Reignite your passion for fitness

There are many reasons to love fitness. It boosts your mood, keeps you healthy and gives you focus, among many other reasons. Of course, despite these, it’s also easy to not love fitness; exercising takes up time, and it’s hard work. However, whether you like it or are trying to, exercise is important for your health and should be a part of your normal routine. If your fitness levels have fallen, or if you’re looking to get back into fitness, then changing your outlook can get your motivation back up.

Many people fall into the trap of exercising way more than they should in fear of losing their momentum and hard work, thinking their at risk of going back to their old habits. It takes a lot to reach a state of overtraining, but if you feel exhausted, tired and unmotivated to train, that should be your first warning sign to change your routine.

The three main reasons you may be experiencing a loss of motivation:

• Your nutrition isn’t supporting your activity 
• Your recovery is poor
• Your routine got boring 

How you can reignite your love for fitness:

1. Have a De-load Week

If exercising is becoming a chore, you won’t be giving it all the effort it deserves for a start, and you won’t be able to keep this up for much longer once this feeling sets in. So just stop for a week, two at most and spend your free time doing things you enjoy. If you feel like you need some to be active, take long walks or try yoga. This rest period will give your body a time to recover and should make you look forward to getting back to your routine and setting new goals.

2. Tweak Your Diet

If you’re feeling de-motivated with your physical results, it may be that your diet needs adjusting slightly to achieve this and see a difference. If you are calorie counting, consider re-calculating your calorie intake based on your activity levels and adjust this to what you want to achieve. If you prefer not to calorie count and don’t have enough energy throughout the day, or the opposite and feel too full to train, try adding or decreasing a handful of carbohydrate-rich foods at mealtimes for a week to see how it effects your levels.

3. Get More Sleep

Running on less than the recommend hours of sleep will eventually catch up to you. Sleep is a major part of the recovery process, it gives your body time to recover, conserves energy, and repairs and builds the muscles you worked during intense sessions. Without sleep, exercise won’t deliver the same benefits, and you won’t have the energy or mindset to do it after a restless night. If you struggle to get a full 7-8 hours of sleep, try having short power naps in the day. Cutting back on caffeine in the afternoon may also help with your sleep, as well as a few other changes (https://castore.com/blogs/journal/sleep-has-your-regular-sleeping-pattern-been-thrown-off-track).

4. Find a New Sport or Class

Loving what you do is the key for long-term fitness success and sustainability. If you have fallen out of love with your current routine, look for other options and try new things. If you stay active, you will progress towards your fitness goals regardless of the activity. It doesn’t even have to be tough, just make sure it’s fun for you. Try a fun dance workout, a HIIT or a new sport altogether and see how you feel after one or two sessions.

5. Find a Training Partner 

Often it can be hard to motivate yourself and stick to a regimen on your own. Find someone who is just as serious about hitting their fitness goals as you are and you’ll quickly find that you are motivating each other to keep going, this will also make you accountable and keep both of you wanting to do better.

Turn exercise into a habit

According to experts, it takes around 66 days for something to become a habit. So if you find that you give up on new fitness routines easily because you’re not seeing results or you’re becoming bored, why not give yourself the 66 day target instead? This is a short timeframe to work toward. You might still not be in love with exercise by that time, but chances are you’ve made it a part of your normal routine and will be likely to keep it up. Some tips for making exercise a habit include:

• Stick to a time of day. Some prefer morning, others evening workouts, make it works around your daily schedule.
• Set a goal. Have a goal in mind that you want to hit, such as x amount of workouts a week or a certain number of miles run, etc, and adjust these weekly.
• Set reminders for yourself to do exercise.
• Get inspired by others - follow people that make you feel good about exercising and motivate you to do the same
• Try everything - Trying as many different exercises as you can will help you to see the variety that’s out there and could lead you to something that you love. 

For more advice: see our other blogs https://castore.com/blogs/journal

#BetterNeverStops​