I get asked all the time “How to make fitness a habit?” Its one of the stumbling blocks that most people face when looking to incorporate fitness into your every day life.
A new habit takes time to be cemented in and become the norm. Allegedly it can take anything from 18 days to 254 days. It really depends on what habit you are trying to form, the person and environment involved. On average a habit takes 2 months or 66 days. Remember this is an average and may be shorter or longer depending on the behaviour, the person and environment.
When it comes to “How to make fitness a habit?” I follow these simple guidelines:
- Don’t treat exercise like it is a punishment! As soon as you assign the emotion to exercise that it is a “Punishment” it will feel exactly like that. Approach it with an open mind and the exercise whilst still being challenging it will be easier than if you think it is about punishment.
- Don’t put too much emphasis on being perfect. Just start small and build up your fitness. Thanks to the rise of the Social Media influencers, a lot of us normal people feel less than when we compare ourselves to those who portray this ideal lifestyle of the super fit. Seriously stop following people who do not add any value to you. Yes they can be great for inspiration but they can also be very negative on your self worth and self esteem.
- Eat real food. If you wanting to start on a better diet, replace as much processed food as you can with whole or real food. Eat nutritious foods that you actually enjoy.
- Make your exercise convenient. Exercise before or after work. Even a lunch time walk for half an hour can have massive positives to your overall health. Remove as many excuses as possible as to why you cant work out. Maybe even resist joining the trendy new gym until you feel fitness is a priority in your life.
- Make sure you are enjoying your exercise. Include friends and family in your exercise if you can. If you have kids take them to the local park and have a run around with them. You will be surprised by how much you will work out doing this. Again showing your children how normal exercise can be to their day is so vitally important in their relationship development towards health and fitness.
- Focus on your progress. Take body measurements, time a walk, measure the distances you are walking or running. All these indicators can show your improvement over a period of time. Before you know it you’ll be doing more and feeling better.
- Be consistent as you can be. The more you do your exercise the easier it will be to keep it a part of your lifestyle. If youre starting out walk every morning or night. In no time it will be almost like your are on automatic pilot each day when it comes to your walk. Consistency is the key.
- Review what you are doing each week and month. Once you feel like you can easily master a task, increase the intensity so you feel like you are challenged. If not you may become bored and lose interest.
If youre looking for more tips on how you can start training check out my post “Start“. If you think youre ready to jump into the world of group fitness or want a one on one training program click on those links. If youre not local to our training facility you can always try our online personal training.