Often the most difficult part of a new health and fitness program is staying motivated. We all start off with good intentions, but often are easily distracted from our goals of a fit and healthy body. It is essential to develop good eating habits and to stay focused on your fitness programs, if you want to achieve the kind of body or level of fitness you so desire.
Setting yourself achievable, short term goals is a great way to stay motivated. For example set yourself the goal of exercising for half an hour two to three days a week to begin with. It could be as easy as going for a walk or for a swim at your local swimming pool. Get a diary and schedule what days and what times you are going to do your exercise. When you have done this for a few weeks then set yourself the goal of doing your choice of exercise for longer periods of time, or increase how many times per week you exercise. Having something solid to work towards like your ideal body weight is always a good motivator.
What you need is to set out daily and weekly goals to make sure you are heading towards the major goal you are setting out to achieve whether it’s your ideal body weight or fitness level you want to achieve.
One of the major obstacles we have to overcome is time constraints. We all lead ever increasingly busy lives. We somehow have to fit so much more into our daily schedules and then tend to fall in a heap at the end of the day. One of the best motivators for me is how much better I feel and how much more energy I have, after doing a training session.
Early morning exercise is always a great time to do this, before work. Yes it means getting out of bed early, but you will fell more energized and ready to start the day feeling great! When scheduling your exercise sessions for early morning it’s a great idea to prepare what you need the night before, and when that alarm goes off early morning NEVER hit the snooze button. It’s the quickest way to unmotivated yourself. I tend to jump out of bed and not think about getting up, once you start exercising you wake up pretty fast!
Many of us embark on fitness and health programs in order to lose weight, and one of the hardest things to cope with is lack of visual improvements. We all like to be reminded on how well were doing, what progress we have made towards our idea body weight / shape. We want to see something obvious, and know that we are on our way to achieving our goal, but in reality, this takes time. Becoming fit and healthy and committing to changing your body shape takes a long term commitment. It doesn’t happen straight away, and nor would it be healthy to. A great way to gage this is by the fitting of your clothes. If those favorite jeans are getting lose but you haven’t lost weight this is a great indication that you are gaining muscle and losing fat, muscle always weighs more then fat.
Losing weight and getting fit is all about making lifestyle changes for the better. When you achieve your ideal body, it will just be a matter of maintaining it with healthy lifestyle choices.
