How To Sustain Your New Year's Fitness Resolutions?

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ith 2021 swiftly approaching, it’s the time of the year to create a perfect storm for your new fitness resolutions…With the positive affirmations and motivations riding high at the beginning of the New Year, millions of people across the globe find it the convenient time to push themselves into trying something new. That’s great! Very impressive! 

Resolutions are a productive way to set goals for the upcoming year. For some, to embark on a new journey could be a daunting task, for others, it could be exciting, whatever is your instinct, one should see through their resolutions to the end of the year.

This isn’t the first time you have made fitness resolution, you made it last year too, could you keep up on it throughout the year? I know most of you are saying, NO, only till the end of February!!!

The problem is setting new goals or habits is easier said than done, not everyone can maintain them, so here’s our guide to help you keep them…work on these tips to find success in your fitness journey…

HAVE A FITNESS PARTNER   

If you are a newbie to the fitness path, you’ll find this tip especially helpful. Having a fitness partner will hold you accountable for your fitness goals. Your fitness partner could be your friend, neighbour, colleague or simply your spouse. When you’re alone, you may struggle to find the motivation to bring yourself to the gym daily and may feel like forced into doing something. Humans are innately social beings and competitive. Here is a list of the advantages of having a fitness partner.

• You may be less likely to skip out on your workout as someone else is relying on you as well.

• Having a fitness partner is the easiest way to set a schedule, to get support, motivation and even healthy competition.

• Fitness partner can play the role of teammate, cheer you. The energy of your fitness partner will help you to continue when you feel like you want to give up.

• Makes you feel secured, comfortable and consistent.

• Choose a person who has a similar commitment to fitness, otherwise, it won’t serve any purpose. As per statistics, those who embark on a fitness journey together with buddies had very low dropouts. 

GET MOTIVATED

First and foremost, don’t treat fitness as something you’ll do when you find the time. Don’t make fitness the bottom of your priority list. Also, don’t complicate your thought about fitness as something really time-consuming and intense. Such thoughts should find a back out from your mind or will ruin your self-motivation.

External motivation will last perhaps a few days, weeks, or possibly even a few months, I strongly believe in intrinsic motivation, in which the sheer enjoyment of the process of exercise keeps you going and going. Don’t plan or do things because someone else does it, do it because you want it, you like it, you enjoy it!

• Choose a form of exercise or fitness pattern, could be swimming, yoga, pilates, gym, aerobics, kickboxing, the home workout whichever you feel you’ll enjoy as opposed to some generic routine.

• Never forget the reason why you started.

• Hang out with high energy kids, with whom, you’ll without your notice get motivated.

• Surround yourself with motivational quotes/inspirational posters.

• Pack your gym bag the night before you go to the gym, and wear a specific gym attire for workouts to get self-discipline and bring in motivation.

• Tailor your workouts to fit your mood. (You might feel like doing cardio today, yoga tomorrow, cycling a day after, this is totally fine).

In most cases, irrespective of different fields, the initial journey will be a bit tough, but what you must always focus on is, how it feels like ones you cross the target… yes, you heard it right! That’s what you must have…the TARGET and the motivation automatically comes in.

GO SLOW & STEADY – DON’T RUSH

You successfully workout for an hour at the gym and focus on good eating habits too, but you don’t find the expected results in the mirror. This is very common, don’t lose heart and don’t be discouraged. Everyone’s body is different and the way it responds is also different. Hence, it can take several weeks to months to notice the difference in yourselves.

The thing is, we live in an instant gratification society. We expect a quick result. This thought should get out of our mind.

Somebody at the gym works out 6 hours a week, while you work out half that timing, never mind... you must understand that fitness is a process, a lifestyle that can be achieved by being consistent with working out and feeding your body the right fuel.

Haven’t you learnt this from the pre-kg tale hare and the tortoise?

Quick fixes never work over the long term, but a sustainable approach does.

Take my advice… don’t hurry on things, start with a relaxed mind. In case you have many commitments and you are not ready for the fitness journey, it’s OKAY… there’s absolutely no hurry to launch your resolution on Jan 1^st, don’t start on the eve of the year either, coz your start to your fitness journey will be based on your mindset that particular day. Instead, plan it a week before December 31^st arrives.

MAKE A PLAN

Not devising a plan is the biggest mistake we see people make while setting a goal. I’ll explain this to you with a simple example, you desire to go on a summer vacation, but won’t know where to go and what next. Imagine you choose to go to a hill station, there will be particular requirements to carry, and if you plan for going to a snow city, there’ll be certain other requirements. Likewise, you must have a plan before embarking on a fitness journey. Setting a plan will get you better acquainted to a journey and help you in the accomplishment of the same.

Don’t bombard your lifestyle with something new, the journey is yours and you must have a plan.

If you’d like to lose weight, you must know what kind of exercise and diet is actually going to help you achieve it. You have to give up high-calorie or empty-calorie foodstuff like potato chips, chocolates, sodas, coffee, sugary items. In case, you have plans to gain some weight, again you must be aware of the basic requisite in diet modulation and workout to achieve the same.

If you prefer to have variation in workout technique, so plan the same, work on upper body strength training on Monday, do HIIT workout on Tuesday and leg workout on Wednesday and you can add alternatives this way.

If you’ve chosen morning hours for a regular workout, you must plan how to compensate in case you miss out on your class on any day…maybe workout in the evening or do pick a different workout like riding cycle, swimming that day.

MUST HAVE A POSITIVE SPIRIT

You must remember here the saying, your past failures do not dictate your future results! While there’s so much stress in our lives, the busy life steals us of our time. You must be very careful to not let your stress invade in the path of a healthy journey.

Emotional well-being is most important for accomplishing your goals.

To prepare yourself for that dip in spirit, set yourself up for success well in advance. Make bad memories, negative people, and bad habits inconvenient or inaccessible in your road to success.

Get quality sleep for good mental health and good recovery post-workout. Let not the overexposure to blue light sabotage your sleep and mental peace.

Besides the top 5 tips provided, you can work on accountability, for many of the people, there’s no repercussion if they don’t stick to their resolution. They simply leave it the midst, move on and then forget. Get committed to fitness for someone whom you love, this improves your chances in sticking to your goals.

Set realistic goals and remember to focus on the journey not the destination…

Break bigger goals into smaller ones, its fine even you do just stretching…please don’t skip it…

Build gradual momentum…have lots of patience, perseverance, as I say always use the term, be consistent…otherwise you’ll tempted to cancel your new gym membership and repeat the same old mistake when the closest thing you ever got to workout was watching sports channel!!

Well, there’s a lot more to tell you all…follow our blog section asitisnutrition.com/blogs for the latest blog updates…

Commit to making this year that your resolution is going to stick… Hope this blog has shed light and instilled confidence in you on how to start and stick with your workout?

Should you have any questions about specific workouts, fitness, supplements or health in general,  Please shoot us a message…We’d be most happy to answer all your queries…Good Luck!

Also read: Low Carb Diet For Weight Loss - How Does It Work?

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