When the days get colder and shorter, it can be difficult to maintain our fitness routine. It’s so easy to blow off our walks or our gym sessions, because we just want to hibernate! Lots of thoughts of resistance come up, and we just have to acknowledge that. Check out my top 10 tips to help you keep moving forward with your exercise goals!
Change the time you workout.
If you typically workout first thing in the morning, ask yourself if you can manipulate your schedule during the cold months. Can you use your lunch break to workout? Is there a way you can make the time between your job and home work for you? Think outside the box on how you might change your routine to get those workouts in.
If your exercise is an outside event, think about how you can make it an inside event.
Is it time to invest in a treadmill? Should you put a walking pad on your Christmas list? Get a gym membership?
Choose a new activity for exercise.
When our brain is excited about something, it’s easy to create motivation. This winter, pick a new sort of physical activity to change things up and create some excitement. Think about something that you’ve wanted to try but never have, like indoor rock climbing, pickle ball, or dumbbell exercises. Was there a sport you loved to play in your younger years, like soccer or basketball? Consider picking that sport back up for the winter!
Get an accountability partner.
Having someone to help you hold yourself accountable is a great way to create some motivation. Is there a neighbor, a family member, or a co-worker you can walk with? A bestie you can meet at the gym a couple of times a week? If not face to face, is there someone (or a small group of someones) that you can create a group text with to give daily updates?
Create a trigger.
A trigger can help us prime our brain for what to expect to create a trigger. Examples of triggers: If you work out in the morning, put your exercise clothes out the night before so it’s visible. Maybe you sleep in your workout clothes. Pack your gym bag and put it in the car before work.
Apply Mel Robbin’s 5-4-3-2-1 protocol.
Instead of hitting snooze, decide you’re going to count down from five and get yourself up and out of bed. If you’re thinking about going for that after dinner walk and wavering on it, 5-4-3-2-1 it and just go. This is a create way to interrupt those thoughts of mental resistance.
Create an “after exercise” vision of yourself.
Sometimes what kills our motivation is the picture we envision. We often link the idea of exercise with a vision of ourselves experiencing discomfort. We see ourselves sweating or breathing heavily. We might see ourselves struggling and it doesn’t motivate us to act. But we can use our ability to create visions of ourselves to our advantage. Instead of that “during exercise” vision of us, take a moment to create an “after exercise” vision of ourselves. What does she look like? How does she feel? Energized? Confident? Strong? Happy? When we can keep that version of us in our mind’s eye, it helps to create the motivation we need to act.
Coach yourself.
If you are just not feeling motivated to get those steps in or to get that workout in, you can coach yourself around it. Ask yourself “what is the least I am willing to do?” This honest question allows your brain to bring you an honest answer. Maybe it’s not much at all and that’s okay. If your brain says “10 minutes of walking is all I am willing to do”, go with that. You’ll get your 10 minutes of steps in and accomplish what you said you would do. This creates motivation. What often happens though is that once we get started, we find we’re willing to do more. It was just the getting started we needed motivation for.
Get creative!
When we get creative and come up with some new ideas, our mind finds this exciting. And as I mentioned earlier, when our brain is excited about something, it naturally creates motivation to act. Think about some places and/or times that you don’t usually think about to exercise or move. Can you start walking for 15 minutes of your lunch break? Can you get your workout in while the kids are at basketball practice? Can you carpool after school pick up or after school activities so that you don’t have to taxi the kids every single day? Can you get a group of friends to walk right after church on Sundays? Is there a community center nearby that would be a warm place to walk? Can you take 3 minutes of every hour during the workday to walk? Can you take the stairs? Start thinking about new ways to work in some exercise!
Consider your values.
Is fitness something you value? Why or why not? When exercise isn’t a priority for us, it’s hard to stay motivated. When it is something we value, we can act with or without motivation because we live according to our value system. If exercise is not a priority, it’s often because our “whys” are not deep enough. As an example, if “weight loss” is your “why” for exercise, your brain gets bored with that. It’s not compelling and it remembers that it never works long term, so it gets tired of that "why" over time. But if your “why” is something that adds quality to your life in some way, our brain is motivated by that. That’s a “why” that gets us to act.
I hope these are some useful tips to keep you on track with your fitness goals during the coldest months of the year. If these darker, colder days are messing with your mindset in regards to your health and weight loss goals, click HERE for some tips to shift your mindset.
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