Instead Of Fitness Efforts, Use Fitness Routines!

It’s very easy to look at each effort at getting in shape and living a healthy lifestyle as a singular thing you motivate yourself to do now. Accrue enough of these, you hope, and before long you’ll be where you wish to be. This can pose a problem however - as you may not always feel completely motivated or incentivized to make that good decision.

If you’ve had a long work day and all you want to do is sit back with a bottle of wine and a cheese board, but you’re trying to lose a little weight and you’ve already been out for dinner that day, well, it’s annoying to sum up the energy to just go to bed without that satisfaction. 

So - we need a healthier means of pursuing the right outcome. We’d recommend that instead of fitness efforts, we use fitness routines to help us move forward and prosper. In this way, you may use of perceptual momentum and the ability to ‘just keep on going,’ which often means breaking this routine can become harder than actually keeping up with it.

But how can we integrate this into our lifestyle in a healthy, natural manner, without forcing ourselves to adopt a new standard? In this post, we’ll discuss all of that and hopefully more.

Self-Care Routines

A self-care routine is standard can prepare you for the day and help you retire from it. For example, skincare practiced well in the morning and at night can help you keep your glow but it will also allow you to do it on autopilot, perhaps while watching some television or reading. The same goes for personal checkups, like scheduling routine eye tests every year or even sooner depending on your needs. 

You may floss on every other day and brush your teeth twice every day, and you may meal prep on a Sunday so that eating well is easy and reliable during the week. Perhaps you’ll do yoga exercises every other day. This has the massive benefit of freeing up your time and mental energy, and never requiring motivation. You can also write these in your diary to first structure the routine loop.

Social Routines

In many cases, your self-care and fitness can be improved alongside someone you like and appreciate. So you may go to yoga classes every weekend together, or perhaps at lunch you and a colleague you trust will head do the gym on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. If you remote work, then it might be that actually socializing is part of your self-care routine, because it takes more of an effort to see people. Perhaps you’ll attend a cafe to work on Mondays, and meet your friends on Thursday evenings, and so on. As you can see, a routine with clear markers can reinvigorate you, just as you’d water and nourish a houseplant every few days on the dot.

Mutual Obligation

There’s nothing quite like keeping a routine out of mutual obligation. If you and a friend head to the gym every Monday afternoon to attend a class, even if you’ve had a late Sunday night and the morning is bitterly cold, you’ll never want to let your friend down. This can be a brilliant way to keep on top of things and ensure your routines are engrained in your daily efforts. You may be surprised just how well it works out.

With this advice, you’re sure to use fitness routines to your best advantage.