Another day goes by and you realize that you haven’t made much progress to your fitness goals. Between procrastination and life happening, achieving your fitness goals can be hard.
Unless you have the motivation, the momentum, the incentive, and the plan to achieve your goals then you can’t possibly make progress.
Take my friend Amy for example…
Amy likes to exercise and when she goes to the gym, she does free weight training and a good amount of cardio. She also takes care to eat healthy on days she goes to the gym.
Amy works at a busy pizza shop and loves to try new foods she creates for their menu. She works 6 days a week and seems to spend more time at work than anything else.
Most days she doesn’t go to the gym, she eats food out, snacks all day, and doesn’t have time to eat as healthy as she does on the days she goes to the gym.
Amy’s problem is she does not get to the gym enough and she doesn’t control what she eats on her off-days.
Sound familiar?
Okay, you may not work at a pizza shop and you may be able to go to the gym consistently… but if you stop and think about what you eat, you may realize you aren’t doing the best you could be.
So instead of dwelling on the negatives, lets dive into how to fix the bad habits that we all pick up.
Tips to Achieving Your Fitness Goals This Year
Achieving your fitness goals are possible and do not require as much of a drastic change as you may think. If you follow these tips, you will start noticing marked progress towards your goals.
Tip 1: No drastic changes
Unless your doctor has warned you to change your lifestyle drastically, there’s no need to make drastic changes… this is usually why someone fails in their fitness goals.
If you are relatively sedentary and start running 5 miles per day, you’re going to get burnt out. In the same token, if you are used to eating tasty foods and you start eating grilled chicken breast and broccoli only, you most certainly will get burnt out and give up.
Slow and steady is key.
Start by giving up some of the excess food you eat, possibly give up that nightly ice cream, soda, or extra helping of dinner. This alone can help you lose a pound or two per week depending on how much you can reasonably give up.
Looking to do cardio at home? Check out some of the best spinning bikes on the market.
Tip 2: Come up with a strategy
Coming up with a plan is important so it removes the guess-work and anxiety from achieving your fitness goals.
Instead of trying to figure out what to eat for the day when you wake up, plan a week’s worth of meals in advance. Even if you do not prep your meals in advance, knowing what to eat makes it easier to eat healthy and harder to justify running through the drive-thru to get something to eat for lunch.
Come up with a schedule that you can keep for going to the gym. If you know some days you just won’t be able to make it to the gym, plan around that. Make sure the schedule you set is reasonable and you are able to consistently follow it.
Of course there’s always things in life that comes up, but if you work late on Wednesday and have to get up early for Thursday, don’t try to schedule a gym session in the few hours in between your shifts.
Plan for everything; the more time you spend planning (within reason) the higher chance you have to achieve your goals.
Tip 3: Execute your strategy
If you’ve come up with a plan, it’s time to execute. If you’ve planned accordingly, you will know what you’re eating, when you’re eating it, and when you’re exercising (along with many other things).
Now is the time to “sell out” and give everything you can to execute your plan. We are all human and will sometimes stray from the plans but the closer you stick to your plan, the quicker you will reach your goals.
Tip 4: Do whatever it takes
Doing whatever it takes can take on a different meaning depending on who you ask. When I say “do whatever it takes” I mean that this is going to take compromises and completely giving up some bad habits and possibly addressing any emotional eating issues you may have.
I don’t want this to sound like you are giving up everything you like to achieve your goals, but you will have to start eating within reason and planning when you eat a treat instead of eating one whenever you’d like. It’s a hard truth to swallow but if you are serious about achieving your goals then you must change your habits.
Tip 5: Meal prep
If you’ve planned correctly, you know what you’re going to be eating each week and you can plan accordingly. Come up with a time that you can spend cooking and preparing your meals for the week. This means you will need to come up with a way to separate portions and make them easy to get to. I prefer using Tupperware because it is affordable and helps me keep my portions in control.
Along with Tupperware, you will need a food scale, a good set of measuring cups, and any other storage containers you may need like sandwich baggies.
Preparing meals and snacks in advance will help you keep on track. Some days you may be more hungry than usual and you can eat your snacks or a meal early and then make do with what you have left for the rest of the day. If you can hold yourself accountable to the food that you’ve set to eat for that day, you will be ahead of 85% of the rest of the people trying to get fit.
I plan on writing more meal prep articles in the future so check back often.
Tip 6: Become habitual
A healthy lifestyle is nothing more than a collection of good and healthy habits. An unhealthy lifestyle is a collection of bad and unhealthy habits.
Think about it:
You habitually grab chips and a soda for a snack, you go to a fast food restaurant for lunch because you don’t want to prepare your own…
OR
Your morning routine is to wake up, stretch and do yoga, eat your breakfast you’ve prepared the day before, grab your lunch and snacks, and be on your way.
Breaking a bad habit is hard and will take a lot of time and consistency but is possible. Eating a nice chef salad and a cheese stick for lunch will become easier to do than running to get some fast food once you create the healthy habits.
Conclusion
Our visitors have goals ranging from weight loss to building muscle and all of these tips apply to them all.
Unless you come up with a plan and execute it, you won’t be able to reach your goals. You don’t have to drastically change your lifestyle and you can as small as prepping meals for the week.
Coming up with a “do whatever it takes” mentality is necessary to get you through the days you don’t want to “be healthy.” The more bad habits you replace with good healthy habits, the better.
It takes time and it takes a lot of hard work to change someone’s lifestyle enough to see a drastic change in someone’s fitness levels. Don’t let any of these ads or articles fool you into thinking this only should take 2 weeks to reach your goals… it just doesn’t work like that.
Be sure to share these tips with anyone you know that needs a bit of guidance to reach their goals!
