Five ways to reach your fitness goals in 2012

It's a new year, which means ambitions resolutions have been made and it's time to begin the work toward a new and improved you.

Fitness takes center stage every New Year, and 2012 is no different. However, to achieve your goals in this new year, it's important to know a few basic truths as you work toward your goals over the next 12 monthsâ┚¬â€and hopefully the rest of your life.

1. Bread is The Enemy
Do yourself one favor in 2012 and kick bread from your diet.

Go right ahead … unless of course the Pillsbury doughboy is your temple’s template. Admittedly, the dough boy is cuteâ┚¬â€especially when he’s a lesbianâ┚¬â€but as Pappy says, “You don’t see old fat people.”

Whether it’s to prove Ron Paul wrong about the longevity of gay men or just look great and be healthy while doing it, too much fatâ┚¬â€and all the health problems it bringsâ┚¬â€is simply a matter of consuming too many calories. And it’s such an easy thing to do when wheat products are concerned.

Consider protein sources and vegetables the staples of your diet and wheat products a “luxury item” you can afford only occasionally.

It’s the number one reason why so many people todayâ┚¬â€of any orientationâ┚¬â€are just plain heavier than they need be.

Following the skinny and skeletal ’70s, America began its plumping crusade sometime in the 80s after the emergence of AIDS and the rising arc of straight supersizing that the gay bear community mirrored through the 90s and beyond.

Bread, one of the culprits of corpulence, trumps even sugary drinks as the number one dietary mistake because wheat products are insidious in the way they’ve become part of our dietary landscape and our human tendency to horde and graze.

If you never digested another bread productâ┚¬â€and by no means suggested here as it’s far too sinfully deliciousâ┚¬â€your body would never protest and only thank you. Cut that stuff out and the puff covering your shrouded physique will shrink in weeks.

Lose that big sub roll for a medium-sized or small tortilla. Sub the bagel for oatmeal and fruit or maybe just eat your favorite half (and freeze the rest). And those dinner rolls and “never ending” bread basket? Just forget it, at least until you're in a good place and comfortable with a minor cheat day.

2. High-Intensity Workouts
If there’s a freeway to the fountain of youth, fitness researches say high-intensity workouts could be the commuter-lane there.

Fast is the operative concept, meaning your workout never stops to even look at your phoneâ┚¬â€get an MP3 player! â┚¬â€engage in useless chatter with a gym slacker or any other of the other Seven Deadly Sins committed in the gym. High-powered workouts are the antithesis of “waiting around” and the result being eventual physique nirvana in an hour of gym time if you’re doing it right.

That most likely means lots of movement and sweat but not necessarily long, boring sessions of cardio to which your body quickly adapts.

It’s about challenging your muscles with moderate to heavy weight (depending on the circumstances and desired result) while maintaining a cardio-like pace between sets; work contrasting muscle groups (an upper-body exercise followed by a lower-body one is one approach) and “resting” should involve nothing less than constant “fitness-fidgeting” like knee raises, stretching, lunges and anything else that keeps you in a constant state of motion.

As tacky and gauche as it is, muscle mass is great for fighting diabetes, chasing away fat, protection from injuries, and in general studies say it’s a key ingredient in attaining a longevity that’s actually desirable. (Ever notice that as people “get old” they start losing significant amounts of muscle mass? Or is it the other way around? This highly avoidable process starts around 40 and accelerates with time.)

So you need to be lifting weights. How much? Enough to progressively challenge all your muscles but not too much that you suffer a far-too-common overuse injury and sideline your workouts.

Because as important as diet is, in this mechanized, de-exercised world of ours, if you’re in a hole bodywise, you’re going to need exercise to get out of it.

Your best betâ┚¬â€even if it’s a pinch or on creditâ┚¬â€is to hire a good trainer to show you the exercises and techniques necessary to re-shape your body and learn how to love exercise if you don’t. If you’ve also suffered injuries or have back problems, a trainer with a background in physical therapy is highly recommended.

3. Respect Your Forgotten Age
Aging is an unavoidable mental/physical trap but one who's ill effects can be mitigated and delayed.

Whether it’s too much stress or lack of sleepâ┚¬â€which encourages fat productionâ┚¬â€copious chemicals or a crappy diet, there’s a lot that can keep us from attaining our personal best and turning us old before our time.

It may sound like a mantra from some ’80’s sports film, but finding increased intensity in your workouts is key to supercharging your metabolism. Cycling and other “sport” exercises are great for cross-training benefits and encouraging athleticism, but also way too prone to injury for a daily routine, especially one focusing substantially on initial weight loss.

Any injury is going to sideline your critical beginning and consistency is king. It’s possible to trick your body, researchers are beginning to believe, but it will catch on after months or even just weeks of couch surfing while nursing an injury, however well-intentioned its creation.

Because above all else, changing your body is about forging a consistency of action that results in a physical change of less fat, more muscle and eventually sculpting that muscle.

It’s another way you can turn back the hands a bitâ┚¬â€redistributing your body fat.

4: Vegetables Everywhere!
After genetics, how your body looks is second-most-affected by the food you put in your face.

Exercise is great and more-or-less mandatoryâ┚¬â€even Jesus loved to power walk and took cross-training to a whole new levelâ┚¬â€but a steady diet of bloat food and too many calories will pork you up like Family Guy’s Peter Griffin but without the jokes.

After meat and other protein sources, vegetables should be plentiful in your life going forward. Like, every-meal-kind-of-plentiful, including breakfast.

Besides the essential fiber, vitamins and minerals of veggies, what nutrients they are replacing is just as important. Replace bread and pastas with vegetables and you'll notice a diference.

Eat those vegetables and salads at the end of the meal to help push the slower-digested meats and complex carbohydrates through your system and boost your metabolism.

Make them a key component in supercharging your turbo-charged life and workouts.

5. Exercising for Life
You can’t be anything more than the best possible version of you.

So stop comparing yourself to the “hot bods” in the gym. That’s not the real world. (Do it in the supermarket if you must.)

Getting into your best shapeâ┚¬â€or something resembling itâ┚¬â€takes a three-pronged effort in diet, exercise and lifestyle choices.

But above all else, even as your diet fluctuates and life presents challenges, exercise should be the one thing you never let go of.

Exerciseâ┚¬â€the joy and ability to do itâ┚¬â€is the means and the end, resulting in the best of all possible worlds.

2012 isn’t the end, it’s your beginning.