Fitness: Motivational Tips
Getting into the habit of working out can be a difficult task. The first few days and even weeks you’re so excited and motivated but slowly you start finding excuses and skipping the gym. It takes 21 days to create a habit, but let’s face it convincing ourselves to get up and exercise every single day is harder than staying in bed, especially during these cold days. But you know it’s worth it, you know it will help you lose those extra pounds and make you feel good in the long road. So here are some tips to motivate yourself every day:
• Get a workout partner: everything is better when you have someone else with the same goals as you. Not only you’ll have someone telling you “let’s go” when you don’t feel like to, but you’ll also have a spotter, someone that can help you lift that heavy weight, or just push you to run that extra mile.
• Take progress pictures: I cannot stress this enough. The scale will drive you crazy if you weight yourself all the time in hopes those numbers go down. Let me tell you that those numbers do not matter, why? Because muscles and fat weight the same. So if you’re looking and feeling slimmer but you weight the same, don’t panic, most likely you have been building muscles and muscles take up less space than fat in our bodies. Pictures will help you notice what has changed and you’ll be happy and proud when you compare old photos to new ones.
• Create small goals: saying “I want to eat better today so I can lose weight” instead of saying “I want to lose weight” forces you to approach this goal one day at a time. What I mean by this is that having small goals helps you be consistent on a daily basis. What you do every single day determines what you accomplish. So every day or every week come up with a small task for yourself. You can tell yourself things like: today I will run 5 more minutes or today I will add veggies to 2 of my meals.
• Remind yourself why: when we do something we do it for a reason. Whatever our motives are we work for it to get it. So whenever you don’t like exercising, try to remind yourself why you are doing it to begin with, what are you trying to accomplish and how it makes you feel every time you do it.
• Reward yourself: often we expect others to congratulate us for our hard work but take a minute of your day to appreciate your accomplishments. You are doing this for you and if you lost or gained those 5 pounds then get yourself something, even if it’s little. Let yourself know that you can do it and reward yourself for it.
