$ 67 mn lost in fitness resolution every year in India!

Are Fitness related resolutions common?

Well, yes, every year Billions of people around the world take some kind of New Year’s resolution. Around 40% of the total New Year’s resolutions are aimed towards fitness. How many times have you seen people deciding to “get fit” as their new year’s resolution and then give up within a month? Oh, is that you? Well, it's almost every one of us and there is enough data to back it up as well.

Don’t believe us?

According to a research carried, 38% of New Year's resolutions made are on fitness. It's New Year and all of a sudden, people around are more conscious about their health.

Around 3 billion people take a new year’s solution, but only 8% achieve it. When we talk about fitness, an estimated whopping 1.2 billion people adopt fitness as a resolution every year. Around 250 million make a new year’s resolution in India. Well, this could have been quite encouraging but 73% of these people taking some kind of fitness resolutions drop their goals as the year progresses.

Is this a fitness resolution trend?
Yes, and Google very well captures the fitness, gym and weight loss trend over the last 5 years to show that every year around December, there is a sudden peak of interest for fitness related activities. On an average, there is around 57% spike in google search for fitness. However, it just takes 20 days for people before they start dropping out.

Based on internal research of Fitso, there is an estimated loss of USD 67 million of an individual’s hard earned money in gym membership in India around New Year time. Well, that's a lot of unintentional money loss and the reasons are same year after year.

Wondering what could be these reasons?

Well, most people, who join up for a gym membership, find it hard to cope with the schedule after a while. Going to a gym needs preparation. All of this takes a considerable amount of time and people soon start skipping their fitness classes. Unless the gym is located right next to the house or the office, people find the commute to be a tiring one. They just don’t feel like spending so much time in traveling back and forth.

Another reason is the lack of instant results. Like with everything else nowadays, people want uber, instant, on-demand results. This is not how fitness works. It takes some time and efforts for the new routine to show some results. This makes people lose their hope and their motivation. All of this is accompanied by those super expensive gym membership packages.

So that is it?

There are more, additionally, most new resolutions are made around December, when the weather is cold. People find it very difficult to leave their bed for exercising. Also traveling on a chilly winter morning turns into a tedious task due to fog. As Christmas and New Year come, people mostly start indulging themselves in good food and drinks. Nobody cares about resolutions when they are in a mood to party all night long.

Still want to stick to your fitness resolution?
Certainly, there are more efforts than returns in the current methodology. There surely is a major gap in what people want and what the conventional gyms have as an offering. Fitness plans in general need to be more personalized and as per an individual's daily dynamic schedule. They should sure be pocket-friendly and if possible should have zero commuting. With the increasing advancements in technological solutions, it has indeed become possible to have a cheap, personalized fitness plan that takes care of your exercises, nutrition. Fitso is a fitness app which help you with all of this – round the clock access to your training plans, personalized coaching, cost-effective and no commutation at all. So, if you want to keep a fitness new year resolution, this is some good news.

(About the Author: This article has been contributed by Mr. Rahool Sureka, Co-founder, Fitso)