By Timothy J Murphy, CAE

The strategy to improve your health and well-being – whether you need fat/weight loss, muscle building, toning, strength improvements, or just general overall wellness – requires more than moving and working your body. Your mind needs to come along on that journey, too. Without the mental clarity needed to focus on your fitness goals, your success can become elusive.

I come to you on this topic from experience, as I made the same common mistakes most of us have made. We start to realize our fitness goals only when we eliminate certain negative mindsets and carry only useful ones. Here I will present to you eight solid strategies for honing the mental side of your health and fitness plan.

1. Don’t start out revving full throttle. Your mind wants you to succeed immediately, but that’s not the way life works sometimes. You have to start somewhere, but you shouldn’t begin your journey with goals and habits that take time and practice to achieve. This will only lead to feeling defeated. In other words, start slowly, and steadily build your stamina and abilities. Need to achieve 10,000 steps a day? No problem. Begin by nailing 2,000, then 3,000, and work your way up. This is the same strategy employed by competitive runners; they train their way up to greater distances, and don’t start out with a 13- or 26-miler!

2. Celebrate all successes – no matter how small. Anything worth having is not going to come overnight, and that fact can be discouraging sometimes. Celebrate every success along the way, and feel good about what you’ve done. Didn’t lose 3 pounds this week, but only lost 1? Hey, you’ve trended the right way, even though it wasn’t as much as you thought it should be. You still won!

3. Enjoyment must be part of the journey. If you stack up activities you really enjoy, you’ll do them more and with higher energy. Prefer yoga over other activities? Go for it. Enjoy walking but not a fan of running? Get out and walk as much as you can. Identify enjoyable activities and do them often.

4. Make fitness and a healthy lifestyle an actual part of your identity. This is a cue I’ve taken from Dr. Sharon Gam, personal fitness coach and exercise enthusiast. You can go from “I need to work out” to “I move a lot and stay active because I’m a fit and healthy person.” If you see your future self in the mirror, keep that vision with you. Pretty soon it gets real.

5. Deal with setbacks and obstacles in a healthy way. So you over-ate, and you did it with all the wrong foods. You missed workouts for a variety of reasons. You couldn’t get off the couch for 2 days. It happens to all of us. This is no time to beat yourself up over it. Learn what triggered the negative situation, and you’ll avoid it in the future. One setback won’t erase all your progress!

6. Remember that you’re naturally a social being. Some people may enjoy going it alone, but that never worked for me. I am motivated by others, so I like exercising with my friends. They keep me encouraged, and the activities are much more enjoyable. I can run a long race by myself, but I wouldn’t enjoy it at all. Engaging exercise activities with others gives me energy and drive I don’t always have when I’m alone.

7. Obsession is never a good approach…to anything, especially fitness. I’m guilty of this (or at least I used to be). In the beginning of my journey, I was so strict with the “rules” that I lost sight of the end game. This only kills the joy that should be a very real byproduct of your plan. Gained a pound or two? It happens; you’ll be back on track tomorrow. Get disappointed for 30 seconds and then get over it. Nutrition and exercise “rules” are helpful guidelines, but unwavering adherence to them is a mood killer.

8. Utilize movement and physical activity as your natural “vibe” enhancer. You don’t need weird supplements or “brain fuel” products found in the drug store and on sketchy web sites. You need to move a lot, lift heavy things, and seek everyday sources of exercise, like taking stairs over elevators, walking the airport instead of sitting at the gate, parking in the back of the parking lot, and just spending time outdoors. Good exercise releases natural mood-enhancing chemicals in your brain, like endorphins and dopamine, which create a sense of accomplishment, calm, and happiness.

Focusing your energy on your fitness goals means clearing out the unnecessary “noise” and other distractions that can plague us if we let them. A positive mindset can drive your body to do what it needs to achieve success. You’ll enjoy your journey more, learn great lessons along the way, and your healthy changes will last a lifetime!

The preceding was a guest post from one of our clients, Tim Murphy. In 2014, Tim’s doctor shook him up when he said, “I’m just going to be blunt. You’re too fat. You’re too young to be this fat. You’re not in good shape. You have to do something! You’ve got to get the weight off.”

As an avid listener of WIBC, Tim had heard about Exercise Inc and decided to check it out. When he first learned about the 20-minute workout once a week, he was skeptical. But he decided to give it a shot.

Since then, Tim’s lost over 90 pounds and improved several other key health metrics. More importantly, Tim’s been able to keep the weight off and continually improve his health and fitness for more than 10 years.