The need to re-motivate yourself

Do you need to re-motivate yourself? Let’s see if this sounds familiar…

It’s New Year’s Day…the start of a BRAND NEW year…a blank slate…and you are oh-so-excited to make THIS year YOUR year. You set some goals…probably some health and fitness goals like losing weight and getting in shape. You tell yourself that nothing is going to stop you this time. This time you mean it.

You start off strong…eating right and getting in some exercise…and you’re still pretty excited.

But then the end of January rolls around and the weather is pretty yucky and life just keeps happening. Perhaps you even got sick or suffered from a cold or your family has been sick and you missed some workouts and ran out of time to prep your meals.

And now it’s February and all that excitement from 50 something days ago has waned. You find yourself still wanting to achieve those same goals, but you are way less motivated to do so.

Sound familiar? Yeah, we thought so. But how do we re-motivate ourselves to get back on track? We have 4 easy tips to help you reignite that fire.

4 Ways to Re-Motivate Yourself

1.Start small. Let’s say your ultimate goal is to lose 20 or more pounds.  Although a great goal to have, it may seem daunting right now. Instead of shooting for 20 pounds, how about shooting for 10 or even 5 or maybe even just 1 pound in the next week. Breaking a larger goal down into smaller goals sets us up for success. We feel more accomplished when we can check items off of our to-do list. Imagine how great it would feel if each week you checked off “Lose 1 pound”. In less than 5 months, you will have achieved your goal of losing 20 pounds…just in time for summer!

2. Reward yourself. All too often we punish ourselves for not doing something. We won’t buy ourselves that new outfit or those new shoes or go to that nice restaurant because we haven’t lost the weight we wanted to lose. But punishing ourselves doesn’t exactly make us feel very good (remember how you used to feel when your parents would ground you or you got those detentions in school?), and we aren’t exactly motivated to do ANYTHING if we don’t feel so good. Instead of punishing yourself, REWARD yourself. Did you follow your meal plan all week? How about a manicure or a new lipstick? Did you workout like you said you would this week? How about a new book to read or some new running socks? Your rewards don’t even have to cost money. How about rewarding yourself with 30 minutes of alone time at the park? You will feel more motivated to reach your goals when you have something to work toward…something tangible that is not food related (or related to the scale).

3. Get accountability. The more other people know about your goal, the more accountable you will feel. If you know that people are going to be “watching,” you will more likely stick to your plan. Join a Facebook group or share your journey on social media. Get a coach or join a workout club or hire a trainer. The more visible you make your goal, the more likely you won’t drop it. Plus, it helps to have the encouragement of others working on their health and fitness too. You can share struggles and successes and tips.

4. Outsource tasks. Research shows that food is 80-90% your results when losing weight or shaping up, and for people who have meal prepped before, food can feel like it sucks up 80-90% of your time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can hire a meal prep service like Prepped Girl to help you keep your health and fitness goals on track. Prepped Girl makes all of their meals from wholesome, nutritious ingredients and delivers them to your door Sunday morning. That way, you don’t have to spend all your precious free time in the grocery store and the kitchen prepping your food, but you will still be good to go come the start of your work week. You can also outsource household chores (like hiring a house cleaner) to free up some time so you CAN get to the gym or go for that run.

Achieving your health and fitness CAN be doable if you find the right ways to re-motivate yourself!