Rekindle fitness flame without having burnout

DALLAS — No muffins. No pizza. No ice cream. No beer. No chocolate. No nitrates. No white rice. No T-bones.

Exercise an hour a day. Lift weights constantly. Follow Atkins. Follow South Beach. Follow the Beyonce diet.

Lose 100 pounds. Lose 50 pounds.

Lose your mind if you try to follow all these ideas for getting fit in 2009.

"People set themselves up for failure, because they try to do too much initially,” says Regina Coreil, group fitness coordinator for the Texas Club in Dallas. "It becomes, ‘I have to do something that hurts me. I’m sore when I’m done. I’m putting myself on a diet I don’t enjoy.’ All these negatives instead of, ‘What can I do that’s moderate?’” Ah, thank you, Regina, for bringing up one of our favorite fitness words: moderation.

We asked Coreil and Ginger Schirmer, a Dallas-based health and exercise expert, for help keeping our resolutions.

"I like to give people a couple of things to modify and go from there,” Schirmer says. "When you give them a whole list, it’s overwhelming and very defeating. But give them something very easy to do, they become their own modifier and change their own lifestyle.”

How? By using the word itself to spur us on. Gimme an M … .

M: Make realistic promises. If a client wants to lose 100 pounds, Regina says, "You don’t have to give us 110 percent in January. Give us two to three days of your time, 30 minutes to an hour each time, and gently move into it.”

O: Opt for fiber. Ginger, a registered dietitian, encourages that dietary addition early on.

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