Finding Your Why & Setting Goals

Finding Your Why & Setting Goals

I know a lot of people think it’s a lack of willpower or motivation that is preventing them from being healthy and active, but I really believe it’s a lack of understanding. When you know why it’s important to be healthy that’s the motivation!

You will be pleasantly surprised how easily the motivation to be more active is when you fully understand your why.

Adhering to the world’s best nutrition or exercise plan will be extremely difficult without spending some time thinking about why it’s important to you.

Finding Your Why

Identify your personal goals: What are your personal fitness goals? Do you want to build muscle, increase endurance, or improve your overall health? Knowing your goals can help you to identify reasons to exercise that are meaningful to you.

Choose activities you enjoy: Write a list of all the types of exercise that you enjoy. If you don’t have any favourites, try something new, and see if you enjoy it. People who exercise consistently for years have one thing in common, they enjoy what they are doing!

Focus on the Benefits: What benefits of exercise are important to you? If you value mental health, you might find meaning in exercise as a way to reduce stress or anxiety. If you value physical health, you might find meaning in exercise as a way to reduce your risk of chronic disease and live in a strong body for the rest of your life.

Find a sense of purpose: Exercise can give you a sense of accomplishment. Setting goals and working towards them can give you a sense of satisfaction and meaning. For example, doing workouts when you don’t feel like it and then being able to increase the reps you do or adding more weight to an exercise. Seeing progress in yourself can become addictive (in a good way).

Incorporate Exercise into Your Weekly Routine: Each week schedule your workouts into your diary at the best time for you. Do not cancel the date unless it’s an emergency! The only way to trust yourself to do things is to plan and then follow it through. If you always find a reason not to do it (and we all can do that, me included!) you erode the trust in yourself to stick to your plan. That’s how we become stuck. So, make a date and go through with it.

Parents: Do you let your children go an entire week without doing any exercise? No, then why do you make your children live an active life? Sometimes we need to parent ourselves, hard truth! You are a role model for your children, the things they see you doing become normalised to them.

Write a list on your phone of 3 meaningful reasons why it’s important for you to exercise regularly. Something like the following, be as specific and meaningful as you can:

• 1.     My non-negotiable is to do 2 strength training sessions every week. The only exception is if I am unwell or injured. This is a habit I will continue for the rest of my life, reducing my risk of serious illness and living in a strong body both mentally and physically. I want to live in a strong, healthy body and mind forever.
• 2.     I want to improve my body composition by adding muscle mass to my body and be stronger. Having more muscle mass means I am more likely to have greater strength and endurance which will make it easier to do everyday tasks, for the rest of my life.
• 3.     Be a role model to my children. Children learn by observing the behaviours of the adults around them. When I exercise regularly, I am modelling healthy behaviours that can encourage my children to do the same. If my children, see me exercising they are more likely to see that as a normal and enjoyable part of their life.

The reasons why need to be very specific to you and I would encourage you to look beyond how you look to find a deeper meaning.

Getting into a size X jeans is all well and good until you feel tired, had little sleep and you are stressed from work. If the reason why is bigger than your bad day, it will hopefully help to encourage you to at least get started with your workout x

 

Setting Goals

People who don’t understand their why and don’t set goals often see the following happen, if this is you, it’s time to set some goals:

Lack of Motivation. Without clear goals to work towards it can become very difficult to stay motivated and committed to an exercise schedule.

Fitness Plateau. Without pushing yourself to make progress, you will reach a plateau where you stop seeing improvements in your strength, endurance, and other aspects of fitness.

Inconsistency. When exercise is not a priority and there are no goals in place, it’s easier to make excuses, skip workouts or exercise less often than you said you would.

Missed Opportunities. Setting exercise goals can help you identify areas for improvement and focus on specific areas of fitness. Without goals, you may miss opportunities to challenge yourself and see what you are capable of.

Feeling Lost. When you don’t have goals, you start to question why you are exercising at all. We all have a million reasons not to move our body appropriately every single day. Having a clear vison of why and what you are trying to achieve, gives you direction and helps you to get the work done on tough days.

Setting exercise goals is important for several reasons:

Motivation. Setting specific goals can help provide motivation and gives you something to work towards. When your goals are clear in your mind, you are more likely to adhere to your exercise schedule and push yourself to achieve the goal.

Progress Tracking. Setting goals can help you to track your progress over time. Using my app, you will be able to measure your progress and see how far you’ve come which can be a great source of motivation and encouragement.

Accountability. Working towards your goals, helps you to be more accountable to yourself. By making a commitment to achieving your goals, you are more likely to prioritise exercise and make it a consistent part of your week.

Improved Performance. Setting goals can help you to focus on specific areas of your fitness such as building more muscle. Working towards a goal can improve your performance and achieve better results than without them.

Increased Confidence. Achieving your goals can help to boost confidence and self-esteem. As you reach each milestone you may feel more confident in your ability to reach other goals both in fitness and in other areas of your life.

I recommend starting with 3 fitness goals that are also connected to your why.

Your Goals for the next 3 months could be:

• 1.     Perform 10 press ups with elbows at a full 90-degree bend.
• 2.     Perform 10 Repetitions of Dumbbell Seated Shoulder Press with 2x10kg Dumbbells.
• 3.     Reduce Waist Measurement to X inches. (As a guide you could lose 1 inch per month)

We will write down where you started. For the press ups I like to film my clients at the start and then we make a diary note to retest every month and we adjust and adapt as we go.

Overall, setting exercise goals can be an effective way to stay motivated, track progress and achieve better results in terms of fitness and overall health. Without goals, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of inconsistent exercise habits and limited progress x