How do you make fitness a daily habit?

Whether you are a student or a working professional, making exercise a part of your daily routine is hard. We all have our day-to-day responsibilities at home and at work that chews up almost all of our time and energy. At the end of the day, we are depleted of our most valuable resource; Energy and time. Hence, we find it extremely difficult to get up and work out.

Fitness is not all about exercising, it is also about the food that we are consuming. At a time when there are a whole bunch of processed foods that are easily available at your doorstep, so delicious and ready-to-eat it feels impossible to resist. With our tight schedules, there’s hardly any time left to eat healthy nutrient rich food.

If we notice around us, we can see that many people live similar lifestyles. Working very hard at work and home, eating whatever is available. This lifestyle has a slow but major effect on our health. When we are consuming more calories with no time left to exercise and burn them, we are slowly storing up more fats and cholesterol every day.

This silence adds up every day making us sluggish, and heavy and even causing some severe illnesses like heart attacks in the future. So, it has become more important than ever to learn exactly how we can make fitness a habit. Hereby, presenting you our 5 tips to help you start from scratch and make fitness a part of your lifestyle.

1. Create a challenge

We usually don’t start exercising or eating healthy when someone advises us. So, the only way to start exercising is by challenging yourself. Start by challenging yourself to exercise.

The common mistake people make is that they believe they can easily work out every day if they want to. That’s not true. One cannot exercise daily unless they have made it a habit. To make it a habit, you first need to exercise long enough for your body and mind to adjust to it.

Create a challenge with your favorite physical activity. It could be walking or running or cycling or swimming or any sport. Make it a point to do it for a certain duration every day. For example, “I will walk every day on a treadmill for 15 minutes for the next 5 days”

Set your specific activity and time duration for a specific amount of days. This is the first step to making exercise a habit.

2. Take one step at a time

Once you are ready with a challenge, take action and complete it. Most people make a huge mistake doing everything at once and feel overwhelmed. For example, “From tomorrow I will walk daily, start eating healthy, stop eating sweets, wake up early, etc”. This All or Nothing mindset is a huge roadblock when creating a habit.

We get overwhelmed with so much change in such a small period. We fail to do everything and judge ourselves for not achieving them. Instead, it is better to take it one step at a time and make it a habit. Then you can gradually add another habit.

3. Start small

Another huge mistake when we are trying to form a habit is doing it too much. For example, “I will start walking for 1 hour from tomorrow”. If you never had the habit of exercising, then don’t start with 1 hour. Start with 10 minutes. You cannot eat the whole cake in one bite. You have to start small. Piece by piece. Then, gradually increase over time.

Let’s recap what we’ve understood until now: challenge yourself with an activity that you enjoy, take it one step at a time and complete one challenge before starting another and finally start small and gradually increase over time.

4. Set a specific time aside

It is important to set a specific time slot in your day for exercise. When we are sure that we cannot manage our time properly, it becomes important to plan.

Most working professionals do not have the time to work out during the day, so setting a specific time in the morning can help. When you plan and set a particular time for a specific activity that is small and fun, it becomes very easy to do it.

Remember simplicity builds repetition and repetition forms a habit. Complexity leads to inaction and inconsistency. Both inaction and inconsistency lead to breaking a habit.

5. Progress over Perfection

No matter how much we plan and get specific regards to our workout regime, there will be always days when we miss our workout. You might have planned to walk every day for 15 minutes for the next 21 days but unfortunately, you missed a day. Now, it is important to not judge yourself and discontinue.

There’s a 2-day rule in habit formation which states that you shouldn’t miss a habit for 2 days in a row when you are trying to build a habit. So, even if you miss one day, think about the progress you made instead of chasing perfection.

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that we are progressing and it is okay to miss one day.

These are the 5 tips to help you form the fitness habit:

1. Challenge yourself

2. Take one step at a time

3. Start small

4. Set a specific time

5. Progress over Perfection

Please make sure to keep reminding yourself of these 5 points as these are the most common mistakes made by people who cannot make fitness a habit. Share it if you find it . Thank you for reading. Visit our website for the best treadmills: All Fitalo Treadmill

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How do you make fitness a daily habit?

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