Starting/Resetting Your Fitness Journey? Top 5 Things to Help You
“Fasted cardio, keto vs. WeightWatchers vs. calorie counting vs. intuitive eating, working out 7 days a week, best exercises to get abs”…
When you’re starting out on your fitness journey and begin to do the initial research as to what’s going to help you hit your goals, odds are, you get hit with some pretty significant information overload on topics like everything above.
So what do you really need to know? As someone who’s not only been there, but who has weeded through all of that information and is a certified personal trainer, allow me to help!
Here are my top 5 recommendations for getting started/resetting your fitness journey to see sustainable, long-term results:
1. Track your food intake, prioritize protein
2. Build a manageable & consistent workout schedule
3. Add in any additional low intensity cardio you can fit in
4. Drink water, sleep & stretch
5. Adopt a dedication > motivation mindset
Track food intake & prioritize protein
No matter what your goal is — lose fat, build muscle, maintain current state or just learning how to live a healthier life — tracking your food intake if you’ve never done so before is going to be a game changer.
Whether you do it through an app or write things down in a journal, tracking your food will start to show you how certain foods fuel your body.
Please Note: Tracking your food is a good way to understand proper portions and the nutritional breakdown of the foods you eat in a day. However, unfortunately, it can be easy for some to develop an unhealthy relationship with the process when wanting to achieve a certain goal (i.e. weightloss). I encourage you to try your best to practice giving yourself grace and using your tracking method in a healthy light.
Build a Manageable & Consistent Workout Schedule
Consistency is key when it comes to exercise. And one of the easiest way to stay consistent with workouts, is understanding how they fit best in your schedule and your ability to perform them.
After all, if you like the exercise you choose to do and it fits in your schedule, you’re more likely to stay consistent and not make excuses to miss it than if you hated the exercise and it didn’t fit comfortably in your day.
Add in any additional low intensity cardio you can fit in
At the end of the day, fat loss really is about calories in vs. calories out. So getting in any additional movement that’s not going to hinder your body’s recovery process just helps chip away at the stubborn fat you’re trying to lose.
Ideas for incorporating additional cardio include: going for a walk, take a few passes up and down the steps, casual jump rope and yoga.
While things like resistance training, high intensity cardio and other forms of exercise will also help in fat loss and lean muscle gain, any additional amount of light cardio you can fit in adds up, too.
Drink Water, Sleep & Stretch
At least 100 oz of water a day
At least 6 hours of sleep a day
At least 5 minutes of stretching a day
Those are my recommendations for easy steps to follow that will not only help you see serious results in your fitness journey, but also help you stay mentally sharp !
Water aids in digestion and helps keep your muscles hydrated so they can do the most work to get you to your goals.
Sleep allows your body to rest, recover and destress . This recovery process allows you to continue to progress at a safe pace and prevent injury.
Stretching will help wake up your body, prime it for the day/for movement and most of all, prevent injury.
Adopt a Dedication>Motivation Mindset
Motivation is all well and good…until it’s not there.
Fact of the matter is you’re going to have days that motivation almost seems negative. So what do you do when you have goals, but your motivation for today is getting in the way of staying consistent to achieve those goals?
You have to rely on something more than motivation. And that something is dedication. When you end up holding your dedication to something at a higher standard than motivation, it’s hard to look at it and ignore it.
A quick example:
It’s cold and snowy outside and you’re all wrapped up on your couch in a blanket. The clock hits 5pm and you usually work out at 5pm because that’s the only time you have in your day to workout.
You’ve been doing this routine for the last 2 months, but today, you just really don’t want to get off the couch. You then remember that you wanted to workout at 5pm every other day to help you live a healthier life, and for the past 2 months, you’ve been doing that, so why stop now? Your dedication takes over, you get off the couch, you crush your workout.
At the end of the day, motivation is uncontrollable. But you are in complete control of what you choose to stay consistent with.