You don’t have to wait until January 1 to get into shape—you can do it any time of the year, but the change won’t happen overnight. Keeping consistent can be hard and you will have good weeks and harder weeks making you second guess your reason for doing this. Here are four steps for creating healthy habits.
Before You Start
Write a list of reasons why you want to exercise and all the physical, social, and mental improvements you will most likely experience from starting this new habit.
Pre-Contemplative
In this initial stage you aren’t even thinking about changing your behavior, you know you want to get healthier and stronger. But chances are you have been down this road a few times and didn’t succeed so you don’t feel you can stick to it this time. Start speaking to a friend who is already exercising and ask for support and accountability when you do start.
Get Ready
Start looking at your reasons WHY you want to create this new healthy habit, stop thinking about the excuses of why not and start thinking about the why you can. Keep connecting to the WHY and this can give you more motivation to just start.
Preparation
In this stage you’re planning—you haven’t fully committed but you are thinking of all the ways you can start. Write out your intentions and start breaking them down into specific doable steps. Keep it simple—you can’t change everything all at once and have specific goals that you know you can stick to.
Action
You’ve made a commitment to start and so you need to be proud of your journey, so keep looking at how far you have come and keep motivating yourself to carry on.
