Think Healthy

By Stephanie Patulli
[Health & Your Life]
What is the secret to sticking with your fitness plan?  Stephanie Patulli tells you how your mindset can affect your fitness goals.
The beginning of a new year always rings in with certain expectations.  You want to create a new you, complete with different eating and exercising habits for a better lifestyle.  These expectations are usually brought upon you by you and they can be hard to live up to.  We tend to take on too much when it comes to getting healthy.  We set unrealistic goals for how much weight we want to lose and how much exercise we will get around to doing.  It may be surprising, but the first step to getting healthy is thinking healthy.  If you’re constantly beating yourself up about how you aren’t always keeping up with your goals, you may be in a destructive mental cycle.  This type of cycle will actually cause you to turn away from your new plans.  Accept who you are now, shortcomings and all, and you might find yourself more successful than you’ve been in the past.

Rethink Your Goals

The whole point of setting goals is to eventually reach them.  Your goals should be realistically attainable or else you risk feeling as though you’ve failed each time you can’t complete one.  If you know your work schedule simply does not allow for three nights of working out at the gym, don’t convince yourself you’ll do it anyway.  Strive for a solid two nights a week instead and then stay more physically active in your everyday routine.  Take the stairs or walk to locations whenever it’s possible.  You’ll feel great when you see that you can meet your goals and you’ll still be living an active lifestyle.  The more you feel like you achieve, the happier you’ll be.  You will be more likely to stick to a plan that makes you feel good about yourself.

Like Who You Are Now

Don’t wait until you’ve reached your goal weight to appreciate yourself the way you are.  You’re much less likely to enjoy a workout program or new routine if it’s only a means to an end.  Enjoy the process.  You should be happy with yourself even before you’ve achieved anything, because wanting to make positive lifestyle changes is a success in itself.  Obviously, you already do care about yourself enough to want to get healthier.  You should want to make these changes because you care about your well being.  Having self worth is important to your success, because the more you like who you are now, the more you’ll want to see yourself living at your maximum potential.
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