It’s that time of year again where we start to hear the cliche “New Year – New Me” and this can be quite intimidating, when returning to your fitness regime after the festive period. Whilst it’s encouraged for us all to relax and recover over Christmas (maybe slowing down a little more or potentially overindulging on snacks more than we usually would), getting out of the blocks early is important, when kick-starting our training back up.

Setting realistic goals and managing your expectations is crucial. You may want to go head-in and change everything at once but dialling it back and starting off small is much more likely to result in you sticking to a plan. Change doesn’t happen overnight. But it does happen when small changes are being made consistently over time.  

Making small incremental changes is an ideal way to adopt new, healthier habits and is one of the most effective ways to get back on track. By aiming to improve by 1% each day, you can make this task a lot less intimidating.

Help yourself by adopting healthier eating habits. Knowing what to eat and how much to eat can be very confusing, especially with the countless diets and new fads popping up every month. Nutrition is the most important part of your training, so you want to ensure that you eat in a way that helps you achieve your goals. Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy your favourite foods or have a drink or two here and there.

If your goal is to lose weight, you want to eat in a calorie deficit. This means you should consume fewer calories than you burn in a day. Your protein intake is also an important factor that is often overlooked. It is the single most important nutrient for weight loss. With weight loss as a goal, your protein intake needs to be high.

If you want to gain weight and build muscle, you must consume more calories than you burn each day. For example, if you burn 2000 calories per day, you should aim for a range of 2,300 to 2,500. This will result in a calorie surplus of 300 to 500. Reducing your sugar intake, drinking 8 glasses of water, and having a variety of fruits and vegetables in your dietary regime will also help you reach your fitness goals.

Getting back into a fitness regime after a break can be daunting. That’s why EMS is such a great way to get you back on track. By delivering a highly effective workout in just 20-minutes, that’s already one thing that ticks the ‘convenience’ box, when shopping around for a new gym.

By complimenting your conventional training (lifting weights to improve strength or running on a treadmill to improve your cardiovascular endurance, for example) with one weekly EMS session, will help you to build a sustainable routine and will help to condition your body quicker. However, for some of us, doing EMS training once or twice per week can be sufficient enough, to achieve our personal goals. 

Be patient with yourself and remember, it took time to get you to where you are now… so it will also take a realistic amount of time to get back to your peak fitness. The Surge team are ready and waiting to help you get back on track.