Fitness Is a Lifestyle, Not a 30-Day Challenge
The pervasive focus on instant gratification today plays right into our brains’ preference for short-term rewards over long-term achievement. So, when you finally decide to make the changes necessary to live your best fit and healthy life, you want to see results fast.
That’s what quick wins are for, as long as you’re not sacrificing your health in the short term in the process. But you also need to play the long game when it comes to living your best fit life—especially when you’re over 50, because you may be trying to change years of ingrained behaviors and habits at a time when your hormones have their own agenda.
Consider two all-to-common scenarios:
You sign up for a 30-day fitness challenge to get into better shape after years of spending more time on the couch than you’d like. You successfully sweat your way through the program, feeling more tired and achy than you’d like along the way. But then what? If you don’t have a long-term plan, you’re likely to revert to your more sedentary behaviors after the challenge is over.
You decide you want to drop the 20 pounds that menopause-related changes you chose not to address have stealthily added to your body over the past few years. You follow a two-week shred diet and drop a quick five pounds, but you’re hungry all the time, kinda grouchy, and not especially energetic. After the two weeks, all you want to do is eat an entire chocolate cake in one go. You don’t do that, but without a long-term plan, you do gain back a couple of pounds as you resume most of your previous eating habits.
Instead of making short-term sacrifices that rarely last, plan for short-term wins that lead to long-term changes and successes. Here are six ways to help to focus on healthy changes that last, rather than quick fixes that don’t.
Determine what you really want: Do you just want to drop five pounds? Or is it really that you want to eat healthier over the long term, so you have more energy to take long walks or leisurely bike rides with friends, play with your grandkids, or outgun your sibling on the tennis court at the annual family outing? When you get to the heart of what’s truly important, it’s easier to maintain a long-term focus.
Adopt a long-term mindset: Patience and perseverance are essential to your fit-life journey. If you’re looking to tone up, slim down or simply stop the weight creep, or eat or sleep better, give yourself time to make changes that will stick. If you start feeling impatient because change isn’t happening as fast as you expected or would like, reframe and focus on the gains you have made. And if you start feeling frustrated, just take the next step forward, and the next, and the next, until you’re comfortably back on your journey.
Set realistic, sustainable goals: Set goals that inspire you, so you’re excited to work toward them. But also set goals that are doable within your current priorities. (Your priorities will naturally change over time, and you can adjust your goals accordingly.) Long-term goals should be “SMART”: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. They also should be sustainable. It may be achievable and realistic for you to jog five miles four days a week, but is that sustainable with your other priorities? Perhaps three miles, three times per week is better aligned with your lifestyle over the long term.
Create an action plan: Set mid-range milestones (e.g., monthly, quarterly) and short-term goals (weekly, daily) that will help you achieve your long-term fit-life goals. What will you do—or stop doing—each day and each week? How will you measure success, so you stay motivated?
Build new habits: Don’t rely on patience, perseverance, motivation, and willpower. They all wax and wane. Build actions and habits into your daily routine to help ensure that you’ll do what you’ve promised yourself you’d do to live a more fit and healthy lifestyle. If you want to exercise in the morning, for example, put your workout clothes and sneakers next to your bed and put them on as soon as you wake up. If you want to eat healthier, you could plan some or most of your meals for the week in advance.
Enjoy the journey: When you find an activity you enjoy, it won’t feel like exercise. And when you find healthful recipes you enjoy, it won’t feel like you’re giving anything up. But if you do find yourself feeling unenthusiastic about today’s workout or this week’s food plan, reframe. Instead of thinking, “I have to _________” (exercise today, eat more vegetables, get to bed early), reframe it with “I get to __________.” It’s a powerful way of reminding yourself that you have the opportunity to choose your path forward toward your ideal fit and healthy lifestyle, and to travel that path.
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