Exercise is absolutely crucial to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. Approaching it in the right way will help you be successful. Developing good exercise habits can help with this.
Make Sure Your Goals are Realistic
The best habit that you can establish when exercising is to set realistic goals. This can help for two reasons. One, it can help you mentally. Set short-term, achievable goals along your journey. This will give you many more reasons to feel you are succeeding. Celebrating your successes will motivate you to keep going. If you feel as if you have to move a mountain in order to be successful, then sticking to a workout routine is much more challenging.
Secondly, having realistic goals can help you avoid injury. If you attack a heavier weight before you are ready or push yourself to run when you’re more in a condition to start out walking, you are much more susceptible to hurting yourself. Instead, start at a weight that is just hard enough to make your body work with the goal of working your way up to heavier weights and more repetitions. Walk until you’re ready to jog. Jog until you are ready to run. Celebrate reaching each goal.
Tackle Your Allergies
What do allergies have to do with exercising? A great deal, actually. Allergy flare ups can stop you from exercising because it’s simply miserable to exert yourself if you’re having trouble breathing due to congestion and runny noses. There are over-the-counter antihistamines that can help with outdoor allergies like hay fever or indoor allergies like pet dander. Or, talk with your doctor about the best medication to help. Another way to deal with your allergies so that you can exercise indoors is to detoxify the air in your home with a dehumidifier. Developing a healthy habit to mitigate your allergies is a great way to keep your head clear so that you can eliminate this roadblock to working out.
Eliminate Excuses Not to Go to the Gym
After a long day at work or after a night of restless sleep, it is easy to talk yourself out of going to the gym. A simple habit to eliminate this excuse is to pack your gym bag the night before so that you have no excuse not to go. Another great tip is to have a gym buddy. Have a schedule where you exercise together and keep each other accountable.
Here are some other great habits to adopt to lose weight and keep it off.