Changing how you look and feel takes time. You won’t drop 30 pounds overnight or exercise once and see huge muscles. It takes time, so even when you feel discouraged, don’t give up. Decide you’re going to workout one more month, one more week or one more day. If you do that enough, you’ll see results that you’ll love. I have clients in Dublin, CA, who had huge goals, but they took them one day at a time and never quit. They got results.
Just do one more.
Doing just one more push-up, one more crunch or one more lunge can bring more results than you thought possible. When you feel like you’re finished and have given your all, try to do one more. Don’t do it at the expense of form, but steady yourself and attempt. If you do this with every exercise, you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish. Like any goal, you’ll achieve it faster and get better results when you adopt the one more mindset.
Help yourself stick with it by measuring progress in several ways.
If you’re just measuring your progress by weight loss, you might get discouraged. When you’re working out, you’re losing fat tissue and gaining muscle tissue. Muscle tissue weighs more per cubic inch than fat tissue does. It’s like comparing the size of a container holding a pound of iron to one holding a pound of feathers. The container with feathers will be larger, so the more fat tissue you have the larger you are. Use various ways to check your progress, like measuring inches or clothing size. When people first start, they often lose inches, but not weight. The results are still the same, they look thinner.
Track your progress.
Keep yourself in the game by keeping score. Track the number of reps, sets and amount of weight you lift. When you feel down, like you’re making slow or no progress, go back to the day you started and see how far you’ve come. You’ll see the improvement in your strength and endurance by looking backward and it makes the journey forward easier.
- Get a workout buddy. Not only can a workout buddy help keep you focused and accountable, you’ll find that both of you benefit by help each other stay positive.
- Find ways to increase your exercise time doing everyday tasks. While you might not like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or carrying out the trash, consider it exercise that boosts your endurance or strength. It makes the jobs easier and improves your overall fitness.
- If you workout in the morning, have your gym clothes laid out the night before you go to the gym and put them on as soon as you get out of bed. Half the battle is getting ready. Once you’re dressed, the rest is easy.
- Just go to the gym. Tell yourself you only have to workout for five minutes. Once you start, if you feel like it, extend it another five and then another. Before you know it, you’ll complete your entire workout.
For more information, contact us today at LIV Fitness 247