Maintain Your Commitment to Fitness

How are you doing with your commitment to wellness? Making the commitment to follow a healthy lifestyle is not easy. Even more difficult is the maintenance of that commitment. If you have it in your heart to lead a healthy lifestyle do not get discouraged if your best laid plans seem to be going awry. The following tips offer helpful techniques for strengthening your commitment to your healthy lifestyle.

Take a Picture - Nothing reveals the whole truth quite as much as a photograph.  While healthy lifestyle changes should not revolve solely around appearance, if your goal is to lose weight, a photo may be an extremely helpful tool.  A “before” picture creates a baseline starting point.  Scales may not be the best indicators of success with weight loss because initially you may gain weight if you are strength training even though you are becoming leaner and losing inches. A picture more accurately showcases your hard work and effort. Continue to take pictures either weekly or monthly to continue to monitor your progress.

Schedule Appointments for Fitness - Just like you make an appointment at the doctor’s office, or take your car in to have the oil changed, make fitness a non negotiable appointment for yourself.  Making fitness mandatory prevents the excuse of saying that you don’t have time.  Most people are short on time because of work, school and family obligations.  The good news is that effective exercise sessions may be broken down into segments as short as 10 minutes, and performed throughout the day.  If time is your obstacle, re-prioritize to find a way to fit in some form of exercise.  Maybe you will need to get up half an hour earlier or use your lunch break for a walk. 

Maintain a Food Diary - Keeping a food diary is the best method for staying true to your healthy commitments.  Because of today’s technology, keeping a food journal can provide much more than accountability.  Many online nutrition tracking methods, such as Livestrong.com My Plate, track your daily caloric intake as well as your activity levels.  Most of these sites also provide nutrition information for specific foods. Old school written journals are equally as effective as electronic versions because they provide you with reflections of everything you eat in a day. If you are honest with your journal, you won’t want to look at too many entries that are made up of fast food!!!

If you feel like you have started to slip, then recommit.  If you haven’t yet started, now is the time.  Remember that practicing a healthy lifestyle such as exercising regularly and eating nutritious food, require discipline.  Do not get discouraged if it doesn’t feel easy.  Just as with anything in life, the more you practice, the easier it becomes!