‘Resolution’ may be the word which best describes an effective approach to walking to lose weight!
New Year’s Resolutions
I just love this blog post about gym membership and New Year’s Resolutions! which also applies to walking to lose weight. I have been a gym member for a number of years and switched gyms a year ago. I am non-regular in my attendance as I use its services to supplement my walking and activity program. When I feel the need (as I do now) to increase my weight loss, I start attending more frequently…
I have decided I am ready, having achieved a good steady program of regular walking and 10000 steps a day, to make it more fun by adding in variety. So the gym is going to see more of me for the next, I don’t know, six weeks. This blog describes the horror of regular gym users when the post Christmas crowd descends on the gym to temporarily clutter the environment. I have found that this also happens throughout the year but I suspect she’s right about the New Year’s resolutions as well. I did it that way many times before I became disillusioned with the excited approach. Now I try for the joyful approach! Enthusiasm helps you get started and keep going initially but for the long term, remember to practice determination with joy.
How To Be Resolute!
This blog post is amusingly true and the suggestion of getting started now is a good one. It requires a lot of things to make fitness or weight loss happen if you’re starting from scratch or not far off. A burst of enthusiasm is not going to do it on its own. Get started the right way! Set yourself up for success!
Be very certain of the reason for your weight loss or exercise effort. Pay attention to how you are seeing what you are doing. Are you dreading the activity? Do you want instant results? Are you prepared to be happy with short term success i.e. reduce a dress size ot two for a special event and then put it back on?
If you have thought beyond the weight loss result – to the desire to maintain or continue reducing- then you will require a long term approach. If you are only focussed on a specific result e.g. to pass a fitness test or look good in a wedding photo, and can go flat out over several weeks, you will probably succeed and then put back on even more than you took off, after the event.
Either way, see yourself as successful (generally) when you want to achieve something. You are prepared to do what is necessary and make it fun, doable and effective. Believe that this is possible and know that at times the memory of your positive belief is the only thing which will keep you going.
In other words you keep on coming back, to the gym, because you know even though it isn’t obvious right now, it does what is expected of it. Find those activities, events and options which are attractive to you because you already have a predisposition to do them. Join a workout group if you like group activities. Get a trainer if you like individual attention, not if you prefer to hide at the back of the class.
You can, however, develop, given the time, knowledge of the gym, the trainers, the classes and different pieces of equipment which will help you orchestrate a fulfilling program. For long term success, remember that this is a relationship. Take the time to get to know it. Let the gym be what it is. Put up with the typical idiosynchracies of this type of exercise program.
Most of all, be resolute! Be very, very resolute!
