Improving your health isn’t something you can do overnight or with a few changes in your life you can’t sustain. You must be committed to a complete lifestyle change supporting your lifestyle and your body.
Whether you want to lose weight, get fitter or be more healthy, quick fixes won’t benefit you in the long term. Instead, focus on making the right choices for you. This journey is about more than just reaching your goals; it’s about creating a healthier, happier you that can sustain these changes without ‘falling off the wagon’ and reverting back to previously learned behaviours.
But how can you do this without losing sight of the end goal and still live your life?
Set Goals
First, set your main goal. What is it you’re trying to achieve? Once you know this, you can begin breaking down these big goals into smaller, more manageable ones. Think of your end goal as a completed jigsaw puzzle. There are often many pieces required to fit together to complete the puzzle, and your goals should be the pieces you fit together to create the end result. Let’s break it down, take it easy, and give yourself small but manageable goals to work towards. Let’s say you want to lose weight. Have your desired weight in mind or the amount of weight you need to lose, then set a small goal to get there. It might be that you aim to reduce the amount of junk food you eat over a few weeks or add in more nutritious foods. You might set a goal of losing 4 lb a month, or you might want to know How To Lose Belly Fat Fast to avoid health complications associated with carrying large amounts of belly fat to give you something to focus on to reach your goal.
Don’t Be Strict
Having an all-or-nothing mindset can be massively detrimental when trying to make lifestyle changes. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your new lifestyle won’t magically come together and stick overnight, either. Be patient with yourself, allow yourself the opportunity to make changes slowly, and don’t be too hard on yourself when you don’t meet any targets you set, or you make choices that are 100% perfect. Instead, aim to make more beneficial choices than bad habits, and if the worst does happen, chalk it up to experience. Simply move back to focusing on the positive changes you’re making without letting one bad decision derail your efforts.
Be Realistic
Many people make the huge mistake of overcommitting or being too optimistic about their capabilities or achievements, especially at times such as New Year’s.
Instead of going into all guns blazing, make small sustainable changes to your lifestyle that are easy to sustain and benefit your health. This is about taking control and making changes that you can stick to, not just for a few weeks, but for the long term. It might be your aim to increase your steps by 2000 a day and add in 1 cardio session a week. Then, you can increase this to two sessions or three as you get more consistent. Add in strength training and so on. This will help you move towards your end goal faster and easier than stopping and starting because you can’t sustain the changes you want to make.
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