The ONE thing do you need to do BEFORE getting started on your health and fitness journey
Getting the motivation to start exercising or doing something about your health and well being is tough!
It’s easy to sign up to a gym or to see a PT and have the good intentions to work on this, but it’s another to keep it going.
Over the years I’ve had clients that have started out with those intentions – they think they SHOULD do it and that it’s going to be the best thing for them. BUT, they haven’t truly got their head in it and the motivation to make this a consistent in their life. They’ll do a few sessions, but start to become disengaged and the excuses come out and all of a sudden they’re not feeling it any more and give up. You especially see this a lot in January with new years resolutions! It is of course my job here, to get them back in the zone :-)
And the reason why this doesn’t always become a long term activity? It’s because you haven’t truly thought about your WHY and you don’t have a clear picture of where you really want to be.
I’ll give you an example – you have a special event coming up and you want to lose some weight so you look your best on the day. Great that you have a goal in mind with a specific time frame, but you probably haven’t thought any deeper than looking good in the nice dress you bought. Why do you need to look good? How will you feel? What will you feel like if you don’t quite lose the weight and the dress is maybe a little tighter than you’d like? Will that affect anything else? This type of goal, although totally valid, needs padding out, because you always hit obstacles – you may end up at a friend’s birthday and there’s cake and you decide ‘sod it’. Basically that desire to have the cake overrides the desire to reach that goal, simply because your WHY doesn’t hold enough importance.
Compare that to you going to a doctor for example and them telling you that if you continue with the same eating patterns you have right now, you may end up with diabetes. That’s pretty damned serious and you’re sure as hell going to sort out your eating! That goal of not getting diabetes is definitely going to override the urge to eat cake daily.
I appreciate these are extreme examples, but what I’m trying to say is that before you actually get started, you need to have a truly well-rounded REASON for getting where you want to be. If you don’t have an important enough reason to do what you’re doing, you’re always going to come up with excuses not to exercise or to have that bottle of wine etc.
I will of course caveat that and say that there’s nothing wrong with having the odd off-days or so-called ‘cheat’ days, but if it’s consistently like that then you need to have a think about why you’re doing what you’re doing and if you want it enough.
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