Winston Salem Fitness

Most people in Winston Salem, and elsewhere in the world, know they should eat sensibly and exercise, and there has been much written on proper diet and recommended exercise. However, the difficulty is often lack of organization, discipline and motivation. Listed below are some tips for developing a successful fitness program:

1. Work exercise into daily routine. Proper diet and exercise fuels the body and keeps it healthy. Exercise should be part of your daily routine along with eating, sleeping, reading, etc.

2. Budget exercise and diet as you do time or money. Establish a target for the amount of exercise you choose to accomplish and budget time to accomplish it within a period of one week. Also, establish a target of calories/fat grams for a seven day period. Similar to budgeting money or time, when your target is consumed it’s gone.

3. Schedule your exercise as you do appointments or other activities. Once your target number of exercise hours is scheduled for the week, if you must cancel a period, reschedule it as you would other appointments. Exercise is accumulative, as long as you accomplish a sufficient number of exercise hours in a seven day period, it doesn’t matter when you do them.

4. Make it convenient. Make the time and place you accomplish your exercise convenient. Do not join a health club 30 miles from your work/home that will provide you with excuses for not exercising. Do not schedule your exercise for immediately after work if you consistently have to work late. Set realistic times to accomplish exercises and perform exercise at convenient locations.

5. Plan for alternate exercise routines. If your exercise is running, have an alternate exercise planned for rainy days, such as a treadmill or stair climber. If you travel frequently, have an alternative exercise routine established such as push-up, sit-ups or utilize hotel exercise facilities.

6. Reward yourself. Establish a system to reward yourself when you have accomplished a target or goal. Do not set an unrealistic diet (no fried foods or desserts), you will never maintain it. Budget your calories and save sufficient amount to “pig out” one day for lunch or one night on the weekend. Reward yourself with “weekends off”, if you accomplish your required amount of exercise during the week.

7. Make fitness a priority. To achieve or maintain your desired level of fitness you must make fitness a high priority in your life. If you don’t, you will always be making excuses why you can’t exercise or diet. Fitness does not have to be your number one priority, but it should be high enough to fit into your daily schedule.

8. Train with a partner or use a personal trainer. Personal trainers are great for prescribing programs, monitoring progress and providing support and motivation. Personal trainers can judge your efforts and provide the needed motivation to achieve your maximum performance. Training with partners can also be an effective mean of obtaining support and motivation during workouts.

9. Set goals. Establish realistic but challenging goals for diet and exercise programs. Monitor progress and adjust goals appropriately. Do not be disappointed if you do not achieve significant weight loss during the first month of a fitness program. Fitness programs, unlike some gimmick diets, take longer to experience weight loss results. However, improved fitness will eventually lead to weight loss that will be easier to maintain.

10. Be persistent. Don’t give up! Forget setbacks, keep trying. Remember, fitness is continuous and accumulative. The benefits of fitness far outweighs the efforts.