It’s that time of year again: the days are getting longer and the winter coats are going back into storage (most days). Spring is one of the best times of year to reignite your fitness motivation. Here are 5 simple, actionable tips to help you get started Springing back into fitness now.
Get a new playlist: No matter how much you loved your old workout playlist, listening to the same thing gets boring fast. Not only is boredom demotivating, but boredom also motivates you to overeat. You don’t have to make your own. Your music streaming service has dozens of new playlists added monthly.
Use your calendar: Before the week starts, schedule your workouts with day, time, place and what. This increases follow through by at least 200%! Otherwise the time you need to take care of yourself is at the mercy of everything else – work, family, TV. Bonus: make the appointments recurring so it’s easier to manage every week.
Clean up your kitchen: If it’s in your house it’s in your mouth. We will eat whatever is most convenient. Keeping cookies, ice cream, etc. in your kitchen creates an environment where eating right is very hard. Get rid of what you don’t want to eat every day, and replace that with supportive foods – fruits, vegetables, protein, etc. Sure you can still treat yourself to a cookie, but not every single day
Get a program: “a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client” is true in fitness as well. When you’re in charge of your own fitness program that usually means you will only do what you want to do, and rarely will this be all of what you need. Having an expert call the shots helps you get better results and frees your brain up to do other things.
Shift your focus: outcome goals are things like “lose 20 pounds,” and process goals are things like “clean out my kitchen,” or “strength train 3 days per week.” When people focus primarily on the outcome they are always frustrated because it’s never going to happen fast enough. What’s worse is that this frustration often leads to jumping from program to program without ever getting meaningfully closer to what you want. The more you focus on the process to your goals and getting better at implementing these behaviors the better your outcome will be. It doesn’t happen the other way around.
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