There is no doubt that successful people establish goals for themselves if they want to achieve. These goals require plans of actions and schedules that allow you to pro-actively pursue those goals. We must take a step-by-step approach to our fitness and wellness goals as well.
Here are my Top 5 Steps for Fitness Success
Hire a Trainer: Whether or not you use a Trainer for a weekly basis, you need to hire a personal trainer to educate you, measure your starting point and design a fitness program that includes resistance training, cardiovascular fitness and flexibility. This is also when you must do research on what exactly a “trainer” is and is not.
Trainers are not required by law to have any kind of education. A “certification” on the weekend or over the internet can be good or really bad. Look for a trainer with an education in Exercise Science/Kinesiology from a major university. Research who is helping you.
Get a Nutrition Plan: You could have the greatest workout in the world sent from God above but if you do not follow a sound nutrition plan then the other 23 hours a day you are not working out, you will have a difficult time making progress. Nutrition is important for general health, energy, recovery from the workouts and of course, losing body fat. It is not enough to just eat “healthy”. You must also learn to eat “helpful” if you want to lose body fat and gain muscle tone. Fad diets and starvation is NOT the answer. Remember, we are trying to take this fitness program past the summer into a fitness “lifestyle” and not a quick fix.
Subscribe to Magazines: I think subscribing to various fitness magazines or online sites is a great way to stay educated and motivated. They have various tips of training techniques and recipes for healthy meals that can keep you going. They can also give you inspirational fitness professionals to observe and see some of their lifestyle that has allowed them to achieve their fitness goals.
Get Support: It is hard to stay consistent with fitness and sound eating. It is much MORE difficult to stay consistent if your friends and family are not being supportive by teasing you or refusing to try to eat healthier too. This is especially true for families. Seek support and point out that this healthy lifestyle is not about weight loss but about being healthy. You may have skinny family members that can eat whatever they want but that does not mean it is healthy to do so. Teach your children by example. This will plant a seed for them later in life.
Don’t try to be Perfect: One of the most common failures in making a fitness lifestyle is thinking if you fall off the wagon, then you have to quit. People fall off. I fall off. Get back on it. It is more common to get off track then to be 100 percent consistent. The answer is not to quit when you have fallen off but to simply re-commit. We are human and we get lazy, busy and sometimes life just gets in the way.