Actually Getting Your Health and Fitness Goals to Stick (For Good This Time)
Why Your Health and Fitness Goals Keep Slipping and the Simple Shift That Changes Everything
Here’s something I hear all the time. Someone tells me their health and fitness goals and they sound something like this:
“I want to lose 10 kilos.”
“I want to feel less stressed.”
“I want to run 5K without stopping.”
Totally reasonable, right? I get it. I’ve said versions of all of these myself over the years.
But here’s the thing nobody tells you. Framing your goals this way is actually working against you. Not because the goals are wrong. But because outcomes like these are things you want, not things you can fully control. And building your entire plan around something you can’t control is a bit like building a house on sand.
You can have the clearest vision in the world. You can be fired up, motivated, and ready to go. And then life does what life does.
Work gets insane. Your kid goes through something hard. Your sleep falls apart. Your knee starts complaining. The gym you loved closes for a year.
And suddenly, the goal you were chasing is gone and somehow it feels like your fault.
But most of the time? It wasn’t. Life just didn’t cooperate.
The approach that actually works for your health and fitness goals
So if outcomes are partly out of your hands, what can you control?
Your behaviour.
This is the shift that changed everything for me and for the people I coach. Instead of anchoring your health and fitness goals to a result, you anchor them to the actions you take every single day. Eating slowly. Moving your body most days. Getting outside for a walk. Having a proper wind-down before bed.
These are things that are genuinely within your reach, no matter what else is happening around you. And when you focus there, something interesting happens. The results you wanted start showing up anyway. Not because you chased them. Because you built a life that naturally produces them.
I've seen this play out over 35 years of living and then with coaching. The people who achieve lasting results aren't the most disciplined people in the room. They're the ones who stopped fighting outcomes they couldn't control and started building behaviours they actually enjoyed.
Here’s what this looks like in practice:
Instead of: Lose 10 kilos
Try: Eat whole foods and move my body daily
Instead of: Lower my blood sugar
Try: Take a 20-minute walk after dinner
Instead of: Sleep 8 hours a night
Try: Create a calming bedtime routine and start it 30 minutes before I want to sleep
Instead of: Improve my relationship
Try: Have a proper date night once a week
See the difference? One set of goals puts you at the mercy of outcomes. The other puts you back in the driver’s seat.
How to make it work in your life
Here's how I'd walk through this with anyone starting out.
Get clear on your why
Not just what you want to achieve, but why it matters to you. What does feeling better actually give you? More energy with your kids? Confidence at work? Waking up and feeling like yourself again?
That deeper reason is what keeps you going when motivation dips. And it will dip. That's normal. My own why is simple. I want to stay lean, strong and energetic for as long as possible, partly so I can be the active father my son deserves. Find yours and write it down somewhere you'll see it.
Pick specific behaviours, not vague intentions
"Eat healthier" is hard to act on. "Have vegetables with lunch and dinner" — that you can do today. The more specific the behaviour, the easier it is to actually do it. Vague health and fitness goals produce vague results. Specific behaviours produce specific outcomes.
Make your goals realistic from the start
Not because I don't believe in you. I absolutely do. But sustainable progress is built on wins, not on white-knuckling impossible standards. Start where you are. Build from there. I started at 60% adherence on some of my habits and built to 80% over time. That's how real change works.
Break it right down
If daily exercise feels overwhelming, start with a 10 to 15 minute walk. If cooking at home feels like too much, start by prepping a few lunches on Sunday. Small actions done consistently are worth far more than heroic efforts that don't last.
Build a routine around the behaviours
Consistency isn't about willpower. It's about making the behaviour so easy and so woven into your day that it just happens. Prep fruit on Sunday so you've always got something good in the fridge. Set a specific time for your walk. Make the healthy choice the obvious choice. That's what I do every single week.
Track what you're actually doing, not just what the scales say
How's your energy? How are you sleeping? Are you getting stronger? Feeling lighter in your clothes? Progress is happening in more ways than you think, and noticing it keeps you going. The scale is one data point. It's not the whole story.
Stay flexible
Life is going to throw things at you. Plans will need to shift. That's not failure. That's just living. When things go sideways, your job isn't to restart from scratch. It's to find the smallest version of the behaviour you can still do, and keep going.
Progress is almost never a straight line
I’ve been doing this for over 35 years, and I can tell you. No one gets it right every single day. Not me, not anyone I know, not anyone I coach.
What matters isn’t perfection. It’s the direction you’re heading most of the time.
When you stop measuring yourself against some outcome that may or may not happen on your timeline, and you start measuring yourself against your own behaviours. How often you showed up. How well you took care of yourself. How consistently you did the things that make you feel good, something shifts. You stop feeling like you’re failing. You start feeling like you’re building something.
That’s the quiet secret behind every person who’s ever made a lasting change to their health and fitness goals. They stopped waiting for the result to validate them. They fell in love with the process instead.
And the results? They followed.
Ready to put this into practice?
The behaviour-based approach is the foundation of everything I teach at Vitality Marco. It's woven through my 10 healthy lifestyle habits guide, my five-step body transformation guide, and Marco's Mediterranean Method (coming soon).
Start with whichever resource resonates most. Pick one behaviour from it. Do it consistently for two weeks. Then add another. Small things repeated. That's all this ever is.
Health should feel like your best life, not a break from it.
Marco ☕
About Me
I'm Marco Asnicar, personal trainer, nutrition coach and founder of Vitality Marco. I didn't discover the Mediterranean method. I grew up living it, shaped by Italian roots, real food and movement as a natural part of daily life. It took me until recently to realise that what always felt completely normal to me is exactly what most people spend years searching for.
I coach men and women aged 35 to 55 to do the same. No restriction. No fads. No giving up the life you love. Just a way of eating and living that genuinely feels good and gets better every year.
Want to know more about my story and approach? Read my full About Me page.