How To Make Your 2025 Goals Resilient and Successful

Do you feel like you’ve mastered the art of setting New Year’s resolutions but struggle to see them through? Then you're like most of us! In this episode, Aimee provides strategies to prevent your goals from fizzling by February—and teaches you to flip the script to stay consistent, even when life throws chaos your way.

🔑 What You’ll Learn:

• The real secret to creating goals that align with who you are—and who you’re becoming.
• Why aiming for “good enough” 80% of the time beats nailing it 100%.
• How to turn your aspirations into achievable, actionable steps.
• The power of planning for obstacles before they derail you.

💬 "If your goal isn’t tied to who you’re becoming, abandoning it will feel easier than sticking with it. But when it’s connected to your values, giving up becomes unthinkable."

Whether you’re aiming to eat more veggies, run a marathon, lose weight or reduce your blood sugar, this episode is packed with strategies to keep you on track and motivated. Because success isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress.

🎧 Listen now and let’s make 2025 the year your goals stick for good!

00:59 Setting Realistic New Year Goals

03:14 Finding Your Motivation

08:21 Overcoming Obstacles

11:40 Breaking Down Goals into Manageable Steps

15:01 The Importance of Flexibility

24:36 Acknowledging Success and Progress

Resources:

Newsletter sign up for recipes, upcoming groups and more

Complimentary 15 min call

Beyond SMART Goals: Creating Habits that Last

Beyond SMART Goals: Creating External Frameworks to Achieve Your Intentions

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Transcript

0:00

Hey Rebels, welcome to Blasphemous Nutrition. Consider this podcast your pantry full of clarity, perspective, and the nuance needed to counter the superficial health advice so freely given on the internet. I'm Amy, the unapologetically candid host of Blasphemous Nutrition and a double degreed nutritionist with 20 years experience. I'm here to share a more nuanced take. On living and eating well to sustain and recover your health. If you've found most health advice to be so generic as to be meaningless, We're so extreme that it's unrealistic, and you don't mind the occasional F bomb. You've come to the right place. From dissecting the latest nutrition trends to breaking down published research and sharing my own clinical experiences, I'm on a mission to foster clarity amidst all the confusion and empower you to have the help you need to live a life you love. Now let's get started.

MacBook Air Microphone: 1:00

Happy new year and welcome to Blasphemous nutrition. I'm your host, Aimee. And today, I want to talk about how to make goals that you will not abandon by February 1st. It's that time of your, when people begin a new. Whether or not you make goals or resolutions for the new year. Most of us can't help, but take this moment in time to reflect on the past year And think ahead to the coming one. And inevitably we have thoughts and ideas on what we want to be different. So, if you're listening to this episode, you have likely gone beyond just thinking about this and dismissing it. But perhaps like most of us you've never really been good. Uh, achieving the broad sweeping goals that many people make this year. To finally quit sugar, to start going to the gym four times a week. To train for a half marathon, or maybe add more fruit and vegetables to your diet. Maybe the first two weeks of the year go off well, or even better. You find a six week fitness challenge or use a whole 30 to jumpstart your efforts. Half expecting, but mostly hoping that the momentum of say the first 10% of this year is going to somehow. Be enough to carry you through the next 90%, but life doesn't really work like that. Does it? There are interruptions and obstacles and unforeseen chaos that inevitably makes it near impossible to meet a longterm goal, unless you either have an adaptable, evolving plan in place, or you have a hell of a lot of support from others around you. So today, I want to talk about how to increase your motivation to stick with it when the going gets tough and how to create an adaptable, flexible plan to navigate the unexpected as best you can without giving up and throwing in the towel. The first thing to consider is why. Why are you wanting to make a change in the first place? Perhaps the most important step for any of this is to have a clear, strong purpose in achieving that goal. If you want to run a half marathon this year, determine why that's important. What is that going to give you, aside from feeling like a badass. What does feeling like a bad-ass give you? Maybe it's a sense of refusing to age like your parents did. Maybe it's to reestablish the consistency for physical activity that you used to have in college. But let's say you have a goal, like a half marathon and you achieve it. Then what. Well, if the goal isn't tied to a deeper value or a sense of personal integrity, for example, I value fitness as part of my lifestyle, because it keeps me strong. It improves my mood and it allows me to do all of the things I want to do in my life. If you don't have that deeper value or sense of personal integrity, your goal will likely not withstand the storms and obstacles ahead of you. And then you have nowhere to go after it is achieved or you're more likely not to achieve it in the first place. You have to tie your goal to a value inherent in either who you are today or who you are growing into, who you are becoming. The integration of oneself into an aspiration or a goal makes abandoning it far more painful than keeping at it and pushing through and continuing to work for that goal, even when it feels like life is working against you. Now, if that goal is tied to who you are becoming or who you really wish to be in the world rather than how you see yourself today. You likely will need more support and reinforcement of integrating that value. Reminding yourself in numerous ways and different ways, what becoming this person means to you and staying connected to how much that intention means to you is essential. And here I find inspirational autobiographies or movies about people who overcome the odds and achieve great changes, such as, you know, rags to riches stories or overcoming a debilitating injury to resume a sport, or those who have come back from disease to regain health, personal stories of special Olympians. Right. These can be really helpful. Because these people are human. And so are we, so our shared humanity reminds us that it is possible to achieve things which may feel impossible in the moment. Finding your own sources of inspiration to be your north star and keep you from falling prey to your own fears and doubts is so important and so helpful. Aside from autobiographies or biographies of famous people who have achieved insurmountable odds or inspiring movies about people who overcome huge obstacles. even finding people around you who are ahead of you on the path, but have a similar backstory can also be deeply supportive. And this is where something like a fitness community or a support group can be an absolute lifeline. Even if you aren't aiming to say, be a first place finisher, or you don't think that your diabetes could be put into remission utilizing the stories of those who have achieved more than you expect for yourself or that you think your body can do can still carry you forward. The question you ask yourself may not be, can I win first place, but maybe it's. Can I finish this at all? Can I finish a half marathon? Is that possible for me? Is it even possible for me to get my blood levels from a diabetic range to a pre-diabetic range? Or can I reduce my dose of medication through utilizing lifestyle changes and maintain that lower dose of medication? This reminds me of something else. Shifting the goal from an expectation of something that you have to do to an experiment to see if it is something that you can do or how far along you can make an improvement can reduce the pressure to perform. And it also opens up your mind to creative problem solving when the going gets tough. Which it will. And that leads me to my second point, knowing your obstacles. Maintaining a mindset of curiosity is essential to maintaining resiliency in the face of adversity. Once we panic, once we get angry, we shut down and our creative juices dry up, and it's much, much more difficult to think your way out of a problem when you are in a highly emotional state. So stepping into the new year with an idea in mind of how you want to be at the end of the year is the perfect opportunity and the perfect time to seek known obstacles. And strategize how to overcome them. So first list out all the known obstacles that you expect to face; when your work schedule gets crazy, how are you going to navigate your dietary needs instead of relying on takeout? If you only have 20 minutes to get dinner on the table, how can you best meet your nutrition goals within that timeframe? If you get sick, how will you prevent it from permanently derailing your workout plan for the year? What do you need to plan for when vacations or summer comes and your daily routine changes.? Even if you have a goal that you anticipate achieving before summer, if it is something that you're aiming to maintain as part of a longterm lifestyle strategy, you need to plan for things like summer and things like vacation so that this disruption in your routine doesn't cause that goal or the progress that you made to achieve that goal to be lost. So before you begin. Or today, if you've already begun working on your goal. Outline how you plan to navigate the obstacles and set up contingency plans for when things go haywire. Who is going to watch the kids. What else in your life can take a back seat while you hold onto this goal as a life priority? Maybe laundry doesn't get done. Maybe you have to delegate some tasks to coworkers. Or to your older kids so that you have the time that you need to meal prep or get to the gym or go for that run. And if you find yourself saying there is no way out and you have no choices, then I want you to reframe the question. If there was a way out. What would it look like? If I lived in a world where there was a choice, there was a possibility, what could that be? And then what is the closest that you can get to that? Write out your ideas and your contingency plans, because I promise you in the moment, you're totally going to forget about them. So having them written down will not only help you remember them when the time comes, but it will give you a resource to refer to when your brain is in panic mode. And those creativity juices have temporarily dried up. Number three, break your goal down into the smallest of doable chunks. One of the things that happens when we set goals for the year is we don't take the time. To realize. Ultimately what it will take to maintain consistency and gain momentum in achieving these goals. So if you have a goal to eat more produce this year, what needs to happen? Well, you need to have more produce in the house, first of all. And most of the time, there will probably be some prep involved, which requires time and that time will need to be found and allocated to the prepping of the produce. Right. And you're going to also have to make the time to eat it as well. So what ultimately will it take for all of these pieces to be put in place?. Here's some ideas with that goal of more produce on your plate. First create a master list of produce that you just always have on hand. So for instance, every time we go to the grocery store, we pick up the staples and I'm sure you do too, but our staples always include some produce: bananas, oranges, broccoli, lettuce. And if even getting to the grocery store is a struggle for you, see if you can have regularly scheduled deliveries of groceries to your home or your workplace to save yourself the time that is needed to go and shop for them. When it comes to prep time, you can save a lot of time by purchasing precut veggies, bagged salad, greens, and single serve, produce options. Like. Oranges or a bag of snap peas where there's really no prep involved aside from perhaps maybe washing some of the vegetables before you eat them. Keep some of these on your master list of grocery items for moments when you don't have time to prep. And don't wait until you don't have the time to put it on your master grocery list. I have them in rotation all the time. And then when you don't have time, they are already there and you don't have to think about bringing them into the house. But let's say all hell breaks loose, and it's just going to be a meal out. That's okay. But where is the place where you can find produce order from there? Maybe it's the Thai restaurant on the corner that has a wicked vegetable Curry, or you know that the deli across from your workplace has a salad. That'll get the job done. Or maybe there is a Chipolte lay or other sort of like quick Mexican place that can make a burrito bowl and you can use lettuce instead of rice as the base of that bowl and get your veggies in that way. Make note of the places that do offer options aligned with your goals, write them down. So you don't have to think about it when you are in a rush and then lean on those options during the times that you have to. And once you start looking for places which offer what you need, you will start to find them. And this is a great segue into step four. Determining your optimal, your good. And you're good enough. Now, usually when we make goals, we are operating from a place of what is optimal. I want to eat five servings of veggies a day. Awesome. That is a goal which will significantly improve your health, your energy, reduce inflammation and dramatically lower your disease risk. But is it realistic for 365 days this year? If your current baseline is one to two servings of produce a day, which is what most Americans, Brits, Kiwis and Aussies get each day. Then five a day, every day, probably isn't realistic. Only 10 to 14% of these populations actually get their five servings of fruit and veggies a day. So if this is the baseline for optimal or what is best then shooting for three is good and shooting for two is good enough. Let your good enough be just a little bit more than what your current baseline is and let good be about halfway between good enough and optimal. This way, even if you've had a hellish year, your good enough still puts you ahead of where you were last year and keeps the goal at the forefront without the demands of. Optimal all the time. To use this example from a fitness perspective, let's say you have a goal of exercising four times a week. Maybe you want to do yoga four times a week. You want to lift weights four times a week. Or your aiming to run certain mileage or certain minutes each week that you're going to break up into four different runs. If four is best and you are currently say exercising once a week, then good would be three times a week, right. Instead of the four. And good enough would be one to two times a week. What you're aiming to do is to create a new baseline that is slightly better. Then your current baseline so that at the end of this year, you have still made progress. Life is not a binary pass, fail exam, nor should our goals be so. Gradients of success allow us to get through those unexpected diversions without giving up entirely and allow progress to continue to be made. Even if that progress is less ideal than we really want it to be. Life is going to happen. And the reality is that a perfect score is not needed to be successful. So number five is aim for good enough or best 80% of the time. Precision nutrition is an online weight loss and fitness program. that asks for a year long commitment. And they have been, gosh, they've been around for. I want to say at least 15 years and everything is done exclusively online and there's coaching and support and this whole program. Right. But they have. At this point, over a million people who have gone through their program and they have taken the data from their participants. And discovered that even those who adhered to their nutrition and fitness program, 50% of the time. Still lost five to 6% of their total body weight after a year. Even modest improvements, such as this have real life benefits for your joint health, for your blood sugar levels and your overall reduced risk of chronic disease. Those who are consistent 50 to 80% of the time made even greater progress. Losing more weight, more inches. And interestingly enough, they observed that the difference between those who are rocking it 55% of the time, versus those who were rocking it 79% of the time wasn't wildly dramatic. But those with the greatest transformation were adherent to the program, 80 to 90% of the time. So aim for 80% instead of 100% as your gold star, a plus metric, knowing that if you're able to achieve the objectives of your goal, 90% of the time or more, you're basically just getting extra credit. And. The reality is if you're consistent, even 50% of the time this year, you will be much better off for that effort. Now this perspective is often really hard to keep when you have a big goal. So let's say you want to lose 30 pounds this year, but for whatever reason, 2025 ends up being a Whopper and there's loads of derailments and obstacles. And come December 1st, you've only managed to lose six pounds. That is still a success. And if you don't think so, let me ask you this. Do you want those six pounds back? No. Okay. Then take the win. Not only did you lose six pounds, you've also learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work in the face of massive obstacles. And you would take this into your 20 26 and continue working at it. No, if by November you're pissed off and you're frustrated and you refuse to take that win. You're likely going to say the hell with it for the holidays and just let yourself enjoy the holidays. Regained those six pounds that you lost and then come January. You will be even more pissed off at yourself. So don't let imperfect progress be the enemy of good enough. If you are focused on all or nothing, you will end up with nothing. Number six. It is crucial to keep the long game in mind because things often take longer than expected. My father once told me that he was always a decade behind schedule when it came to achieving his career goals. A decade. Can you imagine? But he never gave up. He has never given up. He is like one of the most doggedly determined and stubborn humans. I know. And. Because of this, he has achieved more in his lifetime than he ever could have conceived of when he first immigrated to the United States. So plan for a year. If, you know, you've got a goal that you want to achieve in 2025 plan for the year. But expect that it may take two years or more, especially for any big, hairy, audacious goal. Be it a half marathon, a full marathon. Successfully putting a chronic disease in remission or getting off of medications or a significant weight loss goal. I mean, I'm assuming that you are planning on living and aging anyway. So keep at it regardless of how long it takes. And each month, each day you'll get closer and closer and better and better at it. If you lose 20 pounds this year, instead of your goal of 30 pounds, you are still so much better off. If you can maintain a 20 pound weight loss. Rather than get frustrated at the last stubborn 10 pounds that aren't letting go. And give up only to gain the weight back. If your body keeps getting injured around the 10 mile mark of your long runs. And you know, maybe at the end of the day, you decide that running that half marathon is just not going to happen in 2025 or even 20 26, but you refocus and you start racing 10 Ks instead, you're still able to stay in shape this way. You can still. Be connected and in alignment with the value that you hold of being a fit person who exercises consistently, even if you're unable to achieve the ultimate dream goal of the half marathon or the full marathon. And readjusting, if you need to and taking the progress that you've made and counting it as a win still puts you in far more alignment with your values and who you want to be in this world, then say getting frustrated and giving up altogether. That's not who you are. That's not who you want to be. If that was you, you would not be listening to this podcast or any of the other health and fitness podcasts that you regularly listened to. Number seven. Finally, you must consciously acutely. Deeply acknowledge what is working and the successes that you have to build efficacy and to build your internal resilience. This is key to keeping your motivation as well as your momentum. If you neglect to take the dopamine hit that you can derive from your progress and instead, try and save it for the goal achievement, you are at really high risk for giving up when it gets hard. If you don't acknowledge what is working, then you won't have any weapons to combat the itty bitty shitty committee when they get all up in your head and they tell you that nothing ever works. And this is too hard and it's fruitless to keep trying. You already have skills and tools and strengths that you've cultivated in your past attempts at your health and fitness goals and these tools and strengths and skills will continue to serve you. Additionally, what you learn this year, will add to that skill set even if you fall short of your overall goal. All of these insights, all of these skills makes you more resilient, better adept, and better equipped for your future endeavors. And that is a straight up win, my friend. If you tend to get my optically focused on the end result, and I am deeply guilty of being one of those people. And you skip the reward of acknowledging the progress along the way, which I have now learned not to do, set up reminders in your calendar at least once a month to assess your wins. I ended up needing to set check-ins. Every single week to overcome my tendency to not acknowledge progress as I was moving along in some big long-term goals that required a lot of strategy. So don't let once a month be your minimum, if anything, that is your maximum time to take between assessing your progress and your wins. These monthly or weekly check-ins can also be a good time to look and see if you need to pivot if some things aren't working or to plan ahead for obstacles that you see coming in the month that maybe you didn't see at the start of the year. Take these moments and congratulate yourself for the effort that you have put in the progress you have made, especially the progress that you've made in habits. You are building which you have full control over. Because sometimes the overarching goals such as the amount of weight lost or the increase in. Speed or distance or heavier weights lifted is not within our full control. So give yourself proper kudos for what you have worked for. And do it often. And soon you'll realize how capable you are of actually making progress, as well as living in alignment with your values and improving your health. This is the way that we prove to ourselves that we can become the person that we are aspiring to be, that we actually are the person that we believe ourselves to be, it's this regular acknowledgement of our progress and our effort and really building our brain to recognize and acknowledging the ways that we are making the effort. So to recap. In order to make this years goals ones that can withstand whatever 20, 25 has in store for us. Be mindful of these seven things. Number one, know why the goal or intention or aspiration that you are making is an essential part of who you are. Or who you are becoming what is your why? And be very, very clear about that. Number two, be mindful and plan for the obstacles and the pitfalls that you know are coming so that you're better able to weather them. And so that you build the skill set to plan for obstacles and pitfalls that you don't quite yet know are coming your way. Number three, break your goal down into the smallest of tasks to make them more achievable. Number four. Determine what your best effort is, what good effort is and what is just going to be good enough. Number five. Aim for 80% at that good enough level or better, but know that even 50% adherence is still progress and will make a difference. Number six, keep the long game in mind and expect that it may take longer than any goal date that you actually have in mind. And finally number seven: fully, acutely, viscerally acknowledge your success. And what is working for you once a month or more often. I do hope that this episode has helped you become better prepared and more resilient in achieving your aspirations this year. If you do find yourself stuck navigating some of the obstacles that come your way. Having a master strategist in your corner to help you navigate through the terrain can save you both mental bandwidth and spare you some of the decision fatigue that comes with navigating life's challenges when they are at odds with your health goals. So, know I'm absolutely here to support you. I have a good 30 years of tools at my disposal to help you navigate the path. And you can reach out to me by clicking the link in the show notes to schedule a complimentary call or to get on my newsletter list so that you are among the first to be invited to upcoming group programs that will be offered this spring. And as always, if you have found this episode helpful please like the podcast, rate the podcast on iTunes. If you haven't already and share it with anybody else that is also making some big, hairy, audacious goals this year so that they too can be better supported and more resilient and achieving them. Until next time, my healthy, heathens!.

31:38

If you have found some Nuggets of Wisdom, make sure to subscribe, rate, and share Blasphemous Nutrition with those you care about. As you navigate the labyrinth of health advice out there, remember, health is a journey, not a dietary dictatorship. Stay skeptical, stay daring, and challenge the norms that no longer serve you. If you've got burning questions or want to share your own flavor of rebellion, slide into my DMs. Your stories fuel me, and I love hearing them. Thanks again for tuning in to Blasphemous Nutrition. Until next time, this is Amy signing off, reminding you that truth is nuanced, and any dish can be made better with a little bit of sass.