Tips to Achieve your Health and Fitness Goals

16th May 2022

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Many of us have a vision of our dream body or fitness level. Common targets that we see:

Weight on a scale
Fitting into a favourite pair of jeans
Running a personal best time in a running race
Exercising a specific number of days each week
Building up to running a specific distance (such as 5 Kilometres)

To help keep you motivated and focused on your health and fitness journey, sweat the small stuff! Shorter term goals can help keep you on track and give you reason to celebrate your progress on your journey.

Download Hutton Health’s free GOAL SETTING WORKBOOKto help set SMART goals that can help your achieve health and fitness success.

Here are 7 tips to achieve your health and fitness goals:

1. Consistency is key

Discipline is more important than motivation. There are days when motivation will be in short supply. In order to make progress with your health and fitness goals, you need to have the discipline to stick to your plan even when you may not ‘feel’ like it.

Keep the momentum going by doing something instead of nothing at all on the days when you are struggling to find the time or motivation to push yourself.

The expectation of perfection can hold you back from achieving your health and fitness goals. Listen to your body and leave room for change in your program and your journey.

If you expect perfection of yourself, it can keep you in the ‘all or nothing’ mentality; where it is easy to stay on the sofa watching Netflix and eating take away on the days when you are mentally or physically exhausted.

Consistency is key to achieving your health and fitness goals

2. Call yourself out on your excuses!

Hold yourself accountable and stop making the same excuses repeatedly.

Do you continually miss a workout because you are too tired after dinner to head out the door?
Do you end up eating pre-packaged meals because you don’t have time to cook?
Do you slow down your pace when you are running or walking because you start to feel tired?

Stand up to your excuses! You are stronger than your excuses!

stand up to your excuses

Make sure your actions align with your health and fitness goals. It is easy to make excuses why you can’t stick to your plan each day, but allowing your excuses to hold you back from taking purposeful action will keep you from achieving your goals. The small actions that you take each day add up to big changes over time. Calling yourself out on your excuses can take you on the path to health and fitness success over time.

3. Don’t stop when things get uncomfortable

True health and fitness change happens out of your comfort zone. If you constantly take the same actions…

Walking or running the same distance at the same speed
Lifting the same weight for the same number of reps
Eating the same amount of the same convenient foods each day

you can expect to achieve the same results.

Show up for yourself even when it gets hard and be committed to the process. Following a progressive plan will allow you to push yourself out of your comfort zone safely. Working with a health and fitness coach will provide you with a program that will help you move from that comfort zone toward your health and fitness goals.

4. Plan ahead

Whether it is with your training or nutrition, be prepared and don’t just ‘wing it’. Having a fitness program to follow can fuel your motivation and can keep you on track to help you progress toward your health and fitness goals. It is difficult to have the willpower to push yourself to exercise if you don’t have a plan. ‘Winging it’ also keeps you from progressively moving toward your goals.

Planning ahead can mean different things depending on your current mindset:

Setting your clothes and shoes out before you go to bed to make it easier to wake up for an early exercise session or run
Having a structured plan can give direction and purpose to your workout
Planning your meals can help you ensure you have the ingredients on hand for the week, making cooking at home easier
Packing a water bottle with you throughout the day can ensure you stay hydrated regardless of your schedule

nothing changes if nothing changes.

5. Don’t compare yourself to others

It is essential to focus on your own journey. The progress and success of others can be a source of inspiration for further action, but it is not an indication of how you ‘should’ be progressing. Every body is different and will respond to a program differently.

Comparison can kill your motivation and steer you from recognising the small successes on your personal health and fitness journey.

6. Stop looking for a quick fix

As cliché as it sounds, improving your health and fitness is a journey and there are no short cuts to sustainable change. The long way to improving your health and fitness is often the shorter way, as:

Weight that is lost too quickly is difficult to keep off
Exercise programs that are too intense can make you more prone to injury
Our eating and exercise habits have formed over a long time, it takes time and sustained effort to retrain our minds and bodies
Extreme diet and exercise programs are exhausting and not sustainable for the long term

Be prepared for your health and fitness gains to take longer than you initially may have thought.

7. Don’t let the numbers on a scale dictate your emotions

Attaching yourself to your weight can cause you to panic and struggle mentally if the scale fluctuates. No weight loss or health journey is linear, so it is normal for the numbers on the scale to vary throughout your journey. The scale is just one way to measure your health and fitness progress.

Read Hutton Health’s blog, Non-scale ways to track weight loss

Focusing on achieving your health and fitness goals keep you accountable for your progress. Finding a workout partner or hiring a trainer can keep you motivated through workouts if you prefer having additional support and encouragement to stick to your goals. Hutton Health offers the accountability and motivation of a dedicated coach while delivering a structured program directly to your phone.