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We have been telling ourselves to finally hit the road and exercise when the New Year comes around. We hit our stride for a few weeks and hit a plateau and end up worse than before. If this sounds all too familiar, it is comforting to know that this is a prevalent scenario. Don’t lose hope. There are ways to sustain the gusto on fitness. Here are things that you can consider to push yourself and finally achieve a healthier and fitter body.
7 Tips To Set Realistic Fitness Goals
#1 Know your strength and weaknesses
Knowing what you are good at will help you do a better job in conditioning and fitness. If you are a geek, you can create or download a fitness application that will assign fitness tasks to you each day. This also holds true to other gadget junkies that cannot part with their iPhones or Android devices. Getting active is great to your mental health as well. It is known that exercise make the brain produce feel-good chemicals that is beneficial towards driving the levels of stress and anxiety down.
#2 Never think that you have no time
If you accept the fact that you have no time for exercise then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Never allow this mentality to ruin your good intentions for your body. Allot at least 10 minutes of your time for exercise. Make it a point to have three such “exercise time” each day to complete the recommended 30 minutes of exercise per day. Learn to do some exercises while you are at your desk.
#3 Find fitness buddies
Make fitness a lot of fun by looking for fitness buddies. Getting along with fitness buffs is a great support system. Admit it. It is more fun to do exercises if you have someone tagging along. Form a club among your co-workers and appoint a time after work to troop to the office gym or a gym nearby.
#4 Reward yourself
Celebrate milestones in your exercise goals with small trinkets of prizes for yourself. You can start with a movie marathon each weekend or a new magazine subscription. You can also reward yourself with a nice spa treatment or an aromatherapy session. Give yourself a virtual pat in the back for a job well done for the week.
#5 Start small then progress
The reason a lot of people give up because they tend to do more than they can handle. Start with at least 10 minutes a day. When you are ready, start progressing to 20 minutes until you can regularly perform 30 minutes of exercise on a daily basis. Doctors recommend a total of 150 minutes of exercise per week.
#6 Eat small portions
Do not deprive yourself of good food. What you can do is to divide the servings in half. This way you still enjoy good food and remain on track. Eat frequently but with smaller portions. Keep in mind that your eating habits can be your worst enemy towards achieving your fitness goals. This is so true especially if you find it hard to resist your food cravings.
Take the time to carefully plan your nutritional diet. This is to ensure that you get the right nutrients you need for having a healthier body without the need to starve or deprive yourself. It would be best to eat more of plant-based foods and reduce your animal meat intake.
#7 Ditch those vices
Creating a fitness goal would be useless if you do not take the time to think about how you can finally get rid of your vices. This is no doubt one of the most important parts of setting a realistic fitness goal. All those efforts that you exert on any exercise and fitness regimen will just be in vain if you always find yourself going out with your friends for a drinking spree.
Getting fit is more mental than physical. Pushing yourself to become more active will depend on how you motivate yourself. Make each exercise time fun and enjoyable and you will never have to work out anymore.
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