You know that it’s important to live a healthy lifestyle every day, but it might seem to you that there are some people who simply have no trouble at all being healthy and active. It might look effortless for them to eat right, to exercise, and make the decisions that keep them stronger, lighter, and happier.
However, whether you’re just getting started on a fitness journey or you’ve been at it for twenty years, the truth is that it requires you to make a commitment to a healthy lifestyle every day. Every single day!
Here are a few tips that can help you renew those commitments so that even if you do fall off of the path, you can get back to it without guilt.
Finding your motivation
Motivation is a vital part of living a healthy lifestyle. We’re not just talking about listening to music while you work out or doing it with a buddy.
What is the motivation at the heart of why you want to get fit? It might be a lifestyle that you want to achieve. It might be a self-image that you want to change. It might be a health scare.
Whatever it is, figure out what your story is. Some stories are helpful and can serve as a powerful motivator so long as you keep them in mind. Some are hurtful and can be replaced with a better one.
Finding your mantras
Your motivation should be a personal story that you can look to whenever you’re deciding if you really want to get up to workout each morning.
However, in the heat of the moment, you don’t need a long story. Sometimes, you just need a mantra you can repeat, a point of focus to pour your energy into. There are great fitness dad quotes that can serve as the perfect example of this. A few simple messages that resonate, that you can repeat to yourself to reinforce your image of what you want to do can get you through those tough bits.
Finding your commitment
You have the story that leads to the commitment and you have the mantras you can use to reinforce your commitment. However, it’s a good idea to have an actual commitment.
A good exercise is to write down a commitment or an oath to yourself, on a physical piece of paper, and put it by the bathroom mirror for you to read every morning. What are you committing to and why are you committing to it? Write that down so you can read it each morning and it can give you the purpose to go and fulfill it.
Finding your goals
Now it’s time to look into the nitty-gritty of it all. You have your reasons and your long-term wants, but how do you boil them into actionable plans? It’s a good idea to create both long–term and short-term goals. Long-term goals can be a kind of body you want or a certain level of physical ability, then the short-term steps are the goals you place along the way to make sure you’re progressing towards the long-term.
Finding the frog
There’s a self-help book that circulated a few years back that left an impression on a lot of people in how succinctly it put things. The notion is that you need “eat the frog” FIRST THING IN THE MORNING everyday. And if you get your hardest thing out of the way first thing each morning, you’ll start getting ahead faster, and create the mentality of doing hard things.
Of course, the frog in this case is exercise. It’s best to commit to doing it as early in the day as you can, and you’ll reap the rewards for the rest of the day (and feel accomplished).
Finding your rewards
In the long-term, the rewards of your efforts are going to make themselves clear. You’re going to sleep better, have more energy, ache less than you would otherwise, and be more confident. However, choosing short-term rewards for yourself, whether it’s a spa day, lunch at your favorite restaurant, or scheduling a break from work all to yourself. It’s better if you find rewards that aren’t tied to food, especially unhealthy food. However, if you do follow the code of allowing yourself a cheat day, you can have some of your very favorites work as rewards.
You have to find your way of renewing your commitment to your healthy lifestyle changes every day. The tips above can help you try a few methods, but it’s all down to what works for you. Once you find it, make it a part of your ritual.
