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One of the biggest struggles of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is getting and keeping motivated. I played football in high school and this got me into weightlifting. For most of my life I was on and off with weightlifting. I struggled doing much more than that. But I was up and down in weight a lot. My highest weight was 275 pounds, and this was when I was diagnosed with diabetes. For years I had been telling myself that I needed to find a way to become healthier. I believe that diabetes was my answer to this thought. Do I wish I didn’t have diabetes, well of course I do, but being diagnosed with a disease that forces you to change your eating habits is not the end of the world? I have taken that obstacle in my life and turned it around to a positive reason to maintain my health.
So, what do we do when we don’t have a reason or a purpose to change and get healthy? The first step is creating a mindset that you are going to do something about it. When you finally decide what you are going to do, how your going to change and set some goals, start off slow. One of the biggest mistakes I made in my years was setting these huge goals and then burning out in the first week. I see this with other people all the time, set those New Year’s resolutions and by February that is over. Start slowly into whatever you have decided, whether weight loss, eating habits or exercising, the more we ease into things the better chance we will have at success.
The next big thing is to follow through, if you blow your eating for a day, the next day get right back at it. The same with our exercise program, if we miss a day, then the following day we hit it again. Don’t let the couch call you in night after night. I have had so many friends that set these huge goals, then fail right off the bat and then they give up. These two thoughts are the main things that helped me as I started down my path, but remember I had the scare of diabetes behind me.
One thought is to celebrate your successes, keeping a consistent exercise plan, eating good for a few weeks, whatever the success is recognize it with something. Buy a new item for your exercising, try a new healthy treat, or get a massage, do something for yourself.
I have an app that I track my exercise, carbs, glucose reading and blood pressure, I find that this helps me stay on my goal. I think anyway of tracking your progress is a great tool to help motivate you. It also shows the progress that your making. In the beginning with my diabetes, I was told to track everything, write things down and journal what helps and what doesn’t. Of course, I didn’t do this for a long time, but when I finally starting testing different apps and looking for something to help me, I found that the tracking really helped.
One of the last things and probably one of the most important, MAKE YOUR HEALTH AS IMPORTANT AS ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE. But is our health more important than our family? Well if you don’t have your health you may not be around for your family. This doesn’t mean to only exercise and forget your family, this means make the time to be healthy for them. Make time to be healthy to perform your work, whatever the subject, family, work, hobbies ect, make time to eat healthy, to exercise and improve your health. This is one of the best motivations you can have and you can do this as a family and then you are all on the same goal.