Quitting fitness is easy – but regular exercise is one of the few methods available to maintain both physical and mental health. Ultimately, working out not only reduces stress levels but also helps to distract yourself.
Motivation and Burnout
Often, people begin to engage in fitness to improve their physical fitness – setting the goal of losing weight or gaining muscle. Unfortunately, such a goal, while helping to achieve results in the short term, is not always associated with the formation of a long-term habit.
Firstly, the desire to quickly lose weight or get pumped up sooner or later rests on the fact that in this process it is important not to achieve the goal, but to maintain the gained shape – which requires constant training. Secondly, an attempt to squeeze all the forces out of oneself leads to burnout and loss of motivation.
Because of these factors, developing a training habit is the basis for achieving results. That is, it is extremely wrong to think in terms of kilograms or centimeters of waist circumference – and instead, you need to control how many times a week (and for how long) you do fitness.
Why do we need physical activity?
The World Health Organization reminds that 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week is the minimum level an adult needs to maintain good health.
The recommendation fixes the existence of a connection between a sedentary lifestyle and health risks – first of all, a change in the body’s susceptibility to carbohydrates and the excess weight associated with it.
The WHO guideline suggests that regular physical activity can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as improve thinking and learning.
7 Tips to Motivate Yourself
1. The hardest step – don’t overthink it
If you have made the decision to return to the sport, do not delay. Stop thinking about what’s holding you back and just take the first step. Thinking less and doing more is not the worst life strategy in the current situation.
2. Start with short workouts
At the first stage of returning to training, take care of your body’s resources – even if you used to play sports for several hours in a row, 20 minutes of fitness 3 times a week is more useful for developing a habit, and not a maximum impact workout once a month.
3. Don’t expect quick results
The hope of obtaining excessively fast and noticeable results is the main enemy of progress. The lack of visible improvements in the first week/month can bring down motivation – while in such a time it is even theoretically impossible to achieve the loss of extra pounds or muscle gain.
4. Focus on basic exercises you like
Returning to a fitness routine after a break is not the time to look for new “advanced” methods of exercising. Focus on those physical exercises/activities that you already know well – and the implementation of which you are at least somewhat pleased with.
5. Plan ahead
Don’t leave the decision to hit the gym (or go for a run) at the end of the day when you just don’t have the energy left. Choose a day and time in advance, and prepare a sports uniform, playlist, and other little things – this will help get rid of excuses to yourself that “today did not work out”.
6. Take one step at a time
Let us remind you once again that in the first weeks of returning to sports, you need to think not about results or progress, but only about returning to your usual mode of activity, but you need to do this smoothly and gradually to avoid burnout.
7. Forget about excuses
If you are in the mood for a run, and it’s raining like a wall outside, do a home workout for the press. Performing any action, even “for show”, is much more useful than decadent moods. Keep in mind that your main goal is to develop a habit, not the training itself.
Keep a workout diary
Fixing the results of the training is a key point in the effectiveness of sports. But speaking of this, we do not at all urge you to install another “fashionable” application with a beautiful interface on your smartphone. In most cases, a plain sheet of paper will suffice.
Write down how often you do sports, how much time you spend on it and how you feel after that – we emphasize once again that it is not the fact of fixing the sequence of exercises and working weights that is important, but the act of consciously analyzing this activity.
A piece of paper left in plain sight (such as a magnet attached to the fridge) is much harder to ignore than reminders from an app you installed just yesterday. Your ultimate goal is habit and outcome, not virtual rewards.
The hardest part about returning to sports is taking the first step. But even after you’ve done it, it’s important to keep moving forward at a neat and progressive pace – trying to get things done quickly will only demotivate you and set you back into procrastination.