Losing your fitness drive is easy, but not as easy as getting back on track. A healthy lifestyle is not a sentence, but a lifelong commitment. You know how good a healthy living makes you feel, and how much energy you gain. When your plans go astray because of life’s little tricks, the best thing to do is to not beat yourself up. It is OK to get side-tracked now and again. It can even make you come out the other side stronger, more inspired, and very much ready for to spring back into action. After losing your drive how do you recharge, get new motivation and inspiration? The tips below will get you motivated.

Lifestyle Change: Lose Your Fitness Drive?

What do we do when we lose our drive? Recharging, getting new motivation and Losing your fitness drive but not your healthy living goals? Illustrated by motivational words to remind your why you started. inspiration isn’t always given when we get side tracked. Every road has a start and an end. That end is the goal – which then becomes the starting point for a new path.

When you embark on lifestyle changes you are normally full of good intentions and inspired to go, go and go. The first few months results come fast and furious. Your body changes visibly – and you feel energized in every way. You reap the rewards of healthier eating, more exercise, rest, and mindfulness.

When the lifestyle change road becomes more about maintenance the side tracking tend to happen. You go on vacation, you have to travel for work, and ‘life’ happens. It is easy to feel that you cannot stay on your chosen healthy course. 

Losing Your Fitness Drive – Not Your Health Goals

Health is not just about getting on a healthier road, it is about habits.

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Healthy Living Inspiration

Habits form with time, and health is an ever challenging friend to keep happy. The balance you find when you have reformatted yourself is equal to none other, and this energy becomes your beacon. You don’t want to lose how well you feel in body and mind – so when ‘life’ happens you will find that it isn’t as hard as you perhaps envisaged to keep healthy habits. If you want a great book to get you going, The GOODista recommends: Health is a Habit by Julie Massey. 

It is OK to go off course and run on a slip road for a while. Your form and energy will not go away over night. It is no use to beat yourself up if you cannot keep to your precise exercise schedule, or find ‘your’ food every day. It is of course given that if days turn into weeks and months, you will have to put more ‘oomph’ into getting back into shape. This article on Sportsmedicine.about.com reveals how long it really takes before you lose fitness when you stop exercising.
 

Losing Your Fitness Drive – When Plans Go Wrong

I realized that losing my drive wasn’t altogether a bad thing. It can even give you renewed motivation and inspiration. Maybe plans that come crashing down are meant to make you 6 signals of lifestyle change need by man pulling hair out as stress reactionstop, reassess and realize why you are doing something in the first place?
 
Over Easter I had the perfect plan going. It included a post for The GOODista about eggs, a dinner with Salmon trout and minted lemon peas, a gym session with my new playlist and long walks in the spring sunshine. BUT… The internet crashed so the post came to nothing, my frozen peas were depleted, the gym was closed, and the rain came down in torrential throws. I got completely taken aback, and literally had to stop in my tracks. It took some good mindfulness techniques not to lose sight of the fact that this wasn’t a catastrophe. 
 
Do You Want Inspiration Every day? Feel, Be and Do Good? Yes! How?  

Losing Your Fitness Drive – How To Get Back On Track

When things go wrong, or plans have to be adjusted, you can feel out of sorts. You get surprised by how the air seems to get thinner when your stress levels rise. However, if you take it one step further you can normally see beyond that OMG horizon. You breathe new life into old goals, reassess, take charge of your choice and most importantly — you forgive yourself and get going. 
 
You breathe new life into old goals, reassess, take charge of your choice and most importantly — you forgive yourself and get going. 
 
Losing your fitness drive can get your back on track with these five steps. Illustrated by man on track field.

5 Tips: Get Back On Track After Losing Your Fitness Drive

Here are some tips of how to get re-activated, re-charged and very much back on track: 

#1 Breathe 

Take a deep breath and think back to why you started your plan in the first place. What was the goal? Can you get there in a different or new way? ‘All roads lead to Rome”, right? A bit of imagination can re-trigger the mind to come up with alternative solutions. My egg post for The GOODista did not make sense after Easter Sunday, so I decided to look for inspiration for a new post.

My mini goal for the day became all about getting back to how I started a new way of thinking, which led to life-altering changes. The GOODista came from this experience. My first action was to re-look a some of my very first health inspiration books. I reopened treasured books about super food, healthy habits and alkaline cooking (find them under related and recommended below). I reorganized my Exercise DVD library and put up a new wind chime that zen-fully spoke to my inner thoughts.

Going back to the origins of my lifestyle change road made me appreciate how far I had come, and how exciting the way ahead was. 

#2 Reassess 

If you cannot reach your goals by road, maybe you have to walk on a Self Pity Party will be a way to see new beginnings as illustrated by man on tricycle going towards the sunshine. Read more on thegoodista.comsmaller path for a while? Every effort counts, just like each small step leads you forward. Sometimes you also have to stop and admire the view, take in the landscape, and exchange ideas with people you meet on the way. This is a good thing. As I looked at the rain on Easter Sunday, I did a Pilates DVD and really enjoyed the flexibility that my rather gym aching muscles got from it.  

#3 Take Charge of your Choice 

You decided that health was going to be your new Healthier Lifestyle Secret is to Do Less to Get More illustrated by Roadsigns saying Old You and New You.mantra some time ago, and when things don’t go your way the former bad habits have a tendency to flirt with your inner devil.

Health becomes habit only when you know the feeling of how it makes you feel. The temptation to dive into a big box of chocolate biscuits did simply not present itself during my Easter mini disaster. My choice to be in charge of my health is a commitment for life, and not hard to keep.

It is absolutely OK to give yourself treats, skip an exercise session, and watch TV series all day. Healthy living is not a sentence – it is an enjoyment. As such your body and mind will be in balance and tell you what is needed. The peas became carrots in pistachio pesto, and the sunshine walks a quick dash in the rain for the dog’s sake, combined with playtime under the portico. The healthy Me time is not time wasted and this quote reinforces this statementchoices are so many, but sometimes we can get stuck in a rut also when it comes to our healthier habits. Thinking laterally will help us find other ways, and sometimes new ones — which become part of our catalog of healthy living tricks.

Thinking laterally will help us find other ways, and sometimes new ones — which become part of our catalog of healthy living tricks.

#4 Forgive Yourself 

The ascetic side of me felt rather beaten up when the plans crashed around me, but then I decided to take a long bath, enjoy a facial and a much-needed pedicure. My me-time got me thinking how pampering and doing ‘nothing’ is real enjoyment and really good for you too. The bath session was so relaxing that I went to bed and watched trash TV for a while to then turn out the lights a 9 pm. 

Change? Confront the excuses, guilt and saboteurs and just do it! Illustrated by man running in the direction of a 'do it; sign.#5 Get Going 

Once you have given yourself a break, looked back and seen the way forward the road is open again. The goal is clearer and you need to get back on it.

The point is now not to become complacent and give up — but really move on. There is no point in moping and staying in pause-mode. Just because you spill a drop of milk on the kitchen table, doesn’t mean that you continue to pour out the whole cartoon, right?! Wipe up, get cracking and take your new inspiration onwards and forwards. 🙂

Losing Your Fitness Drive Is OK

The next morning the sun was out, the internet still down and in itself, it became a sign that I needed to do more of the same. I planted seeds for my summer vegetables, re-potted plants, and took the dog for a long, long walk in the beautiful landscape. The afternoon lent itself to more inspirational reading. As I looked back on my ‘desert island’ experience of no phone calls or social media obligations, I felt invigorated – and oh! so inspired to get Losing your fitness drive, but not your healthy living goals is about being kinder to yourself as illustrated by these motivational words. back into action.
 
A more thoughtful action, where plans can go astray without making the goal go away. It is not an all or nothing approach that gets you to your lifestyle change goals. There is no crystal ball for how things should tick along, but there is a simple fact that it is OK to stop and smell the flowers now and again. 
 

Be Kind To Yourself and Move On

When we lose our fitness drive, the need to take control is the first thing that comes to mind. We tend to beat ourselves up too much, too soon, when things don’t go the way we planned.
 
The way forward is perhaps more about letting go, accepting the inevitable, and re-assessing. New plans can be made, and new roads will emerge.
 
The goal is still the same, but getting side-tracked for a while has a purpose. You need to just sit – and sit – to realize why you started this in this first place. You lead a healthy life and will continue to do so – even when ‘life’ happens. Wellness goals is about making it happen based on your decisions as illustrated by a tree going from winter to summer.
Have you ever gotten off course? What are some tips you would share to get back on track? 
 
If you need to get re-inspired, take a look at some the books and DVD that got me started on this adventure. Perhaps you can recommend some too?
 
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