time passes. Time is constant it's always going to go, but it's just us. We change. So it's whether or not you're willing to change because time doesn't wait for us. There is no, I don't believe in there's time-
Josh Delgado: There's no magic date.
Jordan Tam: Exactly. There's no magic date for you to achieve for that goal.
Josh Delgado: Yeah, and so we do see a lot of short-term goals and a lot of short-term success too, but we always make it clear to people that it's not sustainable. It's not going to last unless you make these long-term lifestyle habit changes that are going to help you keep that success permanent.
Jordan Tam: Yeah, exactly.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: Yeah. So yeah, it's something you brought up, like a lifestyle change. Everyone that comes into personal training sessions with us they think that just because they set their goal, they're probably going to look like that or they want to work to that goal, but it's not just setting a goal. That's like the first step of essentially getting to that first place of achieving that goal. Setting goals first, but you need to be able to commit to that. Which is the second step. You need to be able to commit to that goal. That means that you need to show up. You need to do the work. Just because you're here in the training session doesn't mean you're already getting to that goal. You still have to do all the work. You have to put in the time and the effort and nutrition. You have to do the homework that you need to do. You have to stay consistency.
Josh Delgado: Sure.
Jordan Tam: I'm a big believer of consistency and discipline and commitment if you're willing to achieve your goal. If you don't have the consistency, then what's the point of coming here six to eight weeks and then eight weeks later you don't show up or just the time changes. Consistency is such a huge factor for all of us. Whether not just for fitness goals, but just in life in general.
Josh Delgado: Right.
Jordan Tam: I think having that consistency, discipline, and commitment to be able to get to that is a such a huge underrated kind of aspect that when clients come in they don't really understand. As much as we give them the tools.
Josh Delgado: I agree 100% and consistency. Speaking of consistency, I've asked the gym staff the athletic center team leader for some stats on gym participation. The amount of people who visit the athletic center and how often. From December to January, the stats show that access more than doubles from December to January. This is an annual trend. It's clear, it more than doubles. Then over the months, it tapers off again. Then it ramps back up again and then goes back down. It's a clear trend and I think you can already expect that, but we can see it in numbers as well. You're talking about consistency. People should know eventually, they'll get it at some point, everyone will. That if you're adding physical activity to a part of building up your goals, the consistency. Being part of the group that stays in the gym long-term is going to help you get those results. Otherwise, you're going to be part of that group that loses participation and then by December they're thinking, oh, January's around the corner. It's time to build my goals again. Imagine you were in a place where you're like, you know what? I've reached my goals, I'm maintaining my goals, and it's not about falling off or building new goals. It's I've been consistent and here I am now. So you're in a different place. Okay, and which is ultimately the goal that we want to see for everyone, including our clients and all of you Centennial podcast listeners.
Jordan Tam: Yup, for sure.
Josh Delgado: So Centennial podcast listeners, if you have a goal that you want to achieve and you need help with because we all know it's not easy, it's not always easy. You have all the capacity to reach this goal any time of year and in case you need a bit of help I'm going to name some resources available to you on campus along the way. Perhaps this list can be shared in other places so you can find the links more easily. Progress, Morningside, Ashtonbee, and the SAC campus all have fitness centres with free access to all staff and students. Part-time students pay their membership separately at the AWC. All campus fitness centres offer group fitness classes. The athletic and wellness center at Progress also offers free fitness consultations with a personal trainer. That includes healthy lifestyle guidelines and a body composition assessment. They also offer personal training and they also have a AppleTree Telemedicine Clinic. Which is a walk-in clinic with access to telemedicine and there's now a physician onsite, 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM Monday to Friday. Centennial employees also have access to resources through their health and wellness department. Which includes a gym membership, fitness subsidy, campus walking routes, nutrition guidance, sleep pods, a wellness newsletter, as well as courses on health and wellness topics. Thank you for joining us for episode one, the New Year's Resolution Myth. Make sure to join us for next week's episode on the topic, defeating the winter blues. Where we will be joined by special guests, Adam Balan, Corby Anderson, and Julie Haluschak.