Staying Motivated to Exercise
Staying Motivated to Exercise.
When it comes to exercising, it is really a “do it yourself” proposition. Yes, you can have a gym membership and even a personal trainer, but if you are not motivated you will make every excuse. One motivating factor could be you want to lose weight for a special occasion, like a family wedding or because your doctor has said you have to lose weight to prevent or rectify any health problems.
Once a person can start an exercise campaign and see what benefits they are gaining – it is easier for them to stay motivated. It is not only the exercising that will help you trim down but you should also consider a really healthy eating plan. You don’t have to change your entire life, but it can be as easy as cutting out saturated fats, sugars and salt.
You have to become a label reader and know exactly what foods are good for you and what ones to avoid.
Over the last 60 years, people are not doing the physical tasks they were doing, both at home and at work. People tend to drive or catch public transport rather than walking as they did previously. We have so many labour saving devices in our home that we do not have the same amount of activity we once had.
Some people who do lose weight can very easily regain it. If they stop exercising and go back to their old life style, they soon regain the weight and in most cases – more. People who stop exercising tend to return to their sedentary ways even though they were enjoying exercising.
Despite this, we can prevent it from happening. We all know that we enjoyed the loss of the weight and how good we felt, but what we want to achieve is to keep motivated and exercise and then we can stay healthy and avoid many health problems associated with being overweight.
Ways to lose weight.
Have a clear goal if you want to lose weight. Be very specific. Know exactly the amount of weight you desire to lose. You may want to lose 30 pounds over the next six months. Now if you break that down to a monthly figure – it means losing 5 pound per month.
Now we know that is not impossible to achieve if we modify our eating habits and adopt an exercise plan.
Develop your own strategy.
To lose the weight you must have both a healthy diet and an exercise regime. In the beginning, your exercise programme may be hard and appear slow but as time goes on you can increase the intensity of your training. If at first you can not manage to exercise for 30 minutes, start at 5-10 minutes and you will find that you will soon increase the time day by day.
As you start to lose weight, you may want to send your bigger sized clothes to the op shop. Once you do this, you will see that there a lot of clothes you used to wear that are smaller in size and they make you feel good about yourself. Seeing all these sexy clothes in your wardrobe, will certainly help motivate you and keep you on track.
A super motivator.
Depending on what you can afford, why not pay yourself for every pound you lose. It could be from $10 to $50 per pound and put it aside till you reach your goal weight. At the end you can take yourself on a shopping spree and get a new wardrobe.
Have an accountability partner.
Now my suggestion here is you get an accountability partner. It can be a friend or a family member. Get this person to take a photo of you before you start on any exercise programme. Having an accountability partner is fun because they can watch you achieve along the way and be very encouraging for you. They may want to lose weight also and your efforts will spur them into action.
That person is there to help you through the difficult times as well the great times. They are there to help motivate you and keep you on track.
Are you staying on track?
I am sure if you have taken an accountability partner, you will definitely be staying on track. From our example we started with wanting to lose 30 pounds, you may find after the first month, you have actually lost more than the estimated 5 pounds. If you have – well done. Only weigh yourself once a week – at the same time on the same day of the week.
After a few months, you will become very used to doing your exercises. Your may have even taken a training partner (who can be your accountability partner) and this will also help you. Once you start losing weight believe that you never want to go back to your old ways. Your life has now changed for the better.
Source: http://healththroughhealinghands.com/staying-motivated-to-exercise/
