Exercise scientist Dr. Mike Israetel is helping everyone kick off 2025 on the right foot. In a YouTube video released on December 31, 2024, he shares his top strategy for reaching your New Year’s fitness resolution with actionable, noticeable results.
“People want actionable notable results. And they often forget this part explicitly, but almost everyone, everyone wants to keep their new results going for the rest of the year and get maybe even more results later.”
Dr. Israetel has become a trusted source of wisdom within the fitness and bodybuilding community. He uses his thriving YouTube channel as a platform for individuals seeking not just better physiques, but healthier lifestyles, which he accomplishes with comprehensive dieting guides, workout critiques, and technique breakdowns.
The ‘New Year, New Me’ crowd is in full swing, inspiring him to share tips and insights for those aiming for big changes in 2025. From setting short-term goals to structuring your diet and training, his expert advice below can help turn your resolution into reality.
Exercise Scientist Shares Best Approach to Achieve New Year’s Fitness Resolutions: “Set Your Goals Low But Meaningfully”
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During the YouTube video, Dr. Israetel revealed that most people’s fitness resolutions center around wanting to lose fat or gain muscle.
“Most people want a few things from their New Year’s transformation, their New Year’s resolution of fitness. They want to lose some serious fat.
They want to gain some serious muscle or at least not lose any muscle while losing fat. They want to net a noticeable gain in appearance, an improvement in appearance that people can tell and they can tell.”
What’s Realistic in the Short Term (3 months)?
According to Dr. Israetel, fitness goals shouldn’t be too hard or easy to obtain.
“When you choose roughly three months as the goal you have to be careful not to choose randomly or choose in a way that lets your hope or belief in yourself that’s maybe feeling a little extra in this New Year’s resolution kind of take hold. You don’t want the goals to be too hard or too easy to obtain,” he shared.
In three months, he believes most people can lose five to seven percent of their body weight with proper dieting and training.
“In a three-month timespan, we’ve seen that most people benefit greatly and are able to lose about 5-7 percent of their body weight in that timespan and keep it off.”
Setting Up Diet
As for setting up a proper diet, he emphasized that individuals should eat three to five meals per day while aiming to consume a gram of protein per pound of body weight. To curb the appetite, he believes protein and veggie-based meals are most effective. He also advocated for fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats.
“For diet, three to five meals per day roughly evenly spread. A gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, roughly evenly spread among the meals. Veggies in most meals. When you need more food when you’re hungry, when you need more calories, you’re going to buffer those protein veggie meals with fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats.”
Setting Up Training
On the training side of things, he recommends most individuals adhere to a whole-body training protocol.
“I recommend whole body training for most people. So every time you come to the gym it’s total body, two to three times a week roughly evenly spread.”
He offered an example of how to approach whole-body training.
“For example, you do push-ups supersetted with pulldowns, upright rows supersetted with hamstring curls, and dips supersetted with squats and all of a sudden you’ve trained your entire body but it took you like 25 minutes with multiple sets, very little rest break, gets your cardio going, builds a fuck-load of muscle and it saves an unbelievable amount of time.”
Minimize Internal Pressure
Rather than putting pressure on yourself that could backfire, he suggests adopting a ‘relaxed consistency’ approach, advising to ‘set your goals low but meaningfully.’
“Too many folks consider the New Year’s resolution kind of a time to shine or a time to put it all on the line, like this year, I’m doing it,” he shares. “Here’s the thing. There is no line, and nobody cares about this but you. If you fail, it’s nobody’s problem that you failed except for yours. There’s just no big pressure to make radical changes.”
“What you need to do is get a relaxed consistency in place. Not a high mental pressure short-term cooker that burns you the fuck out. Set your goals low but meaningfully, so they are impressive but easy and attainable. Take the easy W.”
As one of the most prolific fitness YouTubers around, fans of all body types and fitness levels can take lessons away from Dr. Israetel’s breakdown. If you aim to crush a fitness resolution in 2025, feel free to implement his advice for optimal results!
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