How to stick with your new healthy habits
Tip # 1
Don’t let travel derail your new healthy habits and routine. Whether you’re on the road regularly for work, have another home or are taking a vacation you can have a strategy for making healthy choices and still have fun or while taking care of business.
How to do it
-Don’t worry about making progress, just concentrate on maintaining the progress you already made. Maybe you’ve lost weight or have seen great gains in your strength. Rather than fretting about keeping that trend as you break your routine just try to maintain where you are. This mindset shift allows you to go easy on yourself and be realistic about what you can and cannot do. With some of the pressure off you can enjoy your trip or concentrate more on the business you are tending to.
-Try to do something active every day. Every hotel has a fitness center and most have pools. Sneakers and a set of workout clothes don’t take up that much room in the bag. If you can’t get to the gym or just need a break from your routine get outside and walk. This is especially good if you find yourself in a new location. Getting out for a walk gives you a chance to explore and take in the new scenery. Even if you are time crunched, just make an effort to do something. We’ve all been to a conference, where every second seems planned and packed, so even if you only have 15 minutes it’s OK. Use that 15 minutes. Doing something is ALWAYS better than doing nothing.
-Be realistic, go easy on yourself and have fun. If you’re on vacation, just need a break and want to have fun then absolutely do that. If you have a day that you don’t want to worry about a workout or what you’re eating, that’s OK. If you have a night that gets away from you, that’s OK too. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t beat yourself up. Your chance to do something good for your health or fitness is just the next day away.
-We want to make one clear distinction: Traveling regularly for work or spending the winter in a warmer climate? That’s not vacation that’s your real life, so don’t abandon all of your ‘normal’ routines just because you’re at the Cape for the summer!
Bonus material – get creative if you have to. If you find yourself in a cold location and don’t want to go out outside, you’ll probably head to the hotel fitness center. So does everyone else. If you find all the equipment being used then hit the the stairs. Not the most stimulating location for a workout, but running or walking flights of stairs can be a killer workout and done in any building.
Tip #2
One of the biggest challenges that we all face is our daily calendar. Our days seem packed with about 30 hours of things to do with only 18 waking hours to do them. A seven-day week has 10 days' worth of appointments, activities and obligations. How do we fit it all in? Unfortunately, the answer is sometimes we can’t. What do you do if you have to skip a workout? First, try to keep it to just missing one by making the other 3 a high priority on your calendar. For example, if you have 4 workouts planned for the week and have to miss one, pick the 3 that give you the most bang for your buck and make sure nothing gets in the way of those. If something comes up on the schedule during one of those scheduled workouts, adjust your calendar to find another time to get your workout in.
Bonus Material
Plan out your week. Look at your scheduled meetings, kid's practice times, social engagements and all other obligations and then look at your dedicated workout times. If you know something is going to bump a workout from your calendar, then prioritize the rest of your workouts for the week. If you don’t have time for all of them then make sure to do the most important ones!
Make a plan, execute your plan.
We hope you have enjoyed and found a lot of value in this series of tips. And pardon the pun, but these are just the very tip of the iceberg. The staff at VOS Fitness has an endless repertoire of pointers along with decades of experience and knowledge, so please just ask!! Send us an email at any time or simply speak with your trainer.
Getting going and sticking with it is the hardest part but that’s all behind you now! At this point, you are poised to see some remarkable changes and will progress by leaps and bounds. Stick to it, keep working and ALWAYS have fun!!
As always, reach out to us at anytime at info@vos-fitness.com