Working out, eating healthy, and sticking to your fitness goals overall actually requires quite a bit of motivation.
It’s not easy.
Pushing yourself to stay physically active when survival isn’t necessarily demanding it can be a real pain in the butt (figuratively speaking, of course).
So how do you do it?
How do you actually motivate yourself to work out, even when the going gets tough and you want to drop it?
Well, we recently caught up to a busy professional who’s been steadily working to get into shape for the past 4 months. Before now, he never had the motivation to stick with a workout. But now, he religiously works out at least 4 times per week.
Here are the secrets he uses to stay on top of his workout game.
1. Consistency
“When you stay consistent with your workouts, they start to become a normal part of your daily routine,” he told us during the interview.
“By contrast, if you don’t stay consistent with it, you’ll never build up those good habits. Habits are a super important part of the process. You really need those good habits to stick with the workout long-term.”
2. Find Accountability
“Personally, for me, finding accountability was a huge part of sticking with it,” he confessed.
“I solved this problem by joining a gym membership where I got access to fitness coaches at the same time. If I don’t show up, or if I don’t work out hard enough, the coaches really take notice and ask me about it. This is a huge motivator! I know that if I don’t show up and put in my best, they’re going to be busting my chops for it later—and then I’ll just look like a weenie.”
3. Set Your Goals
“I used SMART goals to set goals for myself and for my weight loss/fitness. I gave myself plenty of time to reach my goals, but I put a specific deadline on them so that I could hold myself accountable. Then, I made sure to write these goals down. Now, I have a metric for exactly what I need to do to succeed. I’ve never done this before, and I think it makes a huge difference. As long as I follow the plan, I’ll know that I’m on track to succeed. And that’s a huge motivator in and of itself.”
4. Stop Spending Time Around People With Bad Habits
“Personally, I had to really cut back on the time I spent around my out-of-shape friends. It’s not that I don’t love them anymore—but when they’re constantly eating chili-cheese fries, ice cream, cookies, and potato chips around me, it just gets harder to stick with my diet plan. It’s just too much temptation. I learned that I needed to spend more time around people who shared my same fitness goals and values. This really helped me to avoid compromising on my goals out of the sheer temptation to just eat a bunch of junk food.”
