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]]>For those who want to incorporate more cardio into their daily schedule, having a dog can help you get out and walk every single day, no matter the weather. It also makes you want to explore different places as doing the same walks every day can get boring. Vitamin D boosts your mood and just breathing in the fresh air after a day at the office can help you to get rid of any stress.
Building stronger muscles, bones, and joints are one of the major benefits of walking. While it can be hard to motivate you to start doing this regularly, when you are a dog owner you have no choice. Your dog needs to be walked to relieve itself and exercise will prevent obesity. Once you start walking every day even for 15-20 minutes it will quickly become a habit you won’t want to stop.
Walking daily is great for your mental health as it gives you time to practice mindfulness and take advantage of being outside in nature. Walking your dog also prevents your dog from doing unwanted behaviors inside the home and creates a strong bond between you and your pet.
Having a dog can also make you more sociable—you are more likely to meet other dog owners and speak to more people on your daily walks. It will also help you to feel part of a community and even start doing longer dog walks if you have people and dogs to walk with.
Walking your dog also provides time for you to train your dogs (and yourself), with lots of recall, eye contact, and other commands.
If you are looking for ways to build healthy habits, especially cardio, having a dog will really help you stay committed to your goals and feel good while doing it. You will always have a reason to walk, which will keep you motivated.
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]]>Drink More Water
Staying hydrated is essential for your body to function properly. When you wake up, before reaching for your coffee try and drink a glass of water. As we sleep we dehydrate, and hydrating first thing in the morning will help you feel more clear. Aim for at least eight glasses of water a day, and carry a refillable bottle with you wherever you go.
Make Time for Exercise
This doesn’t mean you have to spend hours at the gym every day. Instead, find ways to incorporate physical activity into your daily routine. Take a walk during your lunch break, do some stretching or yoga before bed, or take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Pro tip: Go for a walk while you’re taking a long phone call. This is a productive way to get in some steps!
Prioritize Sleep
Getting enough quality sleep is crucial for your overall health and wellbeing. Sleep is when your body does a majority of healing and repairing. Make sure to establish a regular sleep schedule and create a relaxing bedtime routine to help you wind down.
Pro tip: Make sure your room is pitch black, it will help you fall asleep much faster by increasing your production of melatonin.
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]]>What are Habits?
Habits are the routine actions that we take every day. According to research, 40% of an average day in our lives is spent performing habit-based activities! James Clear posits that the quality of our habits accounts for our happiness, success, health, and wellbeing.
How Can You Form Better Habits?
Atomic Habits offers a comprehensive guide to healthy habit formation. The key tenets of Clear’s habit-building philosophy are to start small and keep showing up! Each new habit should only take two minutes to perform, meaning you won’t be overwhelmed by the prospect of a long workout or meditation session.
How Can You Ditch Bad Habits?
James Clear suggests that motivation is overrated and that it’s actually our environment that has the biggest impact on our success. If you want to stop snacking on candy, put it somewhere out of sight. If you want to spend less time scrolling, turn your phone on silent and keep it in a drawer. You’ll be amazed at how the bad habit impulse is reduced when the visual cue is taken away.
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]]>It Models Healthy Behaviors
Every kid loves copying their parents’ actions (or words). One of the most effective ways to improve your kids’ habits is by modeling it yourself. If you’re always going somewhere else to work out, your kids won’t see it for themselves. Working out with them shows them that this is important to you, and hopefully it can become important to them as well!
Less Screen Time
Working out is a great excuse to get them away from a screen. Not only is it less screen time for the kids, but it also takes you away from a screen as well! It’s a win-win situation.
Builds a Strong Bond
Doing activities with your kids (especially away from a screen) is undoubtedly a great way to bond. Being able to share an activity that you love with them can help deepen this connection and build a healthy relationship.
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]]>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.
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]]>If you’re always trying to drink water at times where you normally drink something more “interesting”—you’ll constantly view water as a burden. The trick is to drink water at times when you’d normally be doing something completely different.
So instead of pressuring yourself to drink water while at a movie theater, when you’re in your “fun context”, drink it while you’re at work. Or while you’re on the bus. It’s usually those transition periods—the moments where you wouldn’t expect—where drinking water really shines. Before you know it, you’ll be drinking major amounts of water on the daily. And guess what, you’ll love it too.
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]]>The post How to Implement a Rewards System to Keep You Working Out appeared first on yourdailysportfix.com.
]]>Tie the Reward to the Activity
One way to ensure your “reward” is something you get specifically for working out is to make it something inherent to what you want to do. For example, maybe you stop somewhere for a snack on the way home from the gym—if you don’t go to the gym, you won’t pass that place you like, and you won’t get to eat that snack. Or maybe you plan a hike or a bike ride that ends at a beautiful lookout—you won’t get to see that view if you don’t do the work to get there.
Get a Buddy
If at all possible, find a friend or even just an acquaintance to start forming habits with you. It’s much easier to stick with a routine when someone is checking in on you or especially doing it with you. If you’ve got a buddy, you can help each other come up with good rewards and then check in to make sure the other is sticking to the agreement.
Only Rewards, No Punishments.
In conventional wisdom, the other side of the “carrot” is the “stick”. But you should never deprive yourself or feel shame for not reaching your goals, missing a workout, or even missing a lot of workouts. Shame only makes it harder to form healthy habits, not to mention being harmful to your mental health and self-esteem. Everyone progresses at their own pace, and different routines and methods work for different people. So try your best to be kind and patient to yourself, because that’s the most important part of being healthy.
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]]>Getting Enough Sleep
Given that our culture celebrates business and “hustle”, sleeping enough is often not only overlooked but sometimes even denigrated. However, lack of sleep has been associated with stress, weight fluctuation, and lowered immune system effectiveness. If you feel sick or tired a lot of the time—you probably need to put down the weights and just go to bed earlier.
Drinking Enough Water
Hydration is super important and with the popularity of reusable water bottles, it’s become a little easier to maintain. However, dehydration is still pretty common and it can lead to headaches and energy loss. Invest in a water bottle, and make sure to drink at least one bottle’s worth of water a day.
Meditation
Meditation has been shown to lower stress and anxiety. It’s nearly impossible to avoid stress in today’s world, but stress can worsen heart health, cause weight fluctuation, headaches, and more. Practicing stress-lowering techniques can help you not just mentally, but physically as well.
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]]>Get Movement Into Your Day
It’s okay to start small. Try to find moments in the day to stretch, walk around, dance a little, or any other kind of movement. This may help relieve stress and will help get your body more used to moving regularly without putting strain on it right away.
Get Out of the House When You’re Tired
Practice getting up and doing something at the time of day when you’d like to start working out. That way even when you’re feeling tired—like early morning or after work—you’ll be more accustomed to getting yourself back up and out the door.
(@iamsoogeli)Shower When You Would If Working Out
It may sound a little silly, but one thing you’ll want to get used to is showering at whatever hour you’d normally finish working out. This way, there’s one more part of the routine you’ve already worked into your schedule and you’ll be more inclined to get sweaty right before your scheduled shower.
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]]>The post 3 Ways to Turn Fitness Into a Healthy Habit appeared first on yourdailysportfix.com.
]]>Just Get Moving
The important thing about fitness is every workout counts—it’s important to just get moving. You don’t need to put aside an hour to work out. If you only have 10 minutes, you can still get a great full-body workout in. In 30 minutes, you can do HIIT, strength training, cardio, or a mix of cardio and strength.
Get Familiar With Basic Moves
When it comes to exercising, don’t make things too complicated. You just need to know basic moves like pushups, planks, squats, and lunges.
Do Workouts You Enjoy
Chances are you’re not going to love every workout. You may have to try a bunch before you find one you enjoy, but once you find it, stick with it. You’ll be more likely to exercise if you enjoy your workout.
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