How To Get Back In Shape

So, life happened.  You had kids, work got in the way, and you’re always traveling and eating out.  This lifestyle has left you overweight and out of shape.  There are two roads you can go down: staying the course of comfort and ease, or hard work and effort.  Which road are you on?  

All is not lost; you stumbled on this article for some reason.  We’ll assume it’s because you wanted a change.  Or, more specifically, you wanted to get back to the place you were.  Things were easier when you were younger, right?  Weight just came off, and your energy was through the roof.  Now it’s an effort going up a flight of stairs, you’re tired, and your weight is out of control.  You need not worry anymore, because that’s where FITvocate comes in!

Find Yourself        

Are you looking for motivation? It sounds like you have the capabilities to get back to where you were, you’re just looking for the purpose. Think back to how it felt when you were in shape.  Consider all of the benefits: better health, more confidence, clothes fit.  Know that you can have all of this again, once you commit to the hard work and effort required to get there.  This brings us to the first two words of fitness: Discipline, and Consistency.

• Disciplined means that you are strict with your intentions; this means that you follow a diet that benefits you and ONLY eating out on occasion (Birthdays, Anniversaries, Holidays, and CHEAT DAYS!).  It also means being strict with your exercising, as well as rest.  We covered this in another article, Fitness: A Three Legged Stool.
• Consistent means that you make these efforts part of your daily routine.  You can’t do this once in a while, sometimes, or most of the time.  If this truly is your intention then you need to do this DAILY.  This may be hard at first, as it should be, but if you strictly follow this routine daily for a few weeks (about 2-3 weeks) it will become routine and habitual.  So whatever the case, just stick with it!

Put In The Work!

You have to fight for anything that is worth having, this includes your health.  Throughout this whole process of getting back in shape you will be tempted with comfort and ease.  You’re not going to want to go to the gym all the time, but the motivation that will get you to keep going back is…results!  What’s the fast path to results?  Well, that brings us to the second two words of fitness: Challenging, and Intensity.  The best workouts of any style (body weight, crossfit, power lifting, bodybuilding, etc.) are workouts that are both Challenging and Intense!

• Challenging means that for every rep of every set you’re using a weight that requires maximum effort to properly perform the movement.
• Intense means that you are keeping rest between sets to a minimum, about 2 minutes between each set. Listen to your body; if you feel like you need more rest then take it, if you’re ready to go after 30 seconds that’s even better!

So you may be wondering:

How do you make a body weight workout challenging if it doesn’t involve any weight?

Well, the emphasis on challenging (regardless of using weights or with only body weight) is maximum effort. Maximum effort is a subjective word, and only YOU know YOUR definition for maximum effort. The easiest way to tell if you did use maximum effort is: at the end of the workout are you exhausted or not? If not, well, then you just cheated yourself…

Workout always with maximum effort and you will see results. Remember INTENSE and CHALLENGING!

Now as far as the actual workouts are concerned it really doesn’t matter as long as your workout maintains these two traits. So, if you’re not sure what to workout at the gym, check out our workout generator, it’s free and has tons of routines for you to choose from!

That’s pretty much it; once you have that fire ignited you can’t stop this process!  Stay motivated, and remember:

DISCIPLINED – CONSISTENT – CHALLENGING – INTENSE

You have to fight for anything that is worth having, this includes your health.