I hope all of you are well. It feels like it has been ages since I wrote on my site! I have been very busy at school with academics, working out, working at the Wooden Center, and enjoying UCLA!
While sitting at the dinner table on Christmas Eve at my brother’s, we passed a bag of chocolate coins around and we each took a candy out of the mesh baggie and expressed either an upcoming goal or an aspiration, or one thing we are thankful for. Although most of our thoughtful speeches were about family and love, an overall theme of ours was a hoped for good health and happiness in the new-year.
Motivation waxes and wanes over the course of time. I know so many of my friends that desire to get healthy and make exercise and good eating a priority in their life, but indicate that it is easy to start a new program, but hard to maintain. However, when it comes to life-long health and fitness goals, constant dedication and commitment it needed. Just as paying the rent or mortgage for a home and buying groceries is a necessary part of life, up-keeping your body is justly the same.
I view my body as my vehicle for every day tasks and jobs. It allows me to work, play, express myself, dress-up, move, and help others. Without the proper care such as feeding my body appropriately, the vehicle (my body) wears out and cannot function the same as it has always has done before. Although the body is very resilient, waning motivation to keep it in shape can leave it with permanent damage, such as cancer, coronary heart disease, diabetes, joint disorders, etc.
As noted before, goals for the up-coming year of wellness and happiness have begun to be created and I want to help you all stay committed and motivated because health is something that you cannot buy from a box and with health you can be happy. Your health must take priority #1 in your life so that you can be all you can be for yourself and family in the year 2010 and beyond.
Advice to Heed for 2010
#1: Consistency you can stick too!
The worst plan of action you can take on Friday, January 1st, 2010 is to say, “I am going to do a 2-hour workout everyday this week and continue this until I loose these 20 pounds of excess weight!” For a person who has never stepped a foot in to the gym before, to execute this is asking for an injury and burn out within a week. A great goal for a beginner is a workout schedule that they can stick too! It's key to create goal(s) that is/are long-term and can grow, such as I am going to start working out two times this week for about an hour and I am going to stick to less processed foods this week. After choosing the days of your workouts for the week and working on eating a more wholesome diet you can then make goals for week two and slowly increase a workout and eating plan that fits into your schedule. The key is to create habits that can stick, not ones that are radical and extreme right off the bat. This is a long-term journey… Rome was not built in a day!
#2: Variety
It is important that physical activity is something interesting and enjoyable. At most gyms there is a list of classes and activities you can choose to do! Once you find something fun or a workout you like to do stick to it for two weeks and then switch it up! Variety is what keeps the mind stimulated and the body guessing. Our bodies are very efficient machines. When stress is placed upon muscles they adapt and change in order to deal with the stress and make the body strong and more efficient, however, this means once adapted, your body will work less to do the same amount of work and in order to continue to see results, the work load must change (more in up coming issues about this). For example in the gym you can increase the amount of weight, the number of repetitions, or the number of sets in order to increase the intensity of the workout and continue the process of making your muscles guess and change.
#3: Persistance
Keep going. Let’s say you set a goal, such as lose 10 pounds. Well, once you reach that peak the work does not end. Refusing to workout and feeding your body unhealthy food choice again will only restore the weight you have lost. The weight you lost expressed by a scale is merely a number that can be quick to change. It's crucial to educate yourself about your health and figure out what fuels your motivation to maintain healthy habits. Once your healthy weight is reached it is important to begin a maintenance program so that you can continue to maintain over health. Your weight is not the main criteria, here. Adopting a life-long health and well-ness plan is in need and will allow weight to be lost or gained depending on your status.
#4: Accountability
There are few people that can motivate themselves to workout regularly, year-round. That is why asking a friend to embark on a long-term healthy lifestyle program with you is key. A friend cannot only offer you support, but can also encourage you to stick to your plan when you want to quit. Motivation is a tough thing to always have especially when life happens (bad day at the office, a fight with a family member, or bad news). However, like a rent or mortgage payment, a bad day does not make the bill disappear. To save exercise for only those perfect days in the week is not the right mentality, those are merely excuses that can compromise your health. Your workout should be fun and make you feel better and be an hour or more escape from the real-world and a time to focus on yourself, decompress, and put all problems away for a bit. A friend can motivate you to do this and hold you accountable. You can also bounce ideas off each other and create workouts that use partners (more on this in upcoming blogs!) Friends just make it more fun and make it hard to quit!
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