Sticking to Good Habits

Happy New Year to you all. Hope you all have started your training routines again or for the first time. It's so easy to have all these good intentions at the start of the new year and before the turkey left overs have finished, a lot of people have already given up and have fallen back into their old unhealthy routines. Why is this? There are a few factors that can contribute to giving up including injury, family/work commitments, boredom, cost and feeling it's all too much to take on. In this article I will help you understand the reasons why people give up and how you can over come this and still be keeping fit through to 2016 and beyond:- 1.) Don't take on too much- This is a biggie. People decide all at once that they want to join a gym 5 times a week, give up drinking, smoking and go on a diet all in one go. What do you think is going to happen? Burn out of course. If this sounds like you cut it down to 1 or 2 changes at a time. This will improve your chances of sticking to the regime 10 fold. Start to go to the gym 2- 3 times per week, then when you feel fit enough then add a class or two. Start to eat healthier, if you don't eat breakfast try a protein shake or have some wholegrain cereals or cut out all the fizzy drinks and sweets and replace with water and fruit. These small changes will add up and will help you to move forward and take on more things as you get fitter, rather than feeling overwhelmed and giving up completely. This will also reduce the risk of injury if you start off doing less in the gym, in order to allow your body to get used to your new routine. Remember quality over quantity. Doing a little bit is better than doing nothing at all and you can give yourself time to create a strong foundation to build upon and launch your healthier self. 2.) Boredom- It's easy to get bored and so always choose an activity that you enjoy already. If you love walking or running do that, if you prefer to work in a team and this gives you motivation than join a football or rugby team. Try something completely different to help stimulate both the mind and body. Try a new class that you've never done or try weight training if you always do cardio in the gym. Set yourself goals to help you to focus and check your progress. Give yourself a short term goal of 3 months, a mid term goal of 6 months and a long term goal of a year. In this way you can see your progress as time goes by and you have a plan in place to keep you on course. 3.) Cost- There are plenty of activities you can do which are either low cost or even free. Park Run is an organisation which runs 5K runs on Saturday mornings in local parks around the country and is completely free-check out www.parkrun.org.uk for further details and the nearest run to you. 4.) Family/work commitments- You need good time management for this one. Think of any time that you can make yourself available. What about getting up a little bit earlier to go for a morning run before work, or cycle to work instead of using the car or public transport, that way you can save pounds as you lose the other kind. Take a walk after lunch during your lunch break or run from work back home again. Why don't you take the family out for a bike ride, play football in the park or go for a walk or run. Park Run does a junior run as well on Sunday mornings for 4-14 year olds, so you can run with your child, keeping all of you fit. So you can see that following these tips can help you stick to your new good habits and kick those bad ones for good.