After a relaxing holiday season and enjoying happy times and meaningful moments with your family and friends, we head into 2022 with high expectations and renewed energy. Since the New Year is traditionally a time to make positive resolutions and to set improvement goals here are some tips to help your health & fitness resolutions stick. Hopefully, these tips can help lead to successful resolutions.
Looking for something to motivate you?
If you have low energy, exercise to increase your energy. If you feel down, exercise to improve your mood or decrease your anxiety. Do it because your doctor recommends it to improve the quality or longevity of your life or because you might look better. There is usually some internal need you can find that will give you the incentive or drive to get going.
Choose an obtainable goal.
Resolving to look like a supermodel is not realistic for many of us but promising to include 4 to 6 days of physical activity per week is very possible. Avoid choosing a resolution that you’ve been unsuccessful at achieving year after year. This will only set you up for failure, frustration, and disappointment. If you are still tempted to make a promise that you’ve made before, then try altering it.
Create a game plan.
At the beginning of January, write a comprehensive plan. All successful businesses start with a business plan that describes their mission. Write your own personal plan and you’ll be more likely to succeed as well. Set long-term goals (three to six months), short-term goals (one week to one month), and last, daily goals–what you will do every day to get closer to your long-term goals.
Reward yourself with each milestone.
If you’ve stuck with your resolution for 2 months, treat yourself to something special. But be careful of your reward type. If you’ve lost 5 pounds, don’t give yourself a piece of cake. Instead, treat yourself to something non-food-related, like a professional massage.
Break it down and make it less intimidating.
Rather than one BIG end goal, dissect it into smaller pieces. Set several smaller goals to achieve throughout the year that will help you to reach your ultimate goal. Then, even if you can’t reach your final goal, you will have much smaller, but still significant, achievements along the way. For example, if your goal is to lose 20lbs, try to lose 1.5 lbs per month. It doesn’t sound like much, but a year goes by fast. Also, gradual changes will lead to better and more permanent results.
Don’t do it alone! Get professional assistance.
Everyone needs help and sometimes a friend just isn’t enough. Sometimes you need the help of a trained professional who is familiar with effective and efficient fitness plans and the mental roadblocks that may get in the way. Don’t feel that seeking help is a way of copping out. Especially when it comes to fitness, research studies have shown that assistance from a fitness professional greatly improves people’s success rate. First, find out where you are by getting a fitness assessment. By generating heart rate and flexibility data, you will not only be able to see where you are at, but you can use this data as a baseline to see your improvements. This will help in keeping you motivated!
Our team at Balance Fitness is here to help get you started.
