Fitness Motivation: Everything Changes
If there’s one thing you need to remember where fitness is concerned…
Nothing Stays the Same
If you are fit today, it means zilch if you do nothing but lie in bed for 4 weeks – you’ll be as unfit as a lifelong couch potato.
And if you are unfit today, you can make great strides in the same 4 weeks and change your fitness level beyond recognition.
The only thing is, if you don’t start a fitness routine you’ll never get there. And if you don’t keep up a fitness routine, you’ll never stay at the level of fitness you achieve.
And just to make things more complex, you can’t even stay the same by sticking to one workout routine every day or every week – you have to challenge yourself in new ways and push yourself to stay at your peak.
So what this boils down to is that
- you had better find a range of activities you enjoy doing – that make working out fun
- view any routine you start as getting fit for life, not just for the summer
- find activities you can do all year round or at least activities which you can do to cover all parts of the year
- if you don’t like working out, just the feeling it gives you, get hooked on that feeling so that you feel motivated to keep up whatever you start
Fitness Weight Loss Tip : Split Routines
Photo by exfordy
If you’re looking to lose a few pounds and help things along with exercise, try working out twice a day rather than once.
With split routines
- you increase the calories you can burn without tiring yourself out in one long mega-session – you can work out for longer in total each day and put more effort into your routines
- you keep your metabolism firing on all cylinders giving it a big boost twice during the day
- you keep your goals central in your mind – and hopefully yourself on the straight and narrow
- you won’t have much time left for sitting around pigging out in front of the TV!
If you try this be sure and vary your activities each session and each day so that you reduce the risk of strain and injury on any one part of your body.
Split routines are used most often in weight training to mean working different muscle groups each day and avoid overtaxing any one part of the body, but if you are up for it here is a suggested a.m. p.m split routine incorporating both cardio and strength training.
Easy Fitness Motivation Tip
I have found this fitness motivation tip to be easy but also very effective for my clients (and it works for me every time too!)
If you’re trying to start a daily fitness habit then the best thing you can do if buy a large paper calendar and a big thick black marker pen and pin it up on your wall where you will be able to see it often.
Then every day you do your workout (or other good habit – whatever you’re trying to achieve) take your marker pen and put a big cross through the day.
After a row of crosses you are not going to want to leave a gap.
Aim for 30 crosses in a row – miss one and you have to start right back at the beginning.
If at all possible put your calendar up where co-workers or family will see it. They’ll ask about it and that will help spur you on too!
Nike+ Ipod – great for fitness motivation
My niece just came back from a long weekend in New York with a great gizmo for running – a nike + ipod sport kit
Apparently these have been around for a while and the whole thing has just passed me by. (Well, I AM in a non-running phase just now)
For once the technology seems pretty easy to master even for those of use still working out how to record something on the VCR long after everyone else has moved onto Tivo or Sky+
Anyway this kit my neice bought has a sensor to fit in your Nike+ shoes and then a receiver to plug into your ipod nano (has to be a nano) and away you go running.
Actually though my niece has these anyway, you don’t really need the expensive shoes just something to fasten the to them that you can buy for next to nothing (see here for a shoe pouch
Once you get going, your ipod nano tracks your running time, distance, pace and calories burned and at the end of your workout you can transfer your workout data to itunes and nikeplus.com to and see your progress in full color and graphic detail. You can get voice alerts during your workout too where the music neatly fades in and out around the alert.
Online you can set challenges, goals and resolutions to keep you motivated.
But the best thing is downloading upbeat music to keep you going – there are special selections at itunes and my niece has a great victory song she uses every time. As she says “I ran 7 miles yesterday because of my ipod – I never did that before”.
Definitely worth checking out if you are a runner. You can buy the Ipod Nike+ kit at Amazon
Exercise Before Dinner
Photo by Carl Mueller
Just before dinner is a great time to exercise. After a long day at work or home, it will perk you up and help put you in a more relaxed mood.
It won’t work if you allow yourself to get too hungry however, so make sure you grab a healthy afternoon snack or crunch on an apple a little while before you start.
Even a quick walk in the fresh air, a five-minute bike ride or a run around the park with your kids will help reduce your appetite a little and give your metabolism enough of a boost to cope with the meal to come. And you can still do this even if you did your workout earlier in the day.
Reminding yourself of your health goals in this way by deliberately doing something active before you prepare food and eat a meal gives your subconscious a nudge so you tend not to overeat so much and ruin your good intentions.
Work Out for Longer Without Noticing
Make Fitness More Fun! Find a Friend!
Do you find yourself glancing at your watch every 30 seconds after a while during your cardio session? Are you just trying to get to the end without giving up? I know my eyes are often glued on the time when I go jogging to try and improve my fitness.
But there are also certain times when I don’t focus on just getting through it… sometimes I hardly notice I’m working out at all and the time goes by very quickly.
What is different about those times? Is it just that my motivation varies from one workout to another?
It seems that during the fitness sessions when the time passes quickly, distraction is the key – I am focused on something other than all the effort I’m making.
Here’s what seems to work for me…
- having something to think about. Sometimes at the start of a session I decide to think about a particular issue or topic that’s bothering me while I’m working out. Bonus is that I often come up with great ideas during that time.
- having something to listen to – whether it’s great music, a radio show or a book on CD it passes the time without it feeling like a trial
- having a companion. Mostly I work out alone but on the rare occasions I jog with someone else the session seems to go faster as we chat away 19 to the dozen
- having something to watch. The better the scenery, the more that’s going on, the more interesting the jog. This one also comes into it’s own when I work out at home in front of the TV – with a favorite show on view I often end up exercising for longer than I intended
Just a couple of things to watch out for if you decide to use distraction to keep yourself going for longer
- stay safe – make sure you are still aware of what’s going on around you – for example don’t have your music so loud that you can’t hear the traffic
- don’t forget to keep up the pace of your workout – keep checking that you are working hard enough – the best way (so you don’t have to keep reminding yourself how hard you’re working) is to use a heart rate monitor with a built-in alarm signal which will sound if you reduce (or increase) your pace outside the right zone for you.
What do you use to get yourself through a workout?
More on the Myth of the Fat Burning Zone
A little while ago I wrote about the myth of the fat burning zone – the idea that moderate exercise is the best way to burn fat.
This myth led to every piece of cardio equipment at the gym being given a misleading fat burning program or fat burning zone workout.
You think you’re doing well – 30 minutes “burning fat” – when really you’d be better getting on your treadmill and doing interval training for the same period (and you’d continue burning fat after your workout).
The myth arose because you burn proportionately more fat when you exercise at a moderate pace than you do when your workout is more intense – so a bigger percentage of the calories used come from fat.
You just tend to forget that you use fewer calories overall!
Anyway, I read today in Personal Trainer Cliff Lathams‘ newsletter something even more interesting about fat burning. He says
“I have news for you. You burn a higher ratio of fat to carbohydrate during complete rest. Therefore, sleeping would burn the most fat off your body. And you don’t really think that sleeping in on Saturday morning helps you reach your goals do you?”
Mmmh – think about that next time you step on your treadmill and choose your workout program.
10 Second Fitness Tip : Late Night, Early Morning
If you’ve had a late night, exercise as early as you can the next day.
The longer you leave it, the more tired you’ll get and the more likely you are to decide to skip your workout.
An early morning run outside will blow away the cobwebs and make you feel miles better to face the day… even a gym visit before work will leave you feeling virtuous – at least you’ll be awake after it.
You know it’s true but will you do it?
30 Second Fitness Tip : Think One Step Ahead
Why do you skip your regular workout?
Something comes up, right?
What if you know something is coming up tomorrow, do you still end up skipping your workout?
If you don’t plan ahead you probably will.
Many things which seem to “crop up” can be dealt with if you think about them in advance. For example,
- If you know that you have to be out of the house early, get things ready the night before so you still have time to do your workout.
- If you know you’ve got a meeting which might run into your lunch hour, go to the gym before work instead.
- If you think you’ll be too hungry after work to go training, take a light snack in your gym bag.
The same holds true for all kinds of diet disasters
- If you know you’re likely to eat the bread basket empty never turn up at the restaurant table starving hungry – eat an apple before you go
- If you can’t stop eating chocolate once you start buy a tiny individual chocolate bar instead of the mega bargain size
- If you will come in from work starving hungry and eat the fridge empty while you’re cooking – have some chopped veg in he fridge ready to nibble when you come in (and hide away everything else)
A bit of forethought can go a long way towards helping your success…
Exercise Myth Debunked: Fat Burning Zone
I don’t know how many times I’ve read and heard that you are better to do moderate exercise if you want to burn fat – and exercise for at least 30 minutes to start burning it. I think I even believed it myself at one time I heard it so often.
It’s true of course that all exercise is good for fat burning – a calorie burned is a calorie burned after all (although you are probably not burning as many as you think – so no, you can’t have that Snickers Bar after the gym, no matter how hard you think you worked, without making your visit pretty much a waste of time as far as calorie burning goes).
Anyway I digress.
The truth is that you will burn a lot more calories (and in the end shed more fat) if you vary the intensity of exercise during your session rather than sticking to a moderate pace the whole time.
So for example, you would go at a moderate pace for 3 minutes and then go as fast as you can for 3 minutes before returning to your moderate pace for 3 minutes – essentially alternating moderate and fast pace for the duration of your session a.k.a. interval training
The advantages to this:-
- you are working harder for half your session and so directly burning more calories
- you will be working wonders for your level of cardio fitness – interval training is one of the best ways of getting fit fast
- you get an added calorie-burning boost AFTER your workout. Research shows that you burn 25 per cent as many calories in the hour after your interval training session as you do during it. So, that means if you burn 400 calories during your session – you’ll burn an extra 100 calories in the following hour while you sit with your feet up! Why? It seems the body has to make more effort to get back to normal after intense exercise.
If you feel a bit distraught at the idea of all that intense exercise, don’t let it put you off working out altogether. Remember some exercise is ALWAYS better than none and if you are doing anything at all then good on ya!
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