Planning For a Fitter You
Nikki Gillingham // January 30, 2012
Hello and Happy New Year!
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and didn’t binge on too many treats and turkey (although I know – it’s so hard!) If you did go a little bit overboard, don’t worry; I’ve got your back! Same goes for you wayward resolutioners. It’s nearing the end of January, but that doesn’t mean you can start slacking on your new fitness resolutions! This month we’re going to talk about putting what we’ve learned about clean eating and finding our passion into a PLAN! Because we all know that just saying you’re going to get fit sometimes doesn’t do the trick, does it?
So, where to begin? It’s a question a lot of people have no idea how to answer – and the reason so many New Year’s resolutions fail. It’s not enough to simply know you enjoy weight lifting, and decide you’re going to get more fit by lifting weights and eating clean. What does that even mean?
This is where the beloved plan comes in.
It is 110 per cent worth your time and effort to sit down and put a plan on paper. It has to be something tangible, however, and you have to put it where you can physically see and follow it.
You may be asking yourself now, ‘How do I know what kind of plan to make?’ This is where it gets a bit tricky. You know you want to weight lift, and you know you want to do it four times a week. But what’s next? If you already have some weekly workout routines jotted down somewhere, you can certainly use those. If not, the internet is a great source of information when it comes to fitness – just make sure you’re seeing the same information in several places. With all the fitness crazes happening, you don’t want to jump on a (potentially dangerous) bandwagon. Great sites such as mapmyrun.com or flotrack.org are useful to runners tracking mileage; myfitnesspal.com is good for keeping track of calories burned and consumed, and for keeping you on top of any weight loss goals (one drawback is that it doesn’t give you credit for weight training, which not only burns plenty of calories but increases your metabolism as well through muscle gain.)
Now, divide your week up. If you want to lift weights four times a week, perhaps do two upper-body days and two lower-body days, alternating and leaving a day or two for rest. Maybe add a day of cardio in and voila – a five day workout schedule.
Put it on your fridge. Follow it.
Maybe you think I sound harsh, but it’s almost too easy: Make a plan. Hang it up. Look at it. Follow it. And trust me – it works.
Why does it work? First of all, you’ve already done the ‘thinking’ work – you now know specifically what your workout will be any given day of the week. No more walking into the gym because you’re going to ‘get fit’ without knowing what you should be doing in there. Second, it provides some sort of accountability. Seeing what your schedule is and knowing you skipped it can provoke just enough guilt to rise up in you to get you off the couch the next time you’re ‘too tired’.
Finally, a plan allows for ease of adjustment. Say you really are just too tired to move (we’ve all fallen asleep on the couch after class or work and woken up to find we’ve lost the entire evening; it happens.) You can easily grab your schedule, shift your days around for the rest of the week, and still get in all of your workouts. If you don’t have it in front of you, next time you’re in the gym you may not remember what you did (or didn’t do) and may not know where to go, or what the best option is. When you have a full schedule, it can be hard to keep track of!
Therefore, I have one final plan-recommendation to keep you on track: Write down your progress! Much like a food diary, you can keep a workout diary of the exercises you did and what weight you used (or distance you ran, or time you spent on the stepper at level 7.) This will encourage you to improve and push yourself to discover new heights and help you see when you can safely increase your weights or speed, etc. Also, being able to see how far you’ve come will keep you committed and motivated. You’ll keep going back to the gym to work harder and get you in that Happy Place you are striving for! We all know we need more than the numbers on a scale to judge our success and progress – And don’t forget: muscle weighs more than fat! Don’t be discouraged by slow ‘weight loss’–but I’ll save that topic for another column!
Follow these tips for an easier road to success with your New Year Resolution, and any other fitness endeavor you may find yourself pursuing. As always, email your questions and comments to nikki.gillingham@gmail.com.
Happy Training!
