5 Vital Habits for Fitness Success

Make, and Follow, a Plan

When you are going somewhere new, you follow directions. There is a chance you’d make it to your destination without them, but directions provide you with the fastest, most efficient route. Directions can help you avoid roadblocks and bumps in the road. The same rules apply to your fitness success.

You know where you want your fitness journey to end up: healthier, stronger, leaner, more powerful, more confident. There’s a chance that you could end up there following random workouts, trying a juice cleanse here and there and generally just throwing fitness trends against the wall to see what sticks.

What if you made a plan, and followed it, instead? No second guessing your path. No more wondering if what you’re doing is actually going to work. Creating a plan gives you vision and a sense of purpose.

(p.s. this is a good place to start:)

The next 5 habits will help you create a plan and follow through to reach your goals.

Track, and Act, on Your Progress

Want to fast-track your fitness success? Track what you are doing and then act accordingly.

Keep track of your workouts. Get a small notebook and write down the workouts that you complete. Track the sets and reps you finish (and don’t finish), the weight you lift and even how you felt that day – were you tired, motivated, stressed, anxious?. Use this information to keep making progress!

The ins, outs, hows and whys of Workout Journals <<

If you always lift the same weight, for the same number of reps and sets, your body will adapt to that challenge. In the case of making physical progress adaptation is not a good thing!

Adaptation means that your body becomes efficient at the challenge in front of you. Your muscles don’t have to work as hard, or burn more calories, or build more muscle to get the same job done. Read: you stop making progress.

Keep track of what you do at the gym to give you an idea of where you should add challenge and push yourself next. When you can squat the 15 pound dumbbells for 15 reps consistently, it’s time to increase the weight you are lifting, or the number of sets you are doing.

Keep track of you meals. We humans are not very good at making precise (or even ballpark) guesstimations of what and how much we eat. And if you don’t know for sure that you ate a tablespoon or three of peanut butter, you’re simply taking a stab in the dark when you decide you consume too much fat.

Meal journals give you more information than what and how much you eat. They can also show you trigger points: times/places/people/foods that trigger mindless snacking or eating…even when you are not hungry.

You don’t have to be a calorie expert to eat healthy <<

Think “Better”, Not “Perfect“

We equate healthy and fit with having the perfect body (which by the way differs in definition depending on who you ask), making the perfect food choices, perfecting the ability to get up for a 5 am spin class, taking the perfect supplement blend…

The reality is: nobody is perfect. Not the Olympic athlete, not the fitness model, not Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

Furthermore, nobody’s journey is perfect. You will make mistakes. You will veer off track. Workouts will be skipped and pizzas will be eaten (in their entirety).

Guess what? You can still successfully reach your fitness goals.

Think about health and fitness as existing on a continuum. If on Monday you ate a Pop Tart for breakfast, and by Friday you’ve thrown that box out and you’re now eating eggs and toast…that’s healthier. If you don’t know what protein is on Day 1, and by Day 30 you are consistently including it in 3 meals a day…THAT is healthier!

And it’s those smaller changes that you can stick with that will compound over time and bring you further along your journey to fitness success.

Set Outcome AND Behavior Goals

Setting goals is one surefire way to find fitness success. And recognizing that there are different types of goals will help you to stay on track, determined and motivated.

Outcome goals focus on the results. For example, you might have a goal to lose 5 pounds in one month, or to run a half marathon in November. Outcome goals are important because they give us a bigger picture to look at and look forward to.

The problem with outcome goals is that, to at least some degree, the exact results are out of your control. You might gain muscle while trying to lose weight. Or you might sprain you ankle, taking you out of the gym for a few weeks. And even though these set backs are outside of your control, you internalize them and get frustrated, sometimes accepting defeat as the only outcome of your efforts.

Which is why it’s also important to set behavior goals. Behavior goals are all about what you, personally, can do on a daily/weekly/routine basis. You are in control of your actions.

Think about your outcome goal. Break it down into the actionable steps and daily activities it will take to achieve fitness success. For example, to lose 5 pounds in one month maybe you opt to give up alcohol for 30 days. Or maybe you commit to at least 15 minutes of exercise every day. Those are the behavioral goals that will help you reach your outcome goal.

The nice thing about behavioral goals is that you can celebrate your movement along the health continuum each day. You don’t have to wait to see if you did it right. You know because you are taking action and making better choices each and every day.

Surround Yourself with Support

Think about the people that you are around most often. Do they support your goals? Are they willing to commit with you in some way? Have you asked them to?

Support comes in many ways.

If your husband does all the cooking, support may come in the form of dinner time. If neither you nor your partner currently workout, but you love spending time together, support might come in the form of going on weekly walks or hikes together instead of brewery trips.

Find a tribe that supports who you want to be.

I created the Transformation Club on Facebook exactly for this reason. I know that for a lot of women, myself included, it’s not easy to share your goals and your struggles in the social media shark tank! The Transformation Club is a private safe space. It’s a place to share inspiration and give each other the support and accountability we deserve!

And as always, I invite you to join the club!