Are you looking for fitness motivation that will really work? The following are reliable fitness motivation tips that personal trainers use to keep their clients inspired and on track to meet their fitness goals.
Don’t Tackle Your Fitness Goals Alone
You may want to keep your fitness goals private, but research has proven that people who tackle weight loss with a form of accountability (personal trainer, weight loss partner, running buddy) are more successful than those who try to succeed without assistance. This is because your friend or trainer will help you exercise when you feel too tired or eat right when you might have cheated, were no one else to know about it. Just make sure you choose someone who you trust enough to be totally honest with them and who is just as committed to success as you are.
Set Yourself Up for Success, Not Failure
Before you scoff at this tip, ask yourself this: How many times have you set out to lose weight or get in better shape and then failed to meet those goals? Now ask yourself this: why didn’t you meet those goals?
Chances are you tried to accomplish too much too quickly or signed up for some extreme fitness plan and then burned out. Instead, set achievable goals, broken down into goals that seem so doable they are almost laughable. Then blow those goals out of the water! Your self confidence and motivation will soar as a result.
Celebrate the Victories You Can Control
You can’t control how much weight you lose or how much muscle you gain each day, but you are in control of how well you followed your diet plan or how much effort you put forth exercising. Instead of celebrating results, celebrate your efforts.
This will help you to persevere even on those weeks when you plateau and don’t see results. It will also help you stay focused on what you can do instead of how helpless you feel when your body doesn’t respond the way it used to. This will help you find solutions instead of throwing in the towel or assuming no solutions exist.
Reward Yourself Regularly
Most of us seeking to improve our fitness over 40 need a little extra boost. Our bodies are more resistant to change; we naturally want to hang onto extra fat, and our muscles are more prone to atrophy than they were when we were under 40. We’ve got hormone changes working against us.
That means you are going to be making greater efforts for less payback. As a result, you need extra fitness motivation.
Choose ways to reward you that are tangible and support your fitness plans. Then reward yourself generously and often. We’re all a little more like Pavlov’s dog than we’d like to admit, and a little reward can go a long way.
Educate Yourself About Fitness Over 40
Your body is changing and will continue to change. After age 40, our metabolism slows and our bodies produce different levels of hormones, making us more prone to retaining fat and losing muscle tone. However, there are measures you can take to combat these changes. For example, try eating small meals more often (to keep your metabolism up) and start a weight training program to combat muscle atrophy.
The fitness over 40 challenges doesn’t end here, though. You’ll want to start reading up on what you can do to improve your fitness as a mature adult, taking advantage of the vast amounts of information now available to us. With proper education and support, you’ll find your fitness motivation will flourish and your ability to meet your fitness goals will grow.
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