SUMMARY
Motivation comes and goes. The most important thing to remember is that feeling less motivated doesn’t have to keep you from reaching your health goals in the long term.
When New Years rolls around, most of us make resolutions to take better care of our health. We start out strong…for a few months. But then, we notice our progress starting to slip.
We’re at that point in the year when the road bumps to our goals start to get a little steep and we need to find better ways to keep the momentum going.
A simple “just keep going” isn’t always enough and we need practical ways to plan and stay on track.
If you’re at that point in the year where your motivation is fizzling out, we have some tips for how to stay motivated with those New Year’s resolutions.
Table of Contents
Why Your Motivation Slips
5 Easy Tips For Keeping Up With Your Goals
1. Find the ever-infamous “accountability partner”
2. Make achieving your goals more exciting
3. Set smaller, more manageable goals
4. Don’t beat yourself up over setbacks
5. Remind yourself why you wanted to do this in the first place
Why Your Motivation Slips
Motivation is fueled by a conscious drive to achieve a goal and that conscious effort can fluctuate over time.
As time passes, life gets in the way – stress, busy schedules, new relationships, and other priorities take precedence over our health. It’s hard to stay focused on a goal when its significance diminishes. Maybe that goal doesn’t feel as important anymore as it once did, even if you’d really like to reach it.
Motivation can also drop when we aren’t feeling our best. Maybe we’re in a bad mood, or we’re tired. The most important thing to remember is that one “off” day isn’t a bad thing, and the road to success just needs a long-term plan.
Sometimes mid-year goals need a refresh – and we’ve got some helpful tips on how to do this.
5 Easy Tips For Keeping Up With Your Goals
1. Find the ever-infamous “accountability partner”
You’ve probably heard this before, and it’s one of the most effective tips if you find yourself coming up with excuses to skip your healthy routine.
This doesn’t mean you need to hire a fitness coach to remind you to work out every day – though you can if that works best for you! An accountability partner can be a friend you go to the gym with, your sports teammates meeting up for weekly practice, or a partner that is willing to try healthier dinner dishes with you.
In other words, anybody that supports your healthy journey and makes the work you put in feel less like work can be considered your accountability partner.
2. Make achieving your goals more exciting
This kind of goes hand-in-hand with having an accountability partner. Doing something while having fun makes it feel easier. If that means you’re working out while you and your friend chit chat & gossip, playing a video game that encourages you to move, or doing a fitness dance class if you love dancing, it won’t feel like a workout at all!
Setting up a reward system can also make progress more enticing. Every time you meet a monthly or weekly goal, treating yourself gives you something to look forward to. Now you can justify buying that new espresso machine or those new shoes you’ve been wanting while also meeting your health goals!
3. Set smaller, more manageable goals
If you feel like the goal you’re trying to reach is easier said than done, try breaking things up into smaller, bite-sized pieces (so to speak.)
For instance, if you’re trying to lose weight, don’t think of it as an all-or-nothing until you hit your final weight loss goal. Say you want to drop 20lbs by summer. First think of a doable weekly or monthly goal and develop a plan to reach it. 5lbs a month is a lot easier than 20lbs with an indeterminable date!
Slow and steady wins the race, and if you make easy goals and small habits, eventually you’ll create consistent habits and routines that will last a lifetime longer.
Plus, if you have a game plan it’s a lot easier to track and celebrate progress. And we don’t know about you, but celebrating a dozen small victories is a lot more fun than holding off for only one, right?
4. Don’t beat yourself up over setbacks
So, you only exercised for 15 minutes today instead of your usual 40 because you were tired. That’s still progress!
First of all, you still showed up and put in work. Second, even if you decided to skip the gym entirely, that’s still not a loss. Taking care of your body means a lot more than working out. If you need to take a day off to rest, it’s what your body needs. The important thing is that you don’t give up all together – there’s always tomorrow.
Say your friends want to hang out for pizza and beers. You can still indulge in that pizza, but you compromised and had 2 slices instead of 4.
Will that undo all the work you’ve done? Probably not! Maybe you won’t lose weight that week, but you probably also won’t gain any.
And so, what if you did? Health is a journey with twists and turns, not a straight line. Don’t be so hard on yourself, just try again the next day and meet those small goals!
5. Remind yourself why you wanted to do this in the first place
Sometimes we forget why we wanted to eat better, lose weight, get stronger, etc. in the first place. “Just because” can be a reason but sometimes that isn’t enough. Remember why you wanted to start this journey in the first place.
Was it because you have a big event coming up & you want to fit into that fancy outfit you bought, or was it because you wanted to stop feeling out of breath every time you walked up a flight of stairs?
Visualize yourself with that end goal in mind & how different you’ll feel once you’re there. If it helps, mood boards and other forms of visual inspiration can provide a daily reminder so you always feel inspired to keep going.
Remember that if you stop now, you’ll never see that version of you!
