If you’re working on your list of resolutions and plans then here’s some suggestions that designed to help you out for the planning stages. If your resolution involves health, fitness, weight loss or a related topic then here’s some guidelines for you to keep in mind when making your planning lists.
Avoid Over-Commitment
If you think buying a new piece of equipment or a club membership is going to motivate you into working out because you’ll be spending X amount of dollars, start smaller. Buy a pedometer. Seriously. A pedometer is a twenty-dollar investment and you can track how many steps a day you are walking. 10,000 steps in a day are about 5 miles and burn about 500 calories. The investment in a pedometer isn’t too much money, but you can measure your effort as well as giving you a chance to increase the amount of personal effort.
If you do decide to start a new fitness plan, monitor your time investment. If you start off saying you are going to work out every single day of the week until you hit your goal then it’s a mistake. First and foremost, the best exercise programs include cardiovascular as well as strength training. If you’re building muscle, you need to give it time to repair itself. So if you want to work out everyday, you need isolate what areas of the body you are working on so that you give the rest of your body time to recover.
Don’t Set Yourself Up For Failure
Be realistic in the goals you set for yourself. For example, a lot of lose weight fast plans promise you can lose 10lbs a week or 10lbs in a month. The realistic goal is more like 2lbs a week. Yes, 2 lbs doesn’t seem like much if you have 50 lbs to lose, however, it’s a proven fact that weight shed through regular exercise and healthy diet is more likely to stay off than through crash diet and hard pulsing workouts. So, yes in this case it is the tortoise that beats the hare.
By saying you are planning to lose 2lbs a week, you have set not only a realistic goal or resolution, but also an attainable one. Imagine your pleasure and pride as you handle your weigh in each week. The smaller increments are faster to achieve and each flush of success will encourage you to keep working to the next goal and the next goal. 2lbs a week is 8 lbs a month and your 50 lbs is a six-month achievable task.
Shake It Up
Don’t consign yourself to a miserable hell of workouts that you can’t imagine you would ever do for real. If you hate dancing, aerobics is not the place for you. If you hate walking on a treadmill, then don’t do it. If you really hate climbing on a stair master then it’s an incredibly bad idea to use that workout as your way to achieve your goals.
Instead, focus on what you do enjoy. Like being outside? Plan your walks in a park, in your neighborhood or wherever you like being. Really enjoy working with someone else towards a common goal? Find a fitness partner. Love the feeling of being inside a gym, comparing your progress in competitive fashion? Then join a fitness club or group. By planning your fitness around something you enjoy, you get to have fun while you get your fitness and that’s going to increase your level of motivation.
Don’t Just Sing Out a Party Line
If you’re getting on the fitness bandwagon because that’s what people expect you to make a resolution for, don’t. Any resolution you make, whether it’s about fitness or anything else, has to come from inside. It has to be something you want to do, something you feel you want to because it makes you feel better about you. Ultimately, saying you’re going to lose weight, get in shape, eat better, quit smoking or any of a number of other things for someone else may work – once in a while – but when it comes to making a true lifestyle change – you have to be the catalyst for it.
Sing your own tune. Dance to your own lines. Make the commitments that you can not only live with or survive, but that you can thrive through. It’s your life. It’s your health. Make the resolutions goals that you can achieve. Benefit from your own success and as an anonymous quote says: “Aim for the moon because even if you miss – you’ll be among the stars.”