Getting Started with Health & Fitness: There WILL Be Days...

There will be days that you just do not wanna...

This newly found lifestyle is exciting at first.  You may jump out of bed for the first couple of days, excited to get your workout done and lunch prepped before you run out the door.  You may find yourself feeling happy and motivated to get things accomplished.  It is a wonderful feeling!

But the newness and excitement of the lifestyle will wear off at some point.  You may be sore in the first few days.  You may have spent your energy chasing around your kids, doing homework, working overtime, or staying up too late binge-watching Netflix.  You may wake up on the wrong side of the bed with the wrong attitude one morning.  It happens.

Yes, it happens to all of us at one time or another. We all lose our motivation.  It may happen at different points in your health journey, and I will warn you, it will not happen just once.  Here is why:  motivation is simply a temporary state of mind.  It is an emotion, just as happiness, sadness, and joyfulness are emotions, so is motivation.  It does not stick around permanently.  You have to conjure up motivation every, single day.

So what can you do when you do not feel like doing anything?

You do it anyway.

Yep, you do it anyway.  Why?  Because you have to discipline yourself to make good habits.  You have to do what you know needs to be done, no matter how bad you do not want to do it!  According to Google, the word "discipline" means to:

train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way.

We want to train ourselves to live a healthy lifestyle.  It does not become a habit overnight.  No, the new habit needs lots of practice.  We have to discipline ourselves to create that new habit...to make it part of our lifestyle.  Discipline is going to be the thing that keeps our motivation going.

In 2015, my life fell apart and I was not focused on my health or fitness.  In 2016, I was working to make my workouts a part of my daily routine.  I knew that I needed to focus on completing a whole program all the way through.  I did not allow myself to make excuses, and I knew that I always made an excuse about not being a morning person.  So I got up everyday and worked out in the morning. I got it done day in and day out.  There were days that I did not want to workout.  There were days that I did not want to get up when my alarm went off.  But you know what?  I did it anyway.

I disciplined myself to make my fitness part of my routine.  If I knew that I would be traveling or I would not be home for a workout, I made sure to pack what I needed so that I could still get that workout in no matter where I was!  It was that important to me.

In December, as I was reflecting on the year of 2016, I had realized that since I made my workouts a priority during the year that it was easy to make sure I got my workout in during the day.  I knew that my foundation was ready to be built upon.  I knew that no matter what, I would take time to get a thirty-minute sweat session in no matter where I was.  If I had to rearrange the schedule, I would do just that.  But I knew going into 2017, I was ready for more discipline.

I was dedicated to my workouts, which in turn brought me more motivation.

Some days you will have more motivation than others.  Take advantage of that motivation when it comes!  Some days you will have to dig deep into discipline and just do it because you are trying to make it a habit in your life.  Then there are days that you do the action because you are dedicated, which in turn will bring more motivation to you.