Sammie Kennedy, CEO and creator of Toronto-based Booty Camp Fitness, demonstrates a high squat. (Supplied)

It worked for her seven years ago.

But Sammie Kennedy isn’t completely sold on the value of New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get fit.

Such grandiose declarations — typically involving all-or-nothing plans that suddenly take effect at the stroke of midnight or upon waking New Year’s Day following an evening of last-gasp gluttony — are fraught with disappointment and failure.

“A lot of people place a lot of stress on Jan. 1st being this day that changes their lives,” says Kennedy, CEO and creator of Toronto-based Booty Camp Fitness.

“We often set lofty goals which lead to us getting discouraged when we figure out how much work it will actually take.”

The baby-faced 29-year-old cites a study in the Journal of Psychology that showed nearly one-quarter of New Year’s resolvers return to their old habits by Jan. 7, and more than half fall off the wagon by March.

A Stanford University researcher recently called resolutions “potentially damaging” on the psyche.

But resolutions aren’t an exercise in futility for everyone — as Kennedy can attest.

She bucked the odds after resolving to shape up Jan. 1, 2005. At the time, the then-22-year-old’s body disgusted her and made her miserable.

Kennedy cleaned up her diet and adopted a fitness regimen that included resistance training. She ended up shedding 25 pounds from her nearly 5-foot-6" frame to compete in a fitness model competition in June 2006.

“I discovered I was really passionate for fitness, and got into this industry,” she adds.

The following year, Kennedy opened Booty Camp Fitness, now billed as Canada’s largest women’s-only boot camp.

“Since then, there’s been ups and downs,” she admits. “We (Booty Camp Fitness) went through a huge expansion at one point, and my health kind of fell to the wayside. I had to get that back on track and work towards it again.”

But seven years after resolving to transform her body, Kennedy remains in fantastic shape.

The native of Sudbury, Ont., who lives in Toronto says the key to her resolution success was breaking it down into incremental changes — and celebrating each achievement en route to the big goal.

“It’s easy to get discouraged on the way, especially when you don’t see immediate changes,” explains Kennedy, whose boot camp includes bodyweight-resistance training, plyometrics, kickboxing, yoga, calisthenics and sports conditioning.

“Fitness is one of those things where you might not start to see big changes until after the first four weeks. So it’s a matter of breaking those down into smaller goals, littler milestones that you can reach and reward yourself for along the way so that you feel great about yourself and it keeps you going.”

Kennedy recommends setting daily goals and building toward a four-week goal, an eight-week goal and a longer-term goal — “six months, for example,” she says.

“Fitness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you have to constantly work at and constantly think about.”

A believer in regularly setting goals for various facets of life, Kennedy notes that there’s no perfect day to begin a lifelong fitness journey — Jan. 1 or otherwise.

“There’s never a convenient time to stop socializing and drinking martinis all week long. There’s never a convenient time to cut sugar out of your nutritional program,” she says. “But at some point, you’ve got to make those choices and decide to fit things into your life — like healthy eating and exercise.”

Visit www.bootycampfitness.com.