Michael Brunelli's key advice for keeping New Year's resolutions: 'Controversial'

Heading into 2023, personal trainer and former Married At First Sight star Michael Brunelli has shared his tips to help you keep your New Year’s resolutions.

While studies show that a majority of resolutions often end up being abandoned just a few months into the New Year, Michael tells Yahoo Lifestyle that there’s a simple trick that can make it easier to achieve your year-long goals.

“New Year’s resolutions are a controversial topic,” he says. “People love to set them and come March they’re a distant memory.

“I think people have good intentions when they set their New Year’s resolutions, but the one mistake people make is setting a resolution that is too big and not measurable in the short term.”

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Michael explains that the advice he often gives people is to set an overarching goal to reach by the end of the year and set measurable points within that goal.

“So if your goal is to lose X amount of kilos by the end of the year, how do I do that? Is it that I need to minimise my portion sizes? Is it that I need to cut down on my snacking?” he details.

“And then from there, you can set those little mini goals to achieve by the end of January, by the end of February, by the end of March, so that you consistently get to that point at the end of the year. Otherwise, we just forget about it.”

‘It’s not about aiming for perfection’

Speaking from personal experience after spending the past few months looking after his fiancée Martha Kalifatidis during her difficult pregnancy journey, Michael adds that fitness and health “doesn’t have to be your entire life”.

“It can be in the background, but it doesn't need to become your entire personality,” he shares. “And even for me, I'm a personal trainer but fitness and health isn't my entire life. There are other interests that I have, there are other things that I focus on, and that's okay. It doesn’t have to become an obsession, because with an obsession it can become something that is toxic.

“I think for me as well, it's not about going to extremes. I haven't trained in a long time, I haven’t eaten healthy consistently in a long time, and I'm not just going to be able to turn that all around in one day and be perfect. So it’s not about aiming for perfection, it’s not about going to extremes, it’s about making small sustainable changes.”

These are the key beliefs that Michael upholds with his fitness business Tru Fit, which he founded in 2020 and has already helped over 20,000 people.

“It doesn’t feel like a job to me, to be honest,” he remarks. “It's changing people's lives, without trying to sound bigheaded or anything. There is no greater reward than hearing about the positive changes in people’s lives.”

You can learn more about Tru Fit and its current fitness challenges here.

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