Making a comeback on your fitness routine
A lot of us tend to have a problem with staying committed to a specific diet plan or a proper workout routine. This could be due to being busy with work, school, college, or any other personal business, which pushes us to put off the things that are essential for self-care and our health since these are the things that are the easiest to ignore. However, what we often don’t realize, or for convenience simply forget, is that these are the things that are going to benefit us in the long run and ensure a long, happy, healthy, and comfortable life for us.Emotional distress like heartbreak, loss of something important, or a major shift in the environment that can either hinder the progress we were making before, cause our routine to drastically change or act as an obstacle that seems impossible to overcome. When this happens, we are inclined to completely call it quits, label our work so far a failure, and give up.
However, I believe that in situations like this we’re too harsh with ourselves. We start comparing ourselves to others when fitness and exercise should be about ourselves only, to be better than you were the day before, to keep on moving forward even if you’re slow or not on par with those around you. As they say, failure is a part of success, the highs always come with the lows; what’s important is that you don’t dwell on it and think ahead, start working from the beginning if you have to and just move on. After all, if there’s anyone that deserves a second chance from us, it’s us, isn’t it? So we’re here to advise on what you could do and where you could start when you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom.
Steps to recognizing and overcoming your past failures
Failure can be harsh, humiliating, and pretty rough to first accept and then, to get over. But most importantly, it becomes a looming deterrent against any future efforts. So what steps should you take to prevent it from ending your journey? Well, the first thing to do is to accept it, admit that maybe it’s not working out like you intended it to be or that maybe you missed something initially or that the path you took isn’t suited to you and it’s time to look at other ways. But unless you accept the failure first, you can’t let go of it or successfully find a way to move around it; it’ll always come back. So let’s start there, once you’ve done that, it’s time to slowly overcome it. Here are some simple steps that you could follow, which might help you in getting back into a routine.
Analyze the root cause of failure
Many people are in a rush, so even when they get back up from failure, they move straight to tactics and start strategizing a plan to get back on track as quickly as possible. However, this way there’s a huge chance that they’ll repeat the same mistakes as before and fall into the same pattern that initially led them to failure.
Unless you start from the roots, recognize and understand your shortcomings or other external factors that might have played a role in the blunder before, and consider them while devising a new plan or strategy, the chances of success are meager.
Maybe you weren’t in the proper emotional state, maybe you started with too much at once, or maybe something unexpected came in the way; illness or injury that forced you to take a few steps back, or maybe you just lost motivation after a while. Whatever the reasons may be, it’s important to ponder over them and think about a solution for each of these unique problems so that you don’t have to suffer through them again.
Develop a positive mindset
There’s a famous quote, “Believe you can and you’re half-way there” and this especially rings true when it comes to developing a fitness routine. Go into it with the mindset that you can do it, it’s all under your control and it’ll all work out. Once you do that, all you’ve got to do now is take the first step, start somewhere, no matter how small, and you’ll see a path forming slowly, walk down that path one step (or in this case one exercise) at a time.
Make a schedule
Unless you devise a proper routine and stick to it, all you have are hopes and dreams without any commitment to them. To force yourself to stay in shape and maintain your physical health, make a detailed schedule in which you know what you’ll be doing at exactly what time and try to stick to it as closely as possible. Of course, any schedule that becomes a source of more stress when it’s too strict would probably aid more in demotivating you than helping you, so allow ‘buffer zones’ or free time in between tasks to account for any potential slip-ups and to give you ample time to make up for time lost doing something else. This also gives you sufficient time to relax in between different things instead of having to rush through the day.
Start changing your current habits
Instead of trying to completely change your routine, try making minor changes to your current behavior and altering your daily drill a bit to incorporate simple workout exercises in it. For example, maybe you come home in the evening, change into comfortable clothes, and then sit on the couch and watch a show. Now instead of sitting down on the couch, wear your running shoes and go for a run in your street or around the block. You’ll slowly notice that it starts forming into a permanent habit, and each of your actions is triggered by the one before it. Once your body is used to it, slowly increase the time of your run or add other things like push-ups, wall squats, etc. in your routine.
Start from the basics
When you’re starting after a long while, it’s good to lay the groundwork first, rather than jumping into more rigorous techniques. The severe workouts will tire you out quickly and leave you feeling sore, making you slowly dread and detest the actual time of workout, which can as a result make you lose interest in it and start thinking ‘maybe it’s not worth it’ or ‘maybe later’. This type of thinking is really dangerous since it not only gives you an excuse to leave this one time but also stops you from starting again sometime later.
To avoid this, start with the absolute basics like walking, running, simple stretching exercises, etc. and then move onto more difficult things. This won’t make your muscles feel sore, rather it would give that feeling of being productive and accomplishing something, making you look forward to it.
Hold yourself accountable
You’re going to have an imperfect start, and that’s ok, take your time, but what’s not okay is to keep excusing yourself over and over again on account of things like ‘not feeling like it’ or ‘feeling lazy’. Learn to be strict with yourselves and keep yourself accountable by making up for the tasks you missed. For example, if you skip your exercises one day, spend a few minutes extra on your workout for the next few days.
Envision your goals
To keep yourself constantly motivated, which would enable you to actively work through your daily exercises, keep your goals in your mind, and remind yourself daily about why you started this journey. To lose extra calories? To get back in shape? To strengthen your muscles? Whatever it is, as long as you don’t lose sight of it, you’re good to go.
Now go and take the first step!
While reading this article, I’m sure you must have thought about your own fitness goals and things you want to achieve when it comes to your body. You must have also thought about why you couldn’t do it before, what stopped you. Well, now that you have steps to maneuver through those thoughts and help you figure out the solution to the latter solution, what are you waiting for? Start mentally preparing yourself right now and hopefully everything else will follow.
Fun Facts about Fairy Floss
We all love fairy floss or cotton candy or whatever else you call it. It’s sweet, melts right in your mouth, and is the perfect snack in a festival or carnival. But did you know some interesting facts about the loved candy? Well here they are:
- It was invented by a dentist! Dr. William Morrison of Nashville along with candy maker John C. Wharton first introduced it at the 1904 St Louis World’s fair.
- The only ingredient in cotton candy is sugar.
- Cotton candy is fat-free.
- Strands of cotton candy are thinner than a human hair.
- Other than equipment upgrades and mass production, no other advancements have been made to cotton candy.
Sometimes, it’s more than just a lack of motivation or sheer laziness that stops us from progressing towards our goals. Sometimes it’s a setback from an accident, an illness, an injury,