When it comes to working out most people tend to rely on motivation. Let me tell you something about motivation, it never lasts. In as much as motivation is the reason you decided to start an exercise plan, it’s not going to help you stay consistent. Somedays, you will wake up and feel energized. You will kill your workout session. And other days you will feel like crap. You will dread getting out of bed much less talk about working out. Somedays you will be so busy that your body will literally beg you to stay away from working out and other days you will just want to order a large box of pizza and sip some wine. So how then do you manage to maintain a consistent exercise plan without falling off your routine?
Follow me as I show you five strategies I use to stay consistent.
- Set realistic goals.
Why are you exercising? What is the desired outcome you expect to have by exercising consistently? For me I desire to be fit and healthy and I know that consistently exercising will increase my metabolism and stamina and help me build the right muscles. If your goal is weight loss, don’t aim to lose 20 pounds in one month. That’s not a realistic goal. When you set unrealistic goals and you don’t accomplish you end up abandoning your entire plan. Instead, set smaller goals like:
- lose one pound every two weeks
- exercise thirty minutes 5 days a week
- increase intake of water
- walk for 5 minutes every 3 hours
- grow from doing 25 jumping jacks to 50 per set
These are more realistic goals and will help you stay consistent over time.
2. Track your progress.
Tracking your progress helps you stay focused and committed to reaching your goal. It gives you a realistic picture of your situation and helps you come up with new strategies to overcome challenges. However, the only way to track progress is to first stet smart goals – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound goals. This way, you are able to easily measure your progress and see clearly what is working and what isn’t working. If you find that you are not making the desired progress, you are able to identify the changes that need to be made and implement them.
3. Manage your expectations.
Often when we start a new plan or set a new goal we expect to see the results now. But change takes time. Losing weight takes time. Building good habits take time. So we must learn to manage our expectations. The simple goal of learning to be patient is progress. Give yourself time and don’t judge yourself too harshly. Expect that everything won’t go as planned and prepare your mind to be ok with it. Learn to constantly evaluate your expectations and adjust it to fit your current reality.
4. Reward yourself.
Did you hit a new milestone? Did you accomplish one of your goals? Reward yourself!
The theory of operant conditioning is a psychological concept that suggests that we learn through reward and punishment. Specifically, this theory states that when behavior is followed by a pleasant outcome, we are more likely to repeat that behavior (because we want to repeat this pleasant outcome!). This is called positive reinforcement. The realization that your efforts have been rewarded will lead to more positive actions and motivations from your brain to keep going. It’s important to reward yourself when you accomplish a goal because it makes you feel good and elicits positive emotions in your brain.
5. Get an accountability partner.
Studies have proven that finding a fitness buddy or accountability partner increases the amount of exercise you do and how consistent you are. If you workout at a gym, you can get a trainer to support you with your routines, if not you can join an online fitness challenge. Nowadays, there are so many fitness on the internet. There’s a yoga challenge, squat challenge, skips challenge, plank challenge and many others. If you can’t find a physical partner, you can join an online community of like minded people all working towards accomplishing similar goals as you. This is an effective way to stay committed and consistent.
Final word
I’m not going to lie and say that it’s easy to stay motivated to exercise daily because it’s not. Life unfolds in such a way that sometimes it’s difficult to stay motivated. But when you intentionally change your mindset about exercise and build good habits, you become creative with your workouts and find ways to make it fit in your lifestyle. Here are few tips you can try to make daily exercises easier
- Exercise in bed as soon as you wake up. Doing this will put you in the right mindset for exercising later in the day.
- Workout while your’re watching a movie. I do this a lot. If you’re like me and you have a favorite TV show you like to watch, try doing some squats, lunges, and plank in front of the TV as you’re watching your movie. You will be killing two birds with one stone.
- Figure out what type of workout you like to do and schedule time in your schedule to do it. For example, I like doing aerobics and stretching more than I like doing cardio. So I set Mondays aside just for cardio workouts and the rest of the week I do the workouts I actually like doing.
- Sleep in your exercise clothes, or keep a bag of workout clothes in the trunk of your car. It’s super easy to wake up and go straight to exercise when you already have your clothes.
- Mix it up. Exercise can be fun if you approach it as a part of your normal routine. For example, exercising in bed, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, taking 10 minutes walking break every 2 hours, squatting while making a long phone call. All of these add up to a full day’s worth of exercise
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Balance with Ade 