This year, I made a resolution to lose weight. Unlike earlier years, I reached my target without fail. On reading up on the success rate of new year resolutions and fitness plans, I learned that I belong to the elite 1% who reach their target. It made me happy for myself and sad for others who try and fail miserably. We may blame a lack of desire to exercise on almost anything under the sun, but it really zeroes down to our brains for most of the fault. The mind can either be the motivation to win as well an obstacle to push you to failure. The bumpy road to fitness is only won by tackling these mind body hurdles and this is only possible if you are aware of them and their solutions. Here we go taking them one by one in a 9 point session.
1. Stress
The most popular and dominant of the roadblocks is stress. It’s a paradox because when you are stressed out from daily routines, exercise is the best antidote. Exercise is well known to alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression. In addition, it helps boost your mood, enabling you to cope with the outside world much better than before.
2. Excess Training
Most of the time, we demand too much from anything. We foolishly believe that excess training will take us to our fitness target much faster. On the contrary, taxing your muscles and joints too much without allowing for adequate recovery between workouts will keep you away from your target forever. In such situations of over training, you’ll likely notice a decrease in your performance and your progress either stalls or gets reversed. It is recommended that a day or two of rest days are taken when you work-out in moderate to vigorous intensity. Also, give adequate rest time between extreme workout bouts.
3. Extreme Expectations
A reasonable time to see physiological changes from a regular exercise plan is 4 to 6 weeks. Many people search for evident physiological benefits at the end of one or two weeks of the plan and usually see nothing. This will probably kill their motivation to continue and many quit the program at this juncture. The only ways to avoid this situation is to learn about the timing of benefits, be realistic in your expectations and be extremely patient. You should keep looking for benefits and continue moving on, those will happen for sure.
4. Poor attitude
Attitude is everything, either at work or play. The same goes true for your fitness plan. Many first timers who are unfit and jump in to the exercise bandwagon get negative thoughts in the first or second week of their exercise program. It’s not easy to flush them out. When you get such thoughts, you should consciously replace them with positive ones. The best options are to praise yourself and give due credit for every small gain you had since you started. Small steps are enough to kill negativity and preserve your motivation.
5. When it rains obstacles
Some problems may really stop you from hitting the gym and in most cases these problems are beyond your control. It could be a bout of flu that last for a week or two, some heavy work at office that overflows to home, taking a long vacation or something troubling your mind big time. A bout of flu needs absolute rest, the option to tackle it would be to step up your workouts to a higher degree post recovery from flu. Stressful times might need rest and relaxation, but some rest by working out more. Getting lost in fitness track during a long vacation is very common and the solution could be either workouts during the vacation or some mindful eating. It’s up to you to decide whether eating less or moving more works out. Obstacles can only be tackled with a cocktail of optimism and resilience.
6. Those vague and long term goals
You are likely to fail if your goal is very vague and it is a long term one without any short term landmarks. Both lack of specificity in your fitness objective and not having short term objectives will destroy your fitness initiative for sure. You need to set your goal very clearly and plan it in a stepwise manner with a series of short term objectives that culminate in a big final landmark. Seeing you slowly climb up the graphical ladder of your fitness goal is a visual treat that pumps up your spirits.
7. Beware of boredom
Every time you hit the gym and stick to the same machine and schedule, your body and mind is slowly moving towards boredom. The regularity slowly becomes a daily routine and slowly but steadily, you will start to dislike the fitness plan. Any variety in the plan is good for you, be it the timing, the type of machine, the duration or the intensity. The more variety you have, less is the boredom and chances are high that you stick to it long-term.
8. Motivation from the inside.
Everyone starts a fitness plan with a truckload of motivation. The spirits are high and you feel like it will last for ever. Unfortunately, it’s just an ice cream scoop in mid-summer sun. Before you realize, all that motivation melts to nothing. Motivators are of two types – extrinsic and intrinsic – the former is an outside goal like reducing your waist by couple of inches. The latter is more meaningful, its feeling relaxed or a sense of well being since starting your workout plan. The external ones will slowly fade away but the internal ones will stick to you maintaining your compliance. Everyone has their own internal motivators – identify them and keep thinking about them. It’s the only way to make it a long term thing.
9. Managing your fitness program
Like any program, you need to have a proper plan, schedule it well and mange it like a professional. Before you jump into it make sure you had enough thought to it, read some basics and understood the basic concept of fitness and have a reasonable awareness of benefits and harm of fitness items. Write out a plan, keep a log and document everything you do to improve fitness. Once in a while take a summary, look at where it’s going and be proud about what you did. A well-made plan, a disciplined schedule and a proper log are the three critical elements of every successful fitness plan. So, manage it well like a pro for the best of the rewards.
You will never again fail at the gym, I promise.
Dr. Manu Raj @ DocM Health.
