Health Mindset: Repositioning your relationship with health

 In Health & Wellness, Training Tips

Do you attend the gym ‘properly’ for two weeks and then have a little holiday? What about your food intake – super healthy for a while until you have earnt yourself a cheat day/week?

1. Understanding Fitness Motivation

Given the media and online perception of health and wellbeing, it’s easy to see why we all feel like there’s a bunch of things we should be doing.

This might be cutting out sugar, eating clean and religiously following an exercise regime. But yet, when we think like this, exercise and health is psychologically positioned as a chore.

This can set you up for failure because inevitably… life gets in the way.

2. Mindsets Matter!

If you on again-off-again diet or attend the gym, you may need to reframe how you feel about exercise and movement in general to address the ‘problem’ you have with motivation.

However, you’re not alone! Humans are programmed to seek instant gratification. And modern technology also reinforces this.

Willpower can be quite powerful but it is finite, so as we get busy, often our workouts and diets get depleted if they are seen as something we need to control.

3. Mental skills to improve your health

Those who have struck a good balance, hold a very different meaning in their life for exercise.

This is related to some complex psychology, but essentially means that exercise and being active is not about punishing yourself or ‘being good,’ but rather a means to increase the quality of your everyday life – through increased energy, strength and mobility and not only the long term, often abstract, goal down the track.

It’s tricky to shift your mind to truly believe ‘I get to run on the treadmill today,’ recasting exercise as a gift rather than a type of chore. So, instead, a good place to begin reconfiguring your relationship to fitness is to think about your motivation.

4. Find your motivation!

Ask yourself, why are you working out?

Are your goals are high level and long term, such as ‘lose weight?’ If so, it’s time to break them down into more immediate and attainable steps that you can relate to your everyday. This can help to reframe how you feel about exercise and ultimately address the motivational issues you’ve been having.

5. Goal Setting and Your Body

SMART Goals

Your trainer might suggest developing some SMART goals to specify easier (well easy-ish) steps to take in order increase your ability to accomplish your fitness goals.

Short term goals

Short term goals define the behaviour you’ll need to undertake to get there in a simple format. Having support to change the way you think about exercise to be an opportunity rather than chore, has been shown to increase your likelihood of actually doing it. Which in turn ‘improves’ your motivation.

Group Goals

That increased likelihood of success is especially true if you’re actively involved in a fitness community, like here at South Pacific. You can find a Melbourne Gym and Health Club here with a friendly community and group classes.

Local Melbourne Gyms which understand a health mindset

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