How to Stick to Your Fitness Plan
By Ben Kallen
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Quick, what’s the most difficult aspect of your fitness program?
If you’re like most guys, it’s getting to the gym regularly and eating
right every day, even when you don’t feel like it. You’re a little
tired, the dog needs walking, they’re rerunning The Sopranos…. It’s
easy to slag off once in a while. Unfortunately, it’s the little slips
that can really eat into your progress, or even stop it.
To provide ideas about keeping a fitness program afloat when the going gets
tough, we turned to the real experts in the subject—guys who’ve been
following this advice themselves for months, years, even decades. In addition
to a number of fitness professionals and experts in the field, we asked readers
of our Web site, MensFitness.com, to tell how they keep themselves motivated
week after week, and they responded with some great suggestions. So the next
time you’re tempted to skip a workout or gorge on a bucket of tater tots,
keep these real-life maxims in mind.
Have a Purpose
1. I write down time-specific goals in my diary,
so I can see whether I have attained them when the time is up.
—Gary Lee, reader
2. I write down what I want to achieve for the
day, how I will achieve it, and check it when I have accomplished it. And I
keep the list posted on the mirror in my bathroom.
—Jason Sablan, reader
3. What helps me the most is setting up short-term
goals—I always make sure that I have certain points along the way that
I can track my progress with. This keeps me going when times are tough and I
don’t feel like working out.
—Kevin Valluzzi, in-home personal trainer and triathlete in Bergen County,
N.J.
4. I keep a daily journal of my cardio/weight-training
workouts as well as everything I eat. This holds me accountable and allows me
to chart my progress in a specific way.
—Barry Cook, reader
5. I have to make a million decisions during the
week, both at work and at home. Working out may be hard, but it’s also
an hour when I can relax and focus on one thing.
—Michael Arens, reader
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