With over 60% of Americans suffering from obesity, fitness is the need of the hour. However, for most of us who live a hectic life with stress-filled work, fitness can seem like adding more stress to our life.
Let’s face it, exercise is stressing your body after all, so adding something like that to your life and staying motivated towards it can be one of the most challenging things you’ve ever done in your adult life.
However, you are here reading this article because you realize how important fitness is to leading a healthy life. That’s great! You’re already a third of the way there towards your fitness goals by acknowledging its importance.
Now, let’s take a look at 7 effective strategies you can use to keep yourself motivated toward your fitness goals.
1) Make it Fun
Remember when you played some form of sport as a kid? It could have been football or basketball or even running around the park. You enjoyed it thoroughly and that was one of the main reasons you wanted to keep doing it every day.
This is what you need to do with your current fitness goals as well. Take up a sport or activity that you will enjoy. If you’re not sure, you can try out cycling, swimming, or even something like badminton that’s super fun to play.
These sports are great for fitness and the enjoyment you get when playing them will keep you motivated to continue day in and day out!
2) Find a Buddy
When you try to achieve something all by yourself, your motivation almost always fails you. Your brain comes up with hundreds of excuses to keep you in bed and prevent you from working out or working towards your fitness goals.
This is where having a training buddy comes in very handy. Find someone you already know who would be interested in joining you for these fitness activities or join a local club and pair up with someone in a similar stage of their journey.
You will get accountability for your actions and that will give you enough and more motivation to wake up and head over to tag along with your buddy.
3) Aim Small
When it comes to fitness, most people look at Instagram models or popular movie stars and decide they want to look like them. This is a cardinal sin and will kill your motivation in a few days.
When it comes to fitness, aiming small is the easiest way to ensure you stay motivated. If you plan to work out at the gym, aim for just showing up at the gym every day. Don’t aim for hundreds of pushups or other crazy things that the movie stars may be doing. This will make you feel good for a day or two but you will soon wear out and lose motivation.
4) Make a Grand Gesture
One of the best ways to stay motivated toward your fitness goals is to make a grand gesture. This could be something like signing up for a marathon event 500 miles away or buying a pair of expensive running shoes or badminton shoes.
Such a grand gesture will force you to get out of bed and stay motivated toward your fitness goals.
5) Tie It To Your Existing Habit
The easiest way to make fitness a part of your life is to tie it to some existing habit that you already have. It could be your morning coffee or evening shower. Think of some existing habit that you already do every single day and tie your fitness activity to it.
It could be something along the lines of ‘I will go for a 20-minute run after I finish my morning coffee’. This will make the fitness activity almost automatic and keep you motivated.
6) Make It Your Identity
When you start identifying yourself as a runner, it will be easier to start going for a run each day. Similarly with other activities.
You need to start making your fitness goals a part of your identity and it will naturally become easy to stay motivated.
7) Announce It To The World
The natural continuation to making fitness a part of your identity is to announce it to the world about it. Post on Facebook and social media and tell all your friends that you are a runner and that you will be going for a run every day.
This is a huge commitment and similar to the grand gesture, it will keep you super motivated toward your fitness goals.
In Conclusion
That brings us to the end of this list of 7 essential strategies to stay motivated toward your fitness goals. What did you think? Did you try any strategy and find success? Let us know in the comments below.
