A full transcript follows the video.

This podcast was recorded on January 17, 2017.

Alison Southwick: This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick and I'm joined, as always, by Robert Brokamp, personal finance expert here at The Motley Fool. We're also going to be joined later today by a few special guests. Very exciting.

Robert Brokamp: Very exciting.

Southwick: On this week's episode, we're going to tackle how you can be healthier in 2017 and really, honestly keep those New Year's resolutions. We're also going to answer your question about whether you could retire on the maxed out 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions alone, and we'll review some apps that promise to get you into shipshape. All that, and more, on this week's episode of Motley Fool Answers.

It's time for Answers, Answers, and this week's question comes from Greg. Greg writes: "What is the basis for the $18,000 401(k) and $5,500 Roth IRA contribution yearly limits? Is saving $23,500 each year in the market enough for most people to retire in their 60s?"

Brokamp: Good questions, Greg. There are really two questions. One is a little bit about the history of these accounts and second of all, can you retire by maxing those out?

Let's start with a little bit of the history. IRA actually stands for "Individual Retirement Arrangement," not account although…

Southwick: Oh, what? What?

Brokamp: …it has evolved to stand also for account. But, yeah, look at Publication 590 of the IRS code, which I'm sure you all have. It's Individual Retirement Arrangement.

Southwick: Ha!

Brokamp: Anyways, it came out in 1974. It was actually just geared towards people who did not have retirement accounts at work. You could contribute $1,500, but if you had a plan at work you couldn't. Over the years that changed. They moved it up to $2,000. It wasn't until 2002, I believe, that you could start contributing more than $2,000 and now it's based on a formula with inflation. So once we reach a certain level, it will go up from $5,500 to $6,000.

The 401(k) — its history is a little quirky. It was not a law that was passed to help everyone save for retirement. It was actually this very quiet subsection, 401(k), really geared towards highly paid executives and deferred income. It wasn't until a year after it came out that a benefits consultant named Ted Benna was sitting around his office on a Saturday trying to come up with a retirement plan for a bank, and figured out that actually this would be a good way for people to contribute to [an] account on a tax-advantaged basis.

The government eventually figured out that holy cow, this is a great tax benefit for people. The original limit — this was back in the 1970s — was $45,000.

Southwick: Whoa!

Brokamp: The government realized that this is a big tax break, and so they curtailed it. That explains why there are now limits. The government is making a trade-off whenever they have these accounts. If you contribute to your tax-deferred 401(k), the government is basically giving up tax revenue today, and it grows tax-deferred. So the government has said basically, "We'll give you a little bit of a tax break, but not too big of a tax break." So that explains the limits.

Now the question is can you retire on these alone? And the answer is yes, if you save early enough. I've cited studies in previous episodes that basically said if you start saving in your 20s — if you save between 10-15% of your income — you'll be OK and for most people, that will not get them to maxing out both of those accounts.

The problem is people will often wait until their 30s or 40s, and then you're looking at having to save, really, 20-25% of your income if you want to retire in your 60s. Then you start pushing up against those maximums. But, of course, people often anchor on these maximums as if that's how much you should save. You could always save outside of your IRA and 401(k)…

Southwick: Please do.

Brokamp: Please do. So don't focus on that too much. Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal had an article, recently, going back to the people who promoted 401(k)s in the beginning, and they kind of regret it. Even this Ted Benna guy, who's still proud of often being referred to as "the father of the 401(k)," also acknowledges he created a monster because they were not designed to replace traditional pensions, and there were these simple accounts that you had two investment choices. Now he says there's too many choices, people make too many mistakes, and Wall Street figured out it was a way for them to make a lot of money. So while he doesn't regret it, he sees a lot of flaws in the program.

And that article also interviewed someone who, at the time, was an HR official with J&J. Loved 401(k)s when they came out. Promoted them. It turns out over his career he ended up not even saving enough. So he's in his 60s, as a lawyer, and he would not be able to retire if he just had the money in his 401(k). He said, "To maintain my lifestyle, I'm going to have to work until my mid-70s."

So the answer is yes, you can do it. Start saving early. If you're starting late, max them out, and look for other accounts.

Southwick: All right. It's time for There's an App for That. Yeah!

Brokamp: Hey, hey!

Southwick: And today's guinea pig is Paul Essen. He works in business intelligence, here, at The Motley Fool, so he's a numbers guy. A data cruncher. Thanks for joining us.

Paul Essen: Thanks for having me.

Southwick: Sam and Bro also have an app they're going to talk about, too…

Essen: Yes.

Southwick: There's so many out there. Let's start with Paul, though. You looked at the app Pact. What does Pact promise to do?

Essen: It promises to pay you for leading a healthier lifestyle. Sticking with your commitments to eat healthier, go to the gym, stuff like that.

Southwick: How does it pay you? Where does it find the money to pay you?

Essen: Well, it uses two different methods. It uses the carrot and the stick method to incentivize you and they use the stick portion to pay for the carrot portion. So the people who don't live up to their end of the bargain end up paying a penalty for not living up to their end of the bargain, and that money goes to pay the people who do live up to their end of the bargain.

Brokamp: So if you're doing it, you hope that other people out there are not doing it so you can get their money.

Essen: You're rooting for failure in that group.

Southwick: How'd it go?

Essen: It went pretty well. I had mixed feelings in the end. It does what it says it's going to do, but there are a lot of pitfalls for it. There's three different types of pacts. There's a food-logging pact, where you sync the app with MyFitnessPal, which as a side note is a great app. I have been using that for years. It's a way of keeping track of what you eat and informing yourself of what you eat so you can make better decisions eating.

[With] the food-logging pact, you commit to logging the food that you've eaten one to seven times a week. Each pact is a week long. It goes from Monday through Sunday. And you have to put in at least three meals and 1,200 calories per day in MyFitnessPal to make the pact work.

That one worked pretty well. I had no problems with it. One thing to note is all it does is it checks to see if you've fulfilled those requirements. One day that I'm not particularly proud of I ate an entire barbecue chicken pizza with multiple cans of soda and topped it off with chocolate pie.

Brokamp: Holy cow!

Essen: Easily 3,000+ calories.

Southwick: Wow!

Essen: By no means a healthy diet. And yet Pact was perfectly happy saying, "Yup. You fulfilled your promise to yourself."

Southwick: Oh, weird.

Essen: All it really does is make sure that you're using the app to know that you ate poorly. Not that you're actually eating well. The second type of pact is a veggie pact, where you're committing to eating a certain number of servings of fruits or vegetables. This one sounded like it'd be the most prone to problems, just the way that it works, because you're submitting a picture of what you're eating to the community, and they vote whether it qualifies or not.

Southwick: Oh!

Essen: And I actually found that to be the easiest. It was super simple to take a picture of what I was eating. Typically within 15 to 20 minutes the community had voted an approval of what I had eaten. Never had any rejections. Never had any problems with that. That one worked perfectly well.

The third type of pact is a gym pact, and this one gets a little complicated because there are four different ways that you can fulfill the gym pact. One, you can sync it with an app. There's two apps they sync with. It's MapMyFitness and Runkeeper. For those you have to run at least a mile and for at least 30 minutes.

Southwick: Every day?

Essen: For however many you commit to over the course of the week. So it would be a minimum of one and a maximum of I believe seven. I think you can only have one gym pact — one a day. The second is a verified gym check-in. Pact has a list of verified gyms and uses your GPS to figure out if you're at the gym and to make sure that you stay at the gym for a half hour. I don't belong to a gym, so I didn't test this one out, but I read online that some people have problems with their GPS inside the gym, so they would have problems keeping track of that.

The third type is a step check-in device. It can sync with Fitbit, Jawbone, and some others. It didn't sync with any of my step-tracking devices. I think you have to do 10,000 steps to qualify for those.

And lastly, it uses your phone's accelerometer. So if you have an armband, you can put it on your arm, and when you're doing a workout, you have to log 30 minutes of vigorous activity during an hour-and-a-half span. So I did a half-hour workout. I think about 23 of those minutes or something qualified, so I had to tack on an extra five or 10 minutes afterwards, but that worked pretty well, all things considered.

Southwick: So bottom line, what did you think of the app?

Essen: It works pretty well. It does what it says it's going to do. I'm not going to continue using it, though, and there's three reasons why. One of them is…

Southwick: Can you tell that he's our business intelligence numbers guy?

Whiteside: I know.

Southwick: He said there are three things, there are four components, and there are three… You are very well organized. Tell me about the three reasons why you will not be using it.

Essen: I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. So one is the risk versus reward. I used the app for over a month, and the amount of money that I earned is about $4.

Southwick: Oh!

Essen: The minimum penalty that you can sign up for, in terms of if you don't meet your pact, is $5 per thing that you miss.

Southwick: Oh, wow!

Essen: So if you signed up to eat six veggies in a week, and you didn't eat any, that's negative $30 right there. So you can have a whole month where you did everything perfectly for 29 days. That last day you make a mistake, or something, and you just wiped out all of the money that you made.

Southwick: Ugh!

Essen: So they have to balance out the carrot and the stick a little bit. It's kind of a baby carrot and a Louisville Slugger. That's a problem. And I ran into a couple of bugs which made it more likely that something like that would happen. I tried downloading the MapMyFitness app and syncing it up as part of the gym pact and it didn't work. You get some sort of generic error.

I contacted their technical support. They actually responded surprisingly quickly, but in the end never got it to work out that way. I had one instance where MyFitnessPal food log-in did not sync with the app for whatever reason, so I missed out on that. I may be super conservative. I never had seven days of food log-in just in case something like that happened, so I didn't get dinged for that, but if I had seven days, I would have lost all my earnings and then some because of that one bug.

And lastly (and this is the biggest one) is that you cannot delete a pact once you've created it. So I created a gym pact and I decided it wasn't for me. The accelerometer was the only one that really worked and I didn't want it anymore. I can't delete it. All I can do is pause it. You can pause it for up to three months, I believe, and after that I guess you have to pause it again. There's no way to delete it. If you forget to pause it again, after three months you're going to get dinged for not having fulfilled that pact…

Southwick: It's like the Hotel California of health apps. It's like, "No, you can't leave."

Essen: And another thing is if you delete the app, your account still lives on, on the internet. So people might think, "Oh, this is terrible. Delete the app." If you don't delete your account, you're still going to get dinged, because you have your account synced with PayPal or a credit card.

Brokamp: Oh!

Essen: So people might uninstall the app and then, like a week later, get dinged for all those pacts that they still have that they can't delete. And if you read the reviews online, there's a lot of people who, I think, got hurt by that, thinking if they uninstall the app, they're out. That's kind of a huge deal. It's kind you have to fake your death in order to cancel a gym membership. I see no reason why they have to do that.

Southwick: All right, cool. That was a very thorough review. Thank you, Paul.

Essen: No problem.

Southwick: All right. Who wants to go next? We have Lose It! and Sworkit?

Whiteside: Sworkit.

Southwick: All right, Sam, tell me about Sworkit. What does it do?

Whiteside: There's two versions of Sworkit. There is a paid app of Sworkit and there is the free app. I am a huge proponent of free apps, especially ones that are easily accessible and can offer a wide variety which is what Sworkit does. I'm going to spell Sworkit first.

Southwick: Yes.

Whiteside: S-W-O-R-K-I-T. And so it has four different components, basically four different buckets of exercise that you can choose to participate in: strength, cardio, yoga, and stretching. My personal favorites are the cardio and stretching, mainly because I don't do enough of those two things. Right?

Southwick: I never stretch.

Whiteside: To me they are the least fun. And so once you select one of those four different types of exercises, you can pick the duration. So if you have five minutes or if you have 10 minutes, Sworkit can give you a workout [of] five minutes or 10 minutes. It also goes up to 60 minutes, so if you have a longer amount of time to donate to this workout, specifically stretching (we all need a little more stretching in our lives), then you can do that on this app. I know Bro has used Sworkit a few times…

Brokamp: I've used the cardio a couple of times. I found it very helpful.

Whiteside: It's really great for travel.

Southwick: Oh, yeah.

Whiteside: I'm presenting at a benefit and a compensation summit in a week or so in Orlando, and I don't know what the gym will be like in the hotel. If there will be a gym. What the weather will be like outside. How humid it is in Orlando right now. I really don't know. So I've got Sworkit on the phone. I'm ready to go. It's just an easy, foolproof way (lower case foolproof) to make sure that you're not skipping a workout just because you don't have equipment or you don't have time. Sworkit definitely makes sure that those things are covered for you.

Southwick: Cool. All right. So glowing review, Sworkit, the free version.

Whiteside: The free version.

Southwick: Don't need to pay for that.

Whiteside: Save your pennies. We love that.

Southwick: All right, Bro. And your app that you want to talk about is Lose It!

Brokamp: Lose It! The few times that I have gone on a diet and tried to lose weight, I have used Lose It! So you enter in your goal and it will tell you, "OK, so you want to lose this amount of weight over this time period. You should have this many calories each day." And then as you eat throughout the day, you enter the food. And the great thing about it is it has generic stuff like "apple and eggs," but also name-brand stuff like "grilled cheese sandwich at Panera," or "cheeseburger at McDonald's." It has all the information, there, so you clock it in and you keep track of things.

It also will track [your exercise]. If you say "I ran for a half hour," it will say, "Well, that was worth (I'll make this up) 300 calories." That [goes off] your daily total. And the thing I found most useful about that is it helped me make decisions in terms of trading off what to eat and the amount of exercise I would require to earn that. So if I just ran for a half hour, is it worth it for me to have that cheeseburger at McDonald's, which is also 300 calories and I'll think, "Did I run for a half hour so I could eat this cheeseburger?" Not really.

Whiteside: I hope not.

Brokamp: So it helped me make decisions that way, so it's a great app.

Southwick: So that's three apps: Pact. Paul's like bottom line…

Essen: It's okay.

Southwick: OK. That's fine.

Essen: Just go in with both eyes wide open, because there are definitely some pitfalls to be aware of.

Southwick: And Sworkit?

Whiteside: Sworkit. Go for it. It's free!

Southwick: Come on!

Whiteside: Come on!

Southwick: And finally Lose It!

Brokamp: Which is also free and a big thumbs up.

Southwick: All right. So two apps and maybe a third to try — maybe or not. Paul, thank you for joining us for There's an App for That.

Essen: Thank you.

Southwick: You've been great and thorough. Like I want my numbers guy to be.

Essen: Well, I tried my best.

Southwick: Your best was excellent.

Essen: Thank you.

Southwick: All right. Bro has some really good news to share. Bad news for Sam and me.

Sam Whiteside: I know.

Southwick: Womp, womp. Oh, I should say that Sam's here. Sam Whiteside…

Whiteside: Hi!

Southwick: …is here today. She's the chief wellness fool here at The Motley Fool, and she's joining us, of course, to talk about how you can be healthier in 2017. Bro is off to a fantastic start. Remind us, again, of that bet that you made out of nowhere weeks ago.

Brokamp: Out of nowhere. Well, it was the last time Sam was on the show. We were talking about "maintain, don't gain" over the holidays and I don't know why, spur of the moment, I thought, "I bet I could lose 10 pounds over the holidays."

Whiteside: And what happened?

Brokamp: And all of a sudden I said, "I'm going to pay you guys $200 if I don't lose [10] pounds." [00:06:24 Deb's note: Bro said, "If I don't lose 200 pounds"]. So after we did that episode, I ran downstairs, weighed myself. The holidays happened. January 2, came in and weighed myself. I had lost exactly 10 pounds.

Whiteside: Ten pounds.

Southwick: Yay!

Whiteside: On the nose.

Brokamp: Dun!

Southwick: I'm so happy for you, bummed for me…

Whiteside: Exactly…

Southwick: …because that's $200 we were going to get. Well, we've said it before, but it often bears repeating that healthy is wealthy and Bro, remind us why that is.

Brokamp: Very quickly, obviously the healthier you are, the less money you spend on things like doctors, and hospitals, and manufactured body parts, and things like that.

Southwick: What?

Brokamp: And studies have shown that the more health issues you have, the more money you're going to spend on it. You also are less productive at work if you have health problems and you'll just be happier. And I've mentioned before a study by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave that asked retirees what the key determinants [are] of happiness in retirement. Number one was being healthy.

Southwick: There we go. So today we're going to talk about how to really, truly, honestly keep those healthy living New Year's resolutions that we know you made. We know you made them because everyone does, at least for five seconds. So that's why we're going to go through some of the science behind how to make healthy living really, really stick, and Sam's here to join us.

Whiteside: Absolutely. Do I get to divulge my New Year's resolutions?

Southwick: Sure.

Brokamp: Ooh, yeah. Go ahead.

Whiteside: So they're kind of funny. Well, one of them's funny. One was to get back into my yoga practice, so get really serious about taking my personal yoga journey seriously. The other one was coming to terms with my addiction to spicy pimento cheese.

Southwick: Oh!

Brokamp: Does that mean you're giving it up…

Whiteside: Oh, no…

Brokamp: …or you're just accepting it.

Whiteside: No, no. Accepting. Accepting.

Brokamp: OK.

Whiteside: And moving forward in my life.

Southwick: Pimento cheese is just an amazing thing.

Whiteside: It's a category…

Brokamp: Oh, my gosh. Really?

Whiteside: …by itself.

Southwick: Have you never had pimento cheese?

Brokamp: Not that I recall.

Whiteside: A grilled pimento cheese sandwich? That's all I'm saying.

Southwick: Yeah.

Whiteside: Moving on.

Southwick: Well, let's get into some of the science behind how to really keep your New Year's resolutions, starting with, of course, motivation and finding your intrinsic motivator, not your extrinsic motivator. So what is the difference between an extrinsic and an intrinsic motivator?

Whiteside: For me, when I work with clients either in the office, here, at Fool HQ or outside of Fool HQ, or outside of the Fool, in general, my first automatic question to anyone who is coming to me for personal training, wellness coaching, whatever it is: What is your current motivation for making this lifestyle change?

I would say nine times out of 10, it's extrinsic. It is, "I want to look better in a bathing suit because I'm going somewhere on spring break." Or it might be a specific fitness goal. "I want to run a 5K." All of these extrinsic motivations have an end point. They'll have a completion date, most likely, if you stick with it.

So what happens after you complete that extrinsic motivation? That's where people drop off. That's where people lose motivation. That's where you see everyone coming into the gym in January, February, and March making that New Year's resolution and then either they somehow become demotivated, or they've already hit their short-term goal. And then, "Whoops, well, I don't need to go to the gym anymore. I've already completed that."

Brokamp: I might have changed my eating habits a little bit now that I hit that 10 pounds and I don't owe you guys $200.

Whiteside: Yeah!

Southwick: I think Bro typically is motivated — sorry if we can get personal, here.

Brokamp: Yes, please do.

Southwick: I think most of the times that you start exercising and getting fit, it's because you're extrinsically motivated, and you usually motivate yourself through money stuff. Right?

Brokamp: Right.

Southwick: So you were like, "OK, I don't want to lose this money, so I'm going to do this." And then once you do it, you get that reward, or you get that carrot or that stick, then you're done doing it.

Whiteside: Right.

Southwick: So there's a lot of science behind it. And I looked at this. Dan Ariely, theeconomist,really did a lot of work on this, as well. It's like intrinsic motivation is the joy that you receive from actually doing the thing itself.

Whiteside: Right.

Southwick: So Rick, I think you're really intrinsically motivated to exercise when you are doing Spikeball, and things like that, because you're actually having fun doing the thing.

Rick Engdahl: I didn't realize that was exercise.

Southwick: It is exercise. Of course it's exercise.

Whiteside: It's totally exercise.

Southwick: And then I'm intrinsically motivated… Like the thing that made running finally stick for me two years ago was when I actually got joy out of just having some time to myself for the love of God! Because I had a baby at home, and I literally am never more than 10 feet away from my husband at any point in the day (because we live together and work together and everything). And so for me, I became intrinsically motivated to run when I just enjoyed being out there and having time to myself to think and run.

So that's why, to get personal, I think you, Bro, use extrinsic motivators to help you tackle those goals, which you do. You always tackle your health goals.

Brokamp: That's true.

Southwick: But then it's like every year, you come back and you do it all over again.

Whiteside: And I've told Bro so many times… I'm like, "I will always have an open door for you. I will accept you…"

Brokamp: And I always go back to her. Like, "OK, it's time for me to do it."

Whiteside: With open arms.

Brokamp: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whiteside: Every time. Open arms. There's nothing wrong with that. And I think this time you really did find your intrinsic motivator.

Brokamp: Right. Because a big thing for me has been that men in my family are not healthy. A lot of heart attacks. A lot of strokes. People dying before the average life expectancy. And I don't want to be that person. I want to live long enough to enjoy all the money that I am saving for my hopeful, eventual retirement.

Southwick: Right. But is that an extrinsic motivator?

Brokamp: I would say that's more intrinsic. I think the problem is that it's so long term. It's like retirement, itself. Like I'm still a relatively fit 47-year-old. I'm not likely to die of a heart attack right now. But I think being healthy to live well into my 80s and beating my family odds is a longer-term thing. It's so easy to say, "It's okay if I have ice cream tonight because I don't have to worry about that."

Southwick: I'm still not positive that it's intrinsic, though.

Brokamp: Really?

Southwick: Well, because you're doing it because of the stick. And the stick is you're going to die of a heart attack. You haven't found something that you really love to do fitness and exercise-wise.

Brokamp: That is probably true, because like Rick I am more motivated to do things as a group. Like I did a lot of Ultimate Frisbee. I played football…

Southwick: And you did football in school.

Brokamp: Right, exactly. It's tough, as a guy in his 40s and 50s, to get your friends together to go out and play football.

Whiteside: Right. Personally, for me (and I get this question asked all of the time) it's "Where did you find your passion for fitness or wellness? How did you stumble into the wellness field?" Personally, it came from me when I was around 15 years old and I was at a family reunion. I looked around and every single person on my mom's side of my family was diabetic. Obese. Heart disease. Cancer. Most likely related to lifestyle choices. And I didn't want to end up like that. So I made a very serious pact with myself that day that I was going to clean up my diet and I was going to start exercising.

And looking back, I don't know why and how I had the capability, as a 15-year-old, to make that decision, but it stuck with me. I don't want to die of type 2 diabetes, and obesity, and heart disease like a lot of members of my family. It's such an affliction with them today that that is something they consistently think about 24 hours a day. I don't want to have to do that.

Southwick: But I don't want to necessarily say that extrinsic motivators are bad. Dan Pink, in his book Drive, talks about extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, and he said, "Extrinsic motivators are really great. The reward/punishment kind of motivators are good when it's a very distinct, narrow, highly defined task," so it works in those situations. Intrinsic, however, is where you're going to see that life change where it becomes a habit, and you keep on doing it…

Whiteside: Right.

Southwick: …because you enjoy doing it.

Whiteside: Right, and finding something that you enjoy is so important. For you, it's finding that peace and quiet time when you're running. Personally, for me, it's going to the gym and getting a really good workout, having my earbuds in and just zoning out. Not necessarily peace and quiet. I'll interact and talk with everyone else in the gym. It's just having that feeling afterward is huge. That euphoria.

Southwick: All right. Last piece of science I'm going to throw at you is that the University of Chicago found that while people were exercising, they placed greater value on the intrinsic motivator (so just having fun, relieving stress); but when they were planning to exercise in the future, they placed a greater value on the extrinsic motivators, like improving health and becoming stronger. I just thought that was interesting — that before you do it, the extrinsic motivators get you there — but keeping you going at it, your reward is intrinsic.

Brokamp: One thing I always say to myself when I'm supposed to be doing something, (like working out or going for a run and I don't feel like doing it) [is] I always remember how I feel after I've done it previously. I have never gone for a run or worked out and been like, "Oh, I wish I didn't do that." I'm always happy that I did it, and I feel that way for a while, afterwards.

Whiteside: Maybe that 24 to 48-hour window, when we're sore afterwards, it's like, "Oh, crap."

Brokamp: Do you know what, though? I've learned to accept that as a signal that I've worked out.

Whiteside: Right, exactly.

Brokamp: If I work out and I'm not a little bit sore afterwards, I feel like I didn't do it right.

Southwick: Well, Dan Ariely says the first few minutes are not going to be pleasurable, when you're talking about exercising, but once you get going, things will be better.

Brokamp: It's only pain, folks. It's only pain.

Southwick: Let's move on. So once you have found that intrinsic motivator, now we're going to focus on small and achievable goals. What are we talking about here, Sam?

Whiteside: There is an old term in the fitness/exercise/phys world called "SMART goals." Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-oriented. Those are very important things when making goals — specifically short and long-term goals. I always recommend making one of each…

Southwick: Long and short?

Whiteside: One short-term, specifically, and one long term, and reassessing them as you need to. You might hit that short-term goal faster than you anticipated. Or it might take longer. So for example, a specific, smart, achievable, time-oriented goal would be "I would like to run one-and-a-half miles a day three days a week, and I would like to do that for six weeks." You might not be able to start out at a mile and a half three times a week, but eventually you should be able to build up to that. You might be able to hit that duration and that progression at four weeks. That's great. Don't stop. Find a new short-term goal.

Long-term goals are typically six months and longer, so six months and out in duration. Again, making that a SMART goal. Making sure it's time-oriented, realistic, and achievable. It might have something to do with weight loss. I usually encourage people to not associate specific goals with the number on the scale. I want people to have a specific goal in mind, but that number on the scale does not give yourself worth or give you something to achieve. It's a number. A number is a number is a number. It does not tell you how healthy you are.

Something more realistic might be your total cholesterol number or your resting heart rate. Something that's more realistic that will actually be related to your overall health.

Southwick: For me, I know the intrinsic benefit of just being alone for an hour is great for me, but I did have a goal with the last 10K of doing less than a 10-minute mile for my pace. I am not a fast runner.

Whiteside: Well, neither am I.

Southwick: Yeah, not at all. And I was the last Fool to cross the finish line, by the way, for the 10K, but that was like my goal, so I need to find another goal.

Whiteside: Yeah. We can chat offline.

Brokamp: One thing that you do great, Sam, and I've done Fool Fitness with you and other classes, is that you always emphasize "just do something." So if you're leading an exercise, and it's tough, especially for people who are not in great shape, you can feel bad about yourself that you're not keeping up with the group, but you always emphasize "just do something. Just do something."

Whiteside: Focus on yourself.

Brokamp: Go at your own pace, and it really is encouraging. Eventually you do get to the point where you can keep up with everyone else.

Whiteside: And that's great, but I've talked to so many people and I've seen that time and time again. People running on treadmills, and they keep looking over at the person next to them. Don't worry about that person. That person is probably also worried about you, but don't worry about that. Focus on yourself and your workout, and hitting your short and long-term goals, and making sure you're intrinsically and extrinsically motivated.

Southwick: The final step is keep yourself accountable. Now your buddy for keeping you accountable was actually Mohna, who was on the show last week.

Brokamp: Right. So Mohna started this group called Couch to 5K, which basically said, "Hey, Fools, anyone who hasn't really run much in their life, or recently, but would like to, let's have a goal of running a 5K race by February." She came up, probably with the help of other folks, of a plan for how to get from someone who basically sits around to running. It really was on emphasizing just doing what you can.

But then she and I, for a period of that, would check in with each other every other day. We said, "OK, here's my goal. I need to exercise every other day." We'd say, "OK, this is what I did." We'd post pictures of us running. She has an app that tracks where she ran. She would send me screen shots of it. Mine were a little goofier and sillier, but regardless, it was proof that I was doing something.

Southwick: Do we need to talk to HR?

Brokamp: There was nothing on the line in this case. Like I wouldn't have owed her money, but there's still something about knowing that you have to check in with your colleague and be honest about whether you did something or not. That is an extra dose of motivation.

Whiteside: And it definitely helps if there's one person in that accountability pact that might be a little bit more motivated than the other person.

Southwick: By the way, Mohna is super thin.

Whiteside: Mohna's awesome. And sidebar, I didn't know that you and Mohna were accountabilla-partner-buddies-besties. I had no idea.

Brokamp: Yes.

Whiteside: That's awesome.

Brokamp: And it was over the holidays, so she had gone home to Georgia and she was sending the pictures of her running around.

Whiteside: It's a lot easier to run in Georgia in the winter than Northern Virginia.

Brokamp: That is true.

Whiteside: But for both of you guys, I can easily see how Mohna not intentionally, but just unintentionally, brought your motivation up.

Brokamp: Yes.

Whiteside: Like her personal internal motivation is so high.

Southwick: Yes.

Whiteside: So that's something to keep in mind.

Southwick: Accountabesties.

Brokamp: There you go.

Southwick: We'll go with that one. Accountabesties. Bro, you also had some other examples of keeping yourself accountable that you wanted to talk about, like posting pictures to social media.

Brokamp: Right. A book I've cited in the past is called Willpower by Roy Baumeister, a psychologist, and John Tierney, who's a science writer for The New York Times. And in that book they highlighted the public humiliation diet of Drew Magary who basically would tweet out his weight every day.

Southwick: Oh, was it Drew Magary who did that?

Brokamp: Yes.

Southwick: Oh, I love him. He's so funny.

Brokamp: He's pretty funny.

Southwick: He's dirty, though.

Brokamp: I was going to say. I wouldn't necessarily send people to his articles, because he has a foul mouth.

Southwick: It's funny.

Brokamp: It's funny. So he tweeted his weight. And there's a site called DietBet where you put your money on the line. I know of a person who used to work here who did something like this. He essentially posted his weight every week on Facebook. You publicly say, "I'm going to lose weight, and you're all going to help keep me accountable."

Southwick: And to close, here, when should you call in a professional to help you?

Whiteside: That's a great question. I personally recommend calling a professional probably from the get-go. It's really easy to try something and say, "Oh, well, I tried it. It just didn't work for me." You start out strong with full resources around you, whether it's a registered dietician, or whether you need help cleaning up your diet, or figuring out what the best foods are for you, [or] what the proper preparation techniques [are] that really go into making it easiest for you to make these decisions. Or whether that's searching out what's called a CPT, a certified personal trainer. That's one of my certifications.

Making sure that you have the most well resourced, well-educated professionals in your corner — you're going to win. And so I think [that] going from the start if you want to be serious about this and you really need to get all of your ducks in a row, make sure you have everyone in your corner.

Southwick: And we have you, here, at The Motley Fool.

Whiteside: You do.

Southwick: We're so lucky.

Brokamp: We are.

Southwick: All right, Sam, thank you for joining us. Would you mind sticking around to talk about some help apps?

Whiteside: Absolutely.

Southwick: Well, that's the show. I want to thank Sam and Paul for joining us. And also, if you want to get an even more thorough review of Pact, which is what you would expect from a B.I. (a business intelligence guy), Paul actually wrote a much longer review on his website (his blog RampantDiscourse.com), so you can head there to check it out.

The show is edited robustly by Rick Engdahl. For Robert Brokamp, I'm Alison Southwick. Stay Foolish, everybody.