Many of us can relate to this: You’ve started a new exercise regimen and are really loving it – you’re focused, motivated, committed and you can’t wait to get up and head to the gym each morning. But then, if you’re like many of us, you that these surge of excitement feelings often disappear quickly! Usually within a few days or weeks those good intentions you had disappeared.
The question now is, how do you keep up and what is the best way to help you remain consistent and persevere on a daily basis? There are a few ways in which one can adopt in order to reach their fitness goals and remain consistent. It all starts with a decision you first make of wanting to improve yourself. Then you have to make that commitment by taking the first step to actually starting your journey and hopefully staying on course!
Starting a new habit can be a challenge and maintaining it is not the sexiest topic if we are honest! But it’s the one thing that will get you through especially when your motivation encounters challenges. It’s the key to achieving your results and living a healthy active lifestyle.
Studies have been done to prove that when certain habits are adopted and maintained, individuals are nudged to keep going and achieve their desired results. Below are the top ways to help you cement your exercise routine into your life and make it a habit and part of your healthy active lifestyle.
Proven Tips To Help you Make Exercise A Habit
One thing I totally agree with the idea of doing your exercises daily! I know you’re probably thinking, what? daily? Yes, daily and just to clarify, this doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym every day! There are different ways in which you can do your exercises as you will on this blogpost.
Whatever you choose to adopt as your main exercise has to be something you can afford to do and be consistent with. A walk, a swim, gym workouts, a run, play ball, all these are great ways to get your body moving. Remember the main thing is for you to be able to do it regularly.
1. Make Commitment For A Month
For starters, commit yourself to at least four weeks of exercise regime. The idea is that by the time you complete this, the new habit would be pretty much engraved in you. This has been proven as well in a randomised control study done by Milkman and her colleagues at Wharton School of Business. They found that those participants who joined a four weeks challenge were more likely to continue with their new habit for up to ten months!
They make an important point that the “key to habits is repetition. And if you can get that repetition going while you have high motivation, you’re likely to have a behaviour change that lasts.”
While making this commitment, decide when is the best time to suit you and your new habit, whether in the morning or evening. You know yourself better, so use the time that you know you’re at your most productive. Schedule it in and make it a non-negotiable time, have that time blocked on your calendar. Remember you’re trying to become the best version of yourself and you have to strict on this; obviously urgent things do come up and you may juggle a bit but remember why you started.
2. Do Something You Enjoy
There nothing better and fulfilling than doing something that you enjoy! As mentioned earlier, daily exercise doesn’t mean lifting heavy weight every day. What you want to do is something that you’ll manage and afford to do. Something that brings excitement within you when you think about it. It has been proven that when you bundle up your passion with some form of exercise or something healthy, you’re bound to do it more.
What you don’t want to do is associate your new habit with pain, so it is important to start with something easy to do and slowly improve yourself. As with anything new, you want to start slowly, learn the trick and tips on how to become better. Once your confidence has set it, you can push to another gear to challenge yourself. There nothing exciting and fulfilling than seeing yourself do things you couldn’t do before! It gives you the best joy as you see your hard work paying off.
3. Set Realistic and Reasonable Goals
Having a goal that you’re working towards can be a powerful motivator. Losing weight or getting into shape are good goals in theory, but they’re big-picture goals that need perseverance and consistency. So you have to start thinking small and slowly get your way up. At the same time, you don’t want to be stagnant in your journey so you should slowly push yourself to do a little extra each time.
As we always say, nothing worth having is meant to come easy, there will change and sometimes even pain! But its all part of the package to get where you want to be. The great thing is that you’ll get there if you persevere.
The catch is that the goal has you be something you can reasonably attain, your big ‘WHY’ that you believe you can reach.
It is important to make it super-specific. Check out these examples: Goal; Go for a 3+ kilometre walk 3x per week; Goal: Get to the gym at least 4x this week; Goal: Drink X amount of volume of water each day this week; Goal: Have protein in every meal and snack each day…. Etc. The idea is that these goals are hyper-specific – how many times, how many days, how many plates, etc; and then you’ve got to track them!
Some questions to ask yourself when setting goals are like; this something I can be consistent with? Does it align with and make sense for my big-picture goals? Will it get me the results I’m after or bring me closer to those results? Do I enjoy it?
4. Get Yourself A New Workout Outfit
This may sound strange because some people think gym clothes don’t matter! But they couldn’t be further from the truth. You definitely want to workout on clothes that fit you well and make you feel comfortable. Whether its the colour or design of the clothes, it matters most; it helps you have that confidence because you feel good about yourself.
One thing to remember though is that you’re at the gym or wherever you do your exercise to work on yourself to get the best results you can. Everyone started somewhere so don’t be intimidated by those who are already ahead of you. If you’re not confident yet to start your journey at your gym, start at home to build yourself and yes you still have to get new workout wear, it acts a motivator.
Give yourself the time you need but at some point, you have to face the challenge of being at the gym seeing a lot of other people. You’ll be surprised at how much you learn there and what results you get!
5. Do Not Restrict Yourself
The idea is to help you remain consistent with your new habit, so do not restrict yourself with the same exercises every day and at the same time. It becomes monotonous and boring and you might end up losing interest. It has been proven that when you become flexible with your exercise routine and mixing it a little bit, you’re bound to get more results.
This also allows you to target different muscle groups each time you do a different exercise from the day before. You’re also allowing the other muscles time to recover and grow! Recovery is actually the most important time phase as it’ll help give you the results you want.
6. Record Your Progress and Take Pictures
Sometimes it may look like you’re not progressing at all and it’s fine because progress takes time. However, it is so important to take your before photo and keep it safe, why? because this will reward you later when you compare with your progress photo. Photo and video of your workout do help you see your journey.
I bet you’d be tempted to look in the mirror every day for new results but it can be hard to notice any change especially if you’re doing it daily. But keeping your photos allows you to actually see that change because if you’re working hard and following the plan, there is no reason why you can’t’ get your results.
But beyond the physical results, there are more other amazing benefits of daily physical activity which when you see them, will definitely be motivated. Think of things like; more energy or a better mood throughout the day, better sleep patterns, clothes fitting better, a decrease in stress levels, performance in the gym getting better, etc. Take note of these things so you can see how your progress over time is.
Always remember that everything affects everything and in this case, your commitment, consistency, physical activity, good nutrition and personal development all work together for you to see results.
7. Make A Commitment To Yourself
Here’s the thing, there are going to be days when going to the gym and working out is going to be the last thing you want to do. It happens to all of us. The important thing is not to fall victim to that and start skipping your sessions. Try by all means not to skip any day but if you do, don’t beat yourself up and feel bad. We all do mess up sometimes, however, what matters most is how we recover from that setback!
If you have fallen down, get yourself together and rise up again because you have a goal to reach. Remember that consistency is an important key to your success. Never let any obstacles dictate your end results! If you think you’re struggling, get an accountability partner who will motivate you to keep going. Research shows that if you plan a session with a buddy of yours, you’re more likely to turn up for the session. That’s is why people who join a challenge are more likely to succeed.
Nowadays we have a lot of online fitness challenges that are just as effective, it’s a community that will support you. Once you start, you never want to stop because the community is supportive of each other. I was skeptical when I started, the benefits I got were beyond what I had in my mind and I have never looked back. Now I can’t imagine my life without physical activity and a daily healthy active lifestyle.
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8. Ensure You Have A Rest Day
One thing to never take for granted is having a rest day. Your recovery is as much important as your daily workout, so set a day that suits you and get some rest. My rest day is Sunday, not what happens I never workout on Sunday. If you’re a beginner and your workouts are about twenty minutes in length, then maybe you can go without a rest day.
It is however still I good idea to rest from your usual exercises. Resting your body allows your muscles the chance to fully recover and for growth to take place as well. Remember you want to make the experience pleasurable and make it a daily habit. So by not resting enough, you’re predisposing yourself to associate the habit with pain, and that will lead to your downfall.
In Conclusion
Starting a new exercise routine is exciting and obviously beneficial to your health and wellbeing. It’s important to give yourself time as you build this new habit. Make sure your new workout regimen becomes something that you stick to for the long haul.
Fall in love with it, make it enjoyable and find ways to have fun while doing it. If by any means you start to feel like you don’t want to go out and do something, then look at the routines you have in place, juggle them and find something different do BUT don’t stop.
Believe me, once you’ve started and remained consistent your results will begin to show up and you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner. Always have a reason and motivation for why you doing what you do, that will get you fired up each time
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