5 TIPS TO SICK TO YOUR FITNESS GOALS

It’s late May and we are nearing the end of the school year.  With teachers getting ready for summer vacation across the country we are all hanging on for dear life. We’ve finished our testing season.  The weather is getting warmer.  And the kids in our classes are starting to get more restless by the day.

Each day seems to start with a little less energy than the day before and I keep looking at my calendar as I count down the days.

I know many of us have set health and fitness goals that we are simultaneously trying to achieve.  Maybe we have a trip coming up and we are still trying to lose those pesky 15 pounds we put on over the holidays.  Maybe our doctor has told us we need to improve our health or he is going to have to put us on (another) medication.

It’s a struggle not to just put our goals on hold until the start of summer.

If you are driving the struggle bus right now here are some of the best tips  have that will help you stick to your goals as we get through the final part of the school year.

Start each day by reviewing your WHY.

It is very easy to lose sight of your goals when you are fatigued.  Will-power is like a battery and as it gets drained each day as fatigue sets in, we are less likely to think of the long term consequences of our actions.

A good way to counter this is to begin every day reminding yourself of what your goals are and why they are important to achieve.  Personally, I set a time in my phone that goes off each day at 6am to remind me to write down my goals.  My wife keeps a journal by her side of the bed, and she writes down her goals before even getting out of bed.  This is one of the easiest habits to begin because you can do it before the day gets busy.

Set an appointment for your fitness.

Do you calendar out your daily workouts?  Once I started doing this not only did I have a better completion rate, but I had more productive workouts as well.  The first step is to set the time and location for your workouts and enter it into your phone or write it on your physical calendar.

The second step is to have a plan for what the workout is.  Telling yourself you are going to the gym is not enough.  Be specific.  Take a class if you don’t know where to begin on fitness programming.  Another option is to work with a coach who has had success programming workouts for clients.  But simply bouncing around the gym from machine to machine has a low probability of getting you the results you are looking for.

Plan and prep as much of your food in advance as possible.

The single biggest variable in your success will be your relationship with food.  It’s true, you can’t outwork a bad diet.  If you know my story, then you have heard me talk about how I wasted a decade trying to just exercise more without taking control of what I was eating and drinking.

Yes, calories matter in regard to how much you are eating.  But you also need to focus on what you are eating and when you are eating.  The best way to control your nutrition is to plan out your meals for the week and prep as much of your own food as possible.  This will help you eat more whole foods and less processed and packaged food-like products.  If you simply don’t have the time, look into a local meal prep company and see if using them will help you stick to your goals even when there doesn’t seem to be enough time to cook.

Keep your sleep consistent.

It’s really easy do let our sleep patterns get erratic near the end of the school year.  Days of exhaustion are common but if we stay consistent with our sleep our body will be better at keeping our hormones that regulate our metabolism and hunger in check.

Reward yourself.

Do you give your students a reward if they reach specific goals?  For my kids the reward of getting to walk off campus to the Subway down the street for lunch was a huge motivator for completing their achieve articles.

Do the same for yourself.  Buy yourself a reward when you reach a goal.  That new swim suit or bag that you have had your eye on will be the perfect motivator to keep you disciplined enough despite the end of the school year fatigue.  It doesn’t have to be a huge reward.  Just something to keep your focus.