Your Fitness or Weightloss Journey is just like a long haul flight.

We are well past New Years Day and chances are many of the New Years Resolutions you have set yourself have either been sidetracked or are sitting off in a ditch somewhere long forgotten.

This is often when we throw our hands up and murmur things like "it's too late now" or "I knew I was dreaming when I set that goal" or even "this is something I am never going to achieve".

Before you throw the baby out with the bathwater understand that all is not lost.

We are only 13 days into 2010 and there is PLENTY of time for you to reach your goal this year and this early set back is all part of the journey.

It is unreasonable to expect perfection and unfortunately this is what most of us base our definition of success on.

Goals (I'm not calling them resolutions) like no junk food or exercise 2 hours every day sound reasonable at the time of setting them because in that moment you feel you can do anything but very few people can honour goals like this consistently.

You need to set yourself up to win and this leads me to my long haul flight analogy.

In my 20's I was a pilot and flew most weeks in a small single engine Tomahawk and from time to time I got the opportunity to fly something a bit bigger and more exciting but either way the principles were the same. To fly from A to B requires lots of tracking and adjustments and the bigger the flight the more adjustments you have to make.

If I set out from destination A for destination B and decided that no matter what I was not making any adjustments B would be a very different place indeed and highly likely somewhere I didn't want to be.

Your goals are just the same...

You set yourself a goal of the perfect body in 12 weeks with a plan to 2 hours of exercise a day and eat clean 100% of the time and anything less than reaching those targets will set you up to feel like a failure.

Despite the fact we know from experience we can't sustain this we set the goal again and again - what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? I think that speaks volumes :)

If your goal is something similar (or exactly the same) and you have failed in your attempts rather than ditch the goal or feel like a failure make some adjustments.

All you have is information not failure - take that information and work with it.

Look at the fact you are eating junk food too often and that you are only averaging 45 minutes a day of exercise 6 days a week and use it.

Look at your original plan and hold the reality up against it and begin to create a new plan.

For example you might decide that 100% clean eating is not a reality but eating junk food 4 times a week will not get you your goal so instead you decide on 2 free meals a week.

This means you will not be feeling deprived, it is a darn site better than the diet you currently have and it will get you there - you might also need to make adjustments to your timeline - it may take you another 2 weeks but this is a small price to pay for being able to consistently maintain a diet you know is good for you.

If you can only realistically train 45 minutes a day 6 days a week work out how to get the best bang for your buck so you only NEED to train 45 minutes a day 6 days a week.

Creating a new and better plan every few weeks means you stay on course in the context of your bigger goals after making adjustments rather than letting the whole thing slide and being in the same boat this time next year.

Accept that life is messy and things rarely go to plan - make adjustments along the way and you will have success.

That goal is yours for the taking so go for it!