Winter Health and Fitness Motivation

'Driving force' highlighted in green, under the heading 'Motivation'

You know how it is, Summer begins to approach and we all start to feel a little more motivated to start taking care of ourselves.

Whether it’s the longer, brighter, warmer days or the fear of having to strip down to your bathers for your trips to the local beach or upcoming holiday, either way we all tend to start thinking about how we aught to start making a bit more of an effort to ‘get in shape’ or start ‘getting healthy’.

The problem is, once Summer draws to a close and the temperatures drop, the days get shorter and the “holiday” motivation passes, it becomes very easy to gradually slip back into old habits.

This of course isn’t ideal for anybody trying to achieve longterm health and/or fitness related goals.

With that, my aim today is to give you several tips for staying motivated once the novelty of being healthy and in shape wears off…

Health and Fitness Motivation

The first on our list: Remove Guilt – Forget the Past

When we make a mistake, eat a cheat meal or skip a workout it’s very easy to dwell on the negatives.

“I shouldn’t have eaten that meal because…”

“I shouldn’t have skipped my workout because…”

In reality, although not ideal, missing the odd workout or having the odd cheat meal isn’t going to make a huge difference to your progress providing you forget about it, accept it for what it is and move on rather than feeling bad about it and worrying that you’ve ruined everything now so you may as well quit!

These negative feeling and emotions have far worse affects on the body that missing a workout or having a cheat meal.

It’s not over until you decide it’s over so just move on. We all make mistakes, including us coaches! 🙂

Next on the list: Find Like-minded People

Having others to turn to or rely on when things get tough can make a huge difference when trying to achieve health related goals – or any goal for that matter.

They can help to support and encourage you. You can help provide accountability for each other. You’ll be able to support and motivate each other during your workouts as well as provide a little bit of competition between you which can make huge differences to how quickly you achieve your goals.

This is something I’ve had to recommend to many clients in the past because often their partners and friends aren’t willing to make the changes necessary to help them achieve their goals – they continue to buy junk foods and sugary snacks, they constantly question the reasons why my clients are even bothering to try and get healthy and why they’re ‘wasting’ so much money.

This isn’t always the case of course but it does happen.

You see, sabotaging others success helps to justify our own failures or lack of success.

That’s why surrounding yourself with like-minded people is a great way to stay on track and keep moving forwards – even when things get challenging.

Break it up and Track your Progress

Although these are 2 separate points, they work very well when used together.

Break it up – You may have heard me mention this before in a couple of my other blog posts but it’s important not to focus on the end goal.

The end goal is often a huge achievement that can sometimes seem too big to achieve.

Instead you’ll want to break your goal down into more manageable chunks.

For instance, let’s say your goal is fat loss and you want to lose 40lbs (18.2kg) within 1 year. Rather than focus on losing 40lbs in 1 years, it’s much better to focus on trying to lose 1.54lbs a fortnight.

It’s a much smaller number to work with and far less intimidating than 40lbs.

Track your Progress – By this I am of course referring to the above (if your goal is fat loss), so your body fat% measurements, weight, etc… but I’m also referring to your performance in the gym as well as your daily nutritional intake.

By consistently measuring your progress through body measurements (I highly recommend once a fortnight – no more, no less unless you have a specific reason) you’ll know exactly when and if your efforts need to be increased in order to keep you moving forwards towards your goal.

By tracking your workout progress you’ll always know exactly how much you have to do each workout in order to do just a little bit more or a little bit better each session to ensure constant progress.

By writing down what you’re eating and seeing it down on paper in front of you, you’re far less likely to opt for the ‘bad stuff’ in favour of the things you should be eating in order to achieve your goals.

Lighten up – Don’t be afraid to break your own rules

Stop being so damn hard on yourself! You’ve likely got enough stress in your life without pressuring yourself even more.

Sometimes you just gotta sit back, chill and temporarily put the rule book down!

It’s VERY easy to become overwhelmed, stressed, fed up and demotivated with the ‘game of health’ if you refuse to allow yourself some space to wriggle a little every now and then.

“Don’t be afraid to break your own rules” was the closing statement from one of my Mentor’s (Paul Chek) lectures I’d attended back in 2011 and for many – especially those that often try the “all or nothing” approach – it can be the difference between long term success or failure.

Often we put so much pressure on ourselves to live the perfect lifestyle when we begin working on our health that we miss the fact that the focus should be ‘progress, not perfection’.

Perfection is an almost unattainable goal in today’s world and not only that, it’s not necessary in order to live a lean, pain free life that’s abundant with health and vitality.

Finally, and probably most importantly: Find Your “WHY?”

It’s all well and good to want to look, feel, function or perform better but without a reason ‘why’ it likely won’t be very long until you find excuses to not bother anymore.

You absolutely MUST find a reason why that’s stronger than your biggest excuse!

Maybe it’s your kids? Maybe you want to find a partner? Maybe you don’t want to end up with the same health challenges as your parents? Maybe you have your Wedding coming up or maybe you just want to look good naked?

Whatever your ‘Why’ is, challenge yourself to dig down deep and find a strong enough reason to stay on track and keep moving forwards until you’ve achieved your goals.

NOTE: It’s rarely the first thing that pops into your head!

So there you have it, 5 simple tips to help maintain your health and fitness motivation when times start to get rough and things get tough.

  1. Remove the guilt – Forget the Past
  2. Find Like-minded People
  3. Break it down and Track your Progress
  4. Lighten up and Don’t be Afraid to Break your own Rules
  5. Find your “WHY?”

Now I realise, Just having a few tips thrown at you may still not quite be enough to get you going. Sometimes we need a great big kick up the butt and a few quick ‘wins’ to get us on track.

If this sounds like you, feel free to check out our awesome 21 Day Rapid Fat Loss Challenge!

It’s a complete programme that includes everything you need in order to be successful – including hands on coaching with me.

It will provide you with a great opportunity to not only implement the tips you’ve just learned above but you can also lose up to 10lbs and hugely increase you energy and fitness levels at the same time! What could be better than that? ???? Check out the 21 Day Rapid Fat Loss Challenge here to find out more.

Your friend in Health & Performance,

tyronebraysign

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