It’s been 2012 for almost three weeks. How are your New Year’s resolutions going so far? If you’re the type to use the New Year as an excuse to redefine your fitness goals, I imagine you’re still mostly on track. But if you haven’t been severely challenged yet, or haven’t thought about abandoning your resolution altogether, you likely will in the near future.

The one-month period is a critical measuring stick to assess your progress, alter your goals, or consider revamping your resolution entirely. According to a 2010 study in the journal “Sports Health,” most New Year’s resolutions last just two months. It may provide some solace to know that you’re not the only one struggling with your goals at this point, but having this knowledge also allows you to take some precautionary measures to keep you motivated and avoid dropping your program.

Here are some tips, both for those who are struggling and those who are well on their way, to making 2012 the best fitness year of your life.

1. Make Your Resolution Specific and Measurable

We all want to lose weight, gain weight, build muscle, or become healthier. But these are simply dreams, not goals. For a resolution to become an actual goal, it needs to be specific. Research has demonstrated that the more specific and detailed you can make your resolution, the more motivated you will be to achieve it and the more likely you will be to achieve it. Make your resolution as specific and measurable as possible. Don’t just lose weight in 2012. Lose 20 lbs. Don’t just build muscle. Bench 200 lbs.

2. Set a Timeline

As with the specificity of your goals, you may also not have set a timeline for accomplishing this goal other than “sometime in 2012.” You need to take it a step further than that. Have a specific date at which point you’d like to get that goal over and done with, so you can move onto the next one. If you feel that this goal will take the entire year, set several intermediate target dates so you can measure your progress. I suggest one per month.

3. Alter Your Goals

It’s okay, you’re not ditching your program if you need to make your goals a little easier. Just by getting out and exercising more than in 2011, you’re heading in the right direction. But if you’re finding it more difficult to keep your exercise or nutrition program going, make it easier. It’s much better to accomplish an easy goal and feel successful than to feel like a failure for not accomplishing something that you didn’t have at least a moderately reasonable chance of achieving anyways. It always baffles me, but this is the concept that many people don’t seem to get. Goals are just tools and they’re not concrete. You need to use them to your advantage. If your goals are defeating you, it’s okay to pull back on the reigns a little bit. As a rule, a goal should be about 10 to 15 percent harder than your previous level of performance. For example, if you can run a mile in nine minutes, a realistic goal is to run it in eight minutes and ten seconds by your next time point.

4. Reward Yourself

If you’re like me, you berate yourself when you don’t accomplish something but fail to compliment yourself when you’ve done something well. This “never-good-enough” attitude is dangerous when it comes to goal-setting. It’s okay to be hard on yourself from time to time, but ultimately this will wear you down and lead to what sport psychologists call a failure-based goal-setting style. We set goals to avoid failure, not to achieve success. This attitude will never allow you to perform your best, only enough to avoid feeling like what you construe as a failure. Reward yourself when you achieve your goals, but avoid punishing yourself when you don’t. How you reward yourself is up to you, but make sure to acknowledge your own success and efforts.

5. Add Some Social Support

If you’re struggling on your own, involve a friend or family member in your exercise or nutrition plan. Friends and family members can hold you accountable for your program and you can also do the same for them. Sport psychology research has shown that exercising in a social or team environment leads to markedly improved performance and motivation compared with going it solo.

6. Shake it Up

New Year’s resolutions are fun because they inspire us to improve in some way and they make us feel as if we’re stepping into a new “us.” This rejuvenating feeling, however, will fade after awhile and causes many people to rid themselves of their programs or jump to new ones. Don’t completely ditch your program. Simply find ways to mix it up so that your resolution constantly feels fresh and new. If you always exercise in the gym, go hit the mountain or run on the beach. If you’re sick of your nutrition plan and eat the same things everyday, go to a new grocery store or find a bunch of new recipes. Because of practical issues, you probably have to adhere to some sort of routine. But at least once a week, exercise or eat in a way that you never have before. This can even be your reward.

7. Remember Your Purpose

Your purpose for your resolution will keep you motivated when times get tough. Remember why you chose to set a New Year’s resolution. This isn’t your goal itself, but it’s the reason you decided to set the goal in the first place. Maybe you set a goal of losing 20 lbs. because you were generally feeling lousy about yourself. Or maybe you wanted to eat more servings of fruit to avoid getting cancer or to live longer in order to see your grandkids. Your purpose is the one thing that shouldn’t change during your resolution and it will be the one thing that should always provide a sense of motivation. If you don’t know, or don’t remember, what your purpose for changing was, really think on this and try to find one. With a strong sense of purpose, achieving your resolution itself will be almost secondary.