Get off the Merry go round!

Do you keep on going round and round with your health and fitness routine, gaining weight, losing weight, yo-yoing and losing control.

You start a new diet and fitness regime with good intentions, only to find that 3, 6 or even 12 months later your back where you started and have perhaps even gained few more pounds or are struggling even more to stay in that dress size.

It’s hard to stay focussed when we go it alone; when we don’t have a long term plan and when our goals are too small. Life is busy, but sometimes we use that as an excuse not to do something!

It you really want to make change in your life, it’s time to commit and make that decision both physically and emotionally. You have to really want to do it! So how do we do this, how do we get off this Merry Go round and on the path to sustained change?

1. Accept where you are at and what you want from life. Make peace with who you are and what you have accomplished to date. In our forties and beyond, there are so many expectations of us, however, many are ones that we perhaps place upon ourselves. Make decisions that are for you and not based on what people think you should look like, or be like.

2. Think about what you desire and why? If you don’t know what you want, it is hard to stay motivated; work out what your goal is and why you want to reach that goal; consider what reaching that goal will give you.

3. Jumping on the next fad diet might work for a few weeks of even months, but these are hard to maintain, make you feel deprived and diets aren’t meant to last forever. Eventually, your will power fades away, you have a blow out and you give up. Months later you start a new diet and repeat the cycle. Accept there are no quick fixes and lifestyle changes need to be lifelong.

4. Don’t let other people sabotage your goals. Those around us, whilst they love us can also sabotage our weight loss and fitness goals. They might think here she goes again, on another diet or fitness regime; they might encourage you to have more to drink, offer to get a takeaway; want more of your time. It can be hard for people to see you change, as change can be daunting. Keep firm, stay focussed.

5. Get a personal trainer. A personal trainer will bring new ideas to your workout and lifestyle regime; motivate you, challenge you and look at areas in which you can improve. Enlisting the support of a personal trainer can make life much easier and takes away the pressure. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut; or not even know where to start; or and it can be daunting and quite frankly a little bit scary to start something new. Achieving change takes time, hard work and commitment, but having the right structured package, tailored to your specific needs, by a trained professional, makes reaching those goals a more realistic prospect.

Thank you for reading and lets get stronger together!

Carmien, Fitness Forties