The Fitness Habit

The fitness habit is one that is developed over time, not just an overnight creation. It takes years to reach the point of dedication where you won’t let anything get in the way of eating well and exercising.  All those convenient excuses and rationalizations on why we can’t be healthier don’t come out of the mouths of people with the fitness habit.  This habit is the most crucial part of your success in the short term which leads to a lifetime of health in the long term. 

There are many reasons people have a hard time sticking to a new habit.  I am sure you have firsthand experience with this, it doesn’t have to be with health and fitness, it can be trying to save more money, become more organized, etc. anything that has to do with a lifestyle change.   The most common reasons are not having enough time, not enjoying the change, it’s too hard, I don’t know how,  changes in your routine that lead to interruptions in the normal schedule, and you miss a few days in a row and then quit all together.  These all lead to talking yourself out of the change and rationalizing why this isn’t for you.  

Where people go wrong so many times is they try and take on too much at once.  Then the moment things get slightly inconvenient or any of the other reasons mentioned above occur, they quit.  Eating healthy and exercising are two huge habits, I can’t emphasis the word huge enough.  To say “next week I’ll go to the gym 5x and I am going to eat shit,” when all you’ve done for the previous 6 months is not workout and eat shit is setting yourself up to fail.  Each time we fail we get a little more discouraged and eventually the time between the sayings of “next week I’m going to…..” become further and further apart.  

An easy way to break out of this is to set up very small and easy to achieve habit each day.  Not more than one at a time, trying to change too much at one time leads to no results. If you are a complete beginner, try and just go to the gym for 10 minutes, not one hour.  Don’t even try to change anything else until you can do this for 3 weeks.  Then you can take on another small step.  Eventually all of these small steps lead to huge body and lifestyle changes.