A New Way to Reach Your Fitness Goals

One of our employees recently joined a new gym. During a conversation with the woman working at the front desk, she asked her why she enjoyed working there. The woman responded that she loved seeing people make positive changes in their lives. People always came in so happy and excited every day about getting closer to reaching their goals.

This positive outlook on the process of changing through fitness is a wonderful tactic to apply to your own life.

A New Way to Reach Your Fitness Goals

Many people think of exercise as something that they have to do. It is a chore on a long list of tasks to accomplish each day. However, creating a positive mindset around exercise is a much more effective approach. Consider these questions:

• How does exercise make you feel?
  Do you feel strong? Uplifted? Exhausted? Stressed?
• What motivates you to exercise?
  Is it purely about weight loss, or about gaining flexibility and/or strength?
• Do you enjoy exercising?
  Or do you get bored easily?

Once you understand the answers to these questions, you can better assess how to reach your own personal fitness goals.

If you're stressed about making time to exercise it could be because you're trying to fit it in at an inconvenient time of day. Try moving your workout to first thing in the morning, or even during the lunch hour. If mornings are hard, maybe right after dinner would be better. Experiment with finding a time that works well with your schedule.

If you're motivated to exercise for weight loss consider changing your body image. Weight loss is a great side effect of exercise, but there are many other reasons to increase your fitness. Getting stronger, feeling more confident in your body, improving flexibility, getting better posture, reducing back pain, and boosting endurance are all fantastic goals as well. Try putting more weight on what your body is gaining rather than the number on the scale. No pun intended!

If you don't generally enjoy exercise try something new! All of your friends might love Crossfit, but that doesn't mean that it's right for you. If you're not motivated to do a certain activity, find another that you can be truly excited about. You can find ways to exercise outside of the gym, or take on a new active hobby like climbing, cycling, or salsa dancing.

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Remember to always celebrate the small victories. Maybe you added 10-seconds to holding your plank pose this week, or you can run a quarter of a mile longer today than you did yesterday. Maybe you had a terrible workout, but at least you got to the gym. There is always something to celebrate!

Change takes time, but its the small steps every day that truly matter when working towards your fitness goals.