The 10 Secrets to Sticking to a Fitness Program

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Brian Rideout, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

I’ve struggled with my weight all of my life. I’ve had times in my life where it would come off very quickly, only to have it come back again, and then I’ve had other stretches where all I seemed to be able to do is gain weight, no matter how hard I tried. Since I started working as a Life Coach, however, I found that many of the principles I learned to help other people meet their goals could be applied to my personal struggle with my body weight. In the past several months I have been building muscle, burning fat, and keeping it off.

I looked at what I have been doing differently and made a list of ten things I find have helped me the most in my battle against the bulge.

*_1. Have your Thyroid Checked_. *

If you are having trouble losing weight, or seem to gain it at the drop of a hat, then it might be more than just a matter of eating less and exercising: you might have a problem with your endocrine system. Thyroid problems – along with a number of other endocrine disorders – have become widespread in our society thanks to a change in our overall lifestyle.

Talk to your doctor about ruling out a medical condition if you are having trouble losing weight. In some cases it might be impossible to lose those extra kilos without some medical assistance. Finding out early whether or not you need medical help losing weight can help you avoid a lot of frustration.

2. Set a Meaningful Goal.

Saying you “want to lose weight” is rarely a good enough incentive to lose it and keep it off. An effective goal is a lot more complex than that: you need to know what you are going to gain from losing the weight.

Start by imagining yourself at a healthy weight and at a state of high physical health. Imagine what it will look like. Imagine what your new wardrobe will look like when you can get rid of all the clothes that have become too big for you. Listen to some imaginary compliments on how attractive and fit you are. Feel how it will feel for all the knots in your back to be gone and for you to move freely. Imagine the smell and taste of fresh fruit and fresher air that will come with your healthier lifestyle.

If at all possible, also consider how losing weight will help you reach all of your other goals. For me, it really helped to consider how it would help my business if I had fewer sick days due to neck pain and migraines, and how a healthier, more attractive body would make it easier to spice up my marriage.

It helps to know a little about your own habits as well: especially how you measure weight. Having a goal weight to reach by a specific time helps some people, but it stresses others out. Some might have an old pair of pants they want to fit into, or a belt notch to reach instead. Know what makes a goal that means something to you and that you are comfortable with.

Write out your goal, including the imagination exercise I described somewhere where you can visit it once in awhile. One of the tricks of a good goal is that it focuses only on positives: don’t mention the things you don’t want, but rather focus on the things you do. If your weight causes you back pain that you are hoping will disappear with the weight, mention a “strong, flexible, comfortable back” rather than “no back pain.”

2. Take Positive Action.

Find ways to commit yourself to the goals you have in a meaningful and active way. Create a poster or piece of art to remind yourself of your goal, or read it out into a microphone so that you can listen to it regularly. If it helps you to do so, write affirmations or update your journal after every exercise period.

The idea here is to keep reminding yourself that you do want to lose the weight and why you want to do so. This should be something you can do or see every day – first thing. Like with a written goal, focus on the positives of becoming thinner and healthier.

I know a few women who got a dress or a bathing suit a little too small for themselves and made plans to fit into it: they kept it where they could see it, and when their goal time time came they had no problem fitting into it.

3. Find a Coach.

It really helps to have someone to encourage you, remind you of your goals, and hold you accountable while you are trying to lose weight. Depending on how hard you find it to stick to a plan this can be anything from a friend who asks you how you are doing once a week to a daily exercise partner, to a personal trainer or professional fitness coach. If you find yourself feeling lonely or bored with your exercise routine, you should be able to rely on your coach to listen, encourage, and find new ways to challenge you to help you stick with it.

4. Avoid “Dieting.”

Some Diets work – up to a point, but only if you are willing to sacrifice time, money, and a lot of energy into them. If you are having trouble sticking to a fitness plan, however, having to buy fancy foods, eat in every night, and cook constantly is likely going to kill any motivation you have. You also have to remember that the dieting industry exists to sell books and name-brand food products – not to help you lose weight; some of the diets out there are unhealthy and unreasonable: they only work when you’ve bought all the videos or books that give you enough recipes, tips, and caveats to make it bearable.

It is far more practical to keep to some basic rules of thumb:

 Smaller portions will help you lose weight.
 Cut back on fat and increase the fibre.
 Eat within a half hour of waking up.
 Skipping meals puts your body in “starvation mode” and prevents weight loss.
 Eat something you enjoy (healthiness be damned!) at least once every few days.
 Empty calories like soda just aren’t worth it, and juices are great alternatives.
 Fruit is always good.
 Avoid anything sweetened with non-hydrogenated corn syrup.
 Certain things, like white bread and rice, just make you hungrier later: avoid them.
 Find out if you are a “three meals” person or a snacking several times a day person.

Working out regularly and eating less are hard enough in a hyperactive, information-overload, and overworked culture without burdening yourself with a hundred rules and boring meals that make you feel like a prisoner in your own home.

5. Hydrate!

Most people in first-world countries live in a perpetual state of dehydration. When you are dehydrate your metabolism slows down, you have reduced energy, and you build up toxins in your body. By keeping yourself hydrated you ensure that you are getting the best results from your fitness program.

Most people will tell you to drink about six glasses of water a day in order to keep hydrated, but this is a deceptive rule because we do so much to dehydrate ourselves. Again here are some rules of thumb:
 Start with a goal of drinking six glasses of water in a day.
 Drink an extra glass for every hour of hard exercise you get.
 Drink an extra glass for every cup of coffee you drink, because coffee is a diuretic.
 Drink an extra glass for every can of soda you drink, because it is basically salt water.
 Drink an extra glass every time you have a really salty snack.
 Don’t count drinks like tea or juice as water.
 Sports drinks make a lot of clams and deliver: they don’t count as water, either.

If you are properly hydrated ,your urine should be almost perfectly clear and colourless.

6. Work Out at Home.

The fitness club industry (with a few notable exceptions) is, much like the dieting industry, not about helping you lose weight, either. Their goal is to get you to sign up for an automatic debit from your bank account: then they try not to give you any incentive to actually come in, because they know you will keep paying out of embarrassment when your plan falls through.

If you are one of the fortunate few who find long power walks appealing, and live in a place where the winter is brief and mild, the only equipment you really need is a decent mp3-player and sneakers. A gym is probably a waste of your time. If, like me, you live in a place that is buried in snow half the year, and has chilly winds that will cut through anything but a gore-Tex parka, walking (or bicycling or rollerblading) will not be enough to help you:

While it may seem expensive, it will save you a lot of money in the long run to head down to Zellers, Target, or Wal-Mart and pick up some exercise equipment at home. I recommend elliptical machines for someone just starting out on an exercise program, and graduating to dumbbells or rowing machines later on. Put them somewhere where they get some sun when you are planning to work out. With the exercise gear right there, you will have a harder time making excuses or being prevent from working out due to the weather. You’ll have also invested in something that will not only help improve your health, but you’ve performed some positive action towards maintaining your plan.

7. Keep it Exciting!

You may be wondering why I am advocating getting workout gear for people who don’t walk, rather than encouraging the to save their money and do some sit-ups and pushups. The reason is pretty simple: those are boring, not to mention frustrating, and difficult when you are just starting up your fitness program. The simple fact is that if you aren’t stimulated by your workout you will not stick with it long enough to benefit.

One way to keep it exciting might be to enter into something with a strong cultural context like the martial arts where you will learn meditation, cultural history, some philosophy, and a smattering of another language. Another option that only works for people who are competitive might be to join a sports league, like a local basketball, tennis, football or lacrosse team. If you do any of these, however, be sure that your dojo or team has a good leader who cares enough to call, and that it is a highly active process. Some sports leagues, like curling, bowling, or golf might be fun, but they may not offer you the exercise you are looking for.

Another method is to give yourself a good distraction. If you are working out at home, you can buy a series you enjoy on DVD or load some videos onto your i-pod and watch them as you work out. I do want to add a caveat about sensor-based video games like “Wii Fit”, however – while they are fun, they do not provide nearly as much exercise as they purport to do. They might be useful for a warm-up or cool-down, but I would not make them your primary exercise regimen.

8. Reward Yourself.

Strangely, this is often the hardest part of ensuring that an exercise program succeeds for most people. When you reach milestones, whether you measure them by belt holes, 5 kilogram increments, one month of exercising without skipping a day, or turning up the resistance on your elliptical because the current workout isn’t challenging you enough you should congratulate and reward yourself for it.

The reward can be anything from a new CD to a day at the spa, but make sure it is something you don’t o for yourself all the time, and something you really enjoy. Make sure you tell yourself out loud why you are rewarding yourself, too, so it sinks into the less observant parts of your mind. And make sure those rewards are often enough to be meaningful, too. A reward once every three or four months is hardly enough to keep you going back to the workout, while once a week is too often to really feel like rewards unless you are normally the sort of person who has a hard time giving yourself credit for even big accomplishments.

When you reward yourself you tell your mind “this is important to me, I like where it is going, and I want to keep it up.” if you don’t reward yourself once in awhile your mind will eventually pick up on it and interpret it to mean “this is a routine that I think is necessary, but doesn’t make me happy and doesn’t give me anything I value.” Once that thought has been cooked up by your subconscious it wiill find was to sabotage you.

9. Replace Bad Habits.

Quitting bad habits is never as easy as simply not choosing to do something you are used to doing. The “pure willpower” trick doesn’t work… even for most people who seem to have an iron will. If you want to eliminate a habit you need to replace it with something that is equally pleasurable, and similar enough that your brain might make the connection.

If you have a habit of eating unhealthy snacks, get rid of them and snack on fruit or yoghourt instead. If you tend to drink empty soda calories, replace them with fruit juices or herbal teas. If you indulge in desserts too often, consider following dinner with a sweet tea of decaf coffee. If you find yourself skipping workouts because you are vegging in front of the morning show, consider listening to the news by radio and making a healthy breakfast instead.

If you can keep any habit change up conscientiously for about six weeks it will become a habit. Likewise if you can avoid doing something for six weeks, you will find it isn’t your habit anymore. If you have a coach they can help you kick just about any habit if you just ask them to ask you how it’s going once in awhile and call attention when you backslide.

Just remember that habits involving addictive substances like nicotine require a lot more work to break, and a gradual reduction of the drug. You may want to talk to a doctor about finding healthy means of reducing before you replace those habits altogether.

10. Throw out the Scale!

A lust for results can make us impatient and frustrated. Once you start on a fitness plan, there is a terrible temptation to check your weight every day to see how you are doing. The problem is that while goals tied to a specific weight are very likely to succeed because they are so specific, you can get tied up in confusing numbers.

During the first months of a fitness program you are building muscle and your weight can actually increase even though you are losing mass. Deceptive things like water retention during menstruation, sudden changes in body salt, and even the time of the day can change the readings and distort your perception of the program.

If you have gotten frustrated at fitness programs before because they weren’t showing up at the scale, and you were feeling like you were wasting your time, it may be a good idea to just get rid of the scale. Visit a local medical clinic to be weighed, or have weigh-ins with your coach on a regular basis: every two or three weeks will give you a chance to actually see some results.

When you don’t focus on the numbers, and instead focus on making sure to get the exercise and eat right, you just might find that you will enjoy the whole process a lot more.

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