Thursday, January 10, 2013

Are Your Fitness Resolutions in a Slump?



If you are beyond the first ten days in the New Year and in a slump, with little or no movement and progress towards your fitness and health resolutions, you may be heading towards another year when you are not meeting your goals.  Consider this, “Are you in the same place now as you were last year or even years before?”  If the answer is yes, you may be a prime candidate for a triathlon awakening, a renewal of the mind, body and soul. 
Athletically, a triathlon is a contest of strength and endurance in three levels often associated with swimming, cycling and long-distant running.  Whether an athletic or not, our minds and bodies need similar types of endurance disciplines to navigate successfully through our challenges, and focus on creating a healthy lifestyle.  This is the race of life.  What we do with our bodies has a direct result on whether we will go a short or long distance.
Each of us has an opportunity to experience a healthy lifestyle.  All we need do is carefully prepare and train with exercise, fitness and proper nutrition.   When implementing disciplines similar to an athletics’ training, you may have a better chance of qualifying to receive the crucial reward of moving from the place that you have been complacent in for so long, to a more healthy and fulfilling life. The healthy development of one’s body will create a direct flow of energy to the mind for a soul-satisfying experience.
The good news is, even though you may be over ten days into the New Year; you can still experience the excitement of achieving success in your health and fitness goals.   Here are a few tips triathlon athletics incorporate that will be useful for anyone desiring a transformational lifestyle.
·         Set goals - Goals are important and help produce the motivation needed to achieve some things that may appear impossible. 
·         Periodization – Refers to a process in which athletics divide time into manageable blocks designed to produce specific fitness and performance results.  Set your goals so they will be realistic and manageable within the timeframe you have on a day-to-day basis.  A desire for fast results will soon become discouraging.  If you assign specific blocks of time for each lifestyle objective, and pace yourself, results will become visible faster.
·         Motivation – Make it personal. Why do you want to have a transformational lifestyle?  Do you want to shed pounds for a specific event?  Do you have a physical challenge or do you want to look and feel better for a lifetime? Consider things that will fuel your motivation for achieving your goal.
·         Measure – How will you measure your results?  Give yourself specific parameters such as losing inches, reducing body fat or losing ten pounds.  Stay focused.
·         Timeframe – Give yourself a defined period of time.  If you wish to lose 30 pounds, cut the goal to 10 pounds every month.  Each time you meet your goal, you will get excited about the next interval.  Don’t set a goal like 30 pounds in one month knowing that it may be too much too soon.  Be realistic.
·         Challenge – Make your goals doable. Keep your meals interesting by trying new healthy recipes.  Get your family and friends involved in sharing dishes with each other.  Diversify your fitness routine by experiencing different workouts such as short marathon challenges fewer than 5K for charity, and joining walk/run groups.  You can also start your own challenge with family and friends, which helps to motivate you and others by making it fun.  Don’t keep the same routine.
·         Envision – Can you see the pounds coming off, the positive doctor’s report, the beautiful outfit in your closet fitting without the bugles or crossing the finish line?  How would that make you feel?  The wonderful thing about vision, it helps you to see what the future can look like.  Create a vision board or simply create a vision where your goals are firmly planted in your mind. 
Don’t give up because you have not begun the program or reached the goals you so eagerly resolved to do in 2013.  You can always start at any time realizing each day is a new beginning.  The important thing is to start.  If you fall short, pick up where you left off and begin again.  We are all in the race and everyone has an opportunity to cross the finish line.