Want to develop a fitness habit, be fit and look great?
What separates those who can stick to a fitness program from those who call it quits before they get the results they expect? Despite what you may think, it has nothing to do with lack of motivation, laziness, or lack of desire. It’s your state of mind and your reasons for getting fit that determine whether you’ll make fitness a habit or drop out until you become tired of the way you look and feel again.
People who make exercise part of their lives tend to have one major thing in common; they know the basic fundamental value of fitness they know the health benefits and truly believe that exercising makes them feel better physically, emotionally, and mentally. To them fitness isn’t just about looking good in a bikini, losing weight for the class reunion, or getting healthy because the doctor said so.
Exercise: a healthy habit
Most people don’t believe that exercising can be a habit. Or feel that they cannot form that habit. The reasons vary: “I have never exercised regularly,” “I am too busy,” “I am healthy, I don’t need to exercise”…
However, many people who exercise regularly feel restless, unhappy, lethargic if they do not exercise for a few days. Why? In short, exercising is a habit for them, and missing exercise creates a “craving” for it. This craving works like all other cravings, but this craving is good for you. It not only gives you a temporary high but also has been shown to be fantastically good for you over the long-term. How good?
Proper exercise can fundamentally alter which part of your genes “express” themselves. So, for example, while your genetic makeup may predispose you to Alzheimers, heart disease, cancer or diabetes, regular exercise can reduce your risk to normal level. In fact, the science of epigenetics studies how our behavior fundamentally alters which part of our DNA expresses itself and which does not.
Our self-care habits particularly in the healthy eating (not processed food) and proper exercise area are so powerful they can determine how fast or slow we age or if we stay healthy and well or succumb to disease.
Optimal health and fitness are within your reach
Do you believe in the benefits of regular exercise but stop short of actually doing it? Have you become an expert at making excuses not to exercise? Maybe you’re unwilling to step outside your comfort zone and make the changes necessary to smooth the way for an exercise routine, after all it is easier to avoid putting forth the effort.
Despite your reasons for procrastinating, there is hope. It’s simply a matter of changing your mind. To transform your body and health for good, you have to make it a true lifestyle change…a new series of habits. And that starts in your mind. A simple change in the “quick fix” mindset to one of long term success will steer you down the correct path and be more focused on doing the right things most of the time.
How to develop unstoppable motivation to exercise
What if you could be given a secret that you could use to create motivation and put to use to reach your exercise goals? Would you be willing to supply just a little bit of desire and a little bit of effort?
The key to success is a simple five letter word and that word is habit. This is the number one goal. Yes, the number one goal is to create the habit of exercise.
What is a habit?
A habit is a pattern of behavior developed through constant repetition. If a newly learned behavior is repeated enough times, it eventually gets programmed into the subconscious mind. That behavior then becomes automatic and we no longer have to think about doing it because we respond automatically. Over 90% of our daily routine is comprised of various habits.
Your habits determine your future
Your habits ultimately determine your future in life. You are where you are right now because of the habits that you have adopted in the past. The path to success and happiness in life is to replace your bad habits with positive habits that move you in the direction that you want.
Habits are cumulative in nature, meaning that daily habit behaviors don’t really mean much as single actions, but over time, the effects of those daily actions result in a profound consequence or reward in your life.
Let go of the habits that are not working, including thinking!
If you have decided to want to change something you are going to have to do something different than what you have been doing to get you to this point. The first thing you need to do is throw out your old mentality and think of your journey as a lifestyle change. Do not think of it as something that starts and then stops. That type of thinking does not serve you.
To change a habit, you have to change a bit of yourself
Change your exercise mindset from negative (‘I have to lose weight’) to positive (‘I want to gain strength and fitness’). The most effective way of reducing negative or unhealthy behaviors is to learn positive and healthy behaviors first. The journey to a slim, fit, healthy feel-good body is an inside job. When you get to know YOU on a much deeper level your body and life will transform.
Identifying your bad habits
In order to start crafting the future that you desire for yourself, you will have to first analyse all those habits that don’t support the future that you want. Take out a sheet of paper and begin to list all the negative habits that you have in your life right now.
Design a new success habit
If you’re replacing a bad habit with a good one, then designing a new success habit is simple. It’s usually just the opposite of that bad habit. For an 
entirely new success habit that you want to integrate into your life, you might have to do more research. Take a sheet of paper and write your new success habit up on the top. Then underneath that success habit, write a list of all the key benefits that will result in your life by adopting this success habit. This list serves to sell your new habit to your emotional mind, fueling the motivation to push past the initial resistance and make it work.
Create an action plan
Now comes the time where you have to create a detailed action plan on how you are going to implement that success habit. If your success habit is to exercise more, then your action plan might involve purchasing a gym membership, reading books on fitness or making new friends who are passionate about fitness. Use the same paper that you wrote your success habit and benefits on and create an action plan for implementing that new habit into your life.
Prioritize fitness
If you think or say you don’t have time then you won’t have time. The key to finding the time is to put it at the top of your list and then say you will do it, need to do it, must do it. Yes, it’s that easy.
How long till it’s a habit
The secret to getting hooked on consistent exercise: to truly ingrain a positive habit, a beginner needs not three weeks, not six weeks, but an entire year to do it. Anything less doesn’t sink in the claws in deep enough. Fully committing a year to an exercise discipline is a smart step toward making it a revolution to last a lifetime. Your goal is to just show up until it becomes a habit.
What is your health worth to you?
Getting into shape is one of the best things you can do for yourself. One barely has to look past the front page of the daily newspaper to get a report on the pitfalls of a sedentary lifestyle. For many of us exercise is something we should do, but choose not to. We can live like this for years while experiencing a gradual and barely noticeable decline in overall health.
A healthy habit for quality of life
Being fit has a tremendous impact on your overall quality of life. Consider also the many advantages that exercise bestows on your day-to-day quality of life: Your physical abilities improve. You have more vitality and endurance. Self-esteem and self-confidence increase along with mental alertness and emotional stability. Your outlook on life tends to be much more positive, because you are fit. You feel better than you would without exercise and you look better too.
A smart investment – your health is the investment of a lifetime
Exercise is not an option so much as it is a necessity of life. Exercise and good health are on the same side of a coin, just as lack of exercise and bad health are on the flip side. Heads you win – tails you lose.But be assured you can train yourself for success or you can train yourself for failure, so, be your own coach and get yourself going. If necessary I can help you with the simple but effective eBook called
“The Weight Loss Motivation Bible”.
Even if you don’t want to lose weight this eBook will be the magic sauce that will change your thinking about taking care of yourself and make cementing that habit so much easier.
“Habits begin like flimsy cobwebs at first and are strengthened day by day to become like unbreakable cables to shackle or strengthen our lives”.
For more tools and resources from Carolyn Hansen to assist you in attaining your goals and achieving the success you desire in life, please visit:
