Castle Personal Training
Castle Personal Training is a Corstorphine, Edinburgh based company who specialise in weightloss/toning and Pre and Post Natal exercise.
Blog 11-02-13 3 ways to keep your motivation up. Pics, scales and Facebook!
Hi guys,
This is another one as posted on Yofittv.com.
Last week I wrote about your motivation for your New Years resolutions and how to kick-start them again. We’re now a week later and we have amended our goals and removed our obstacles.
So what do we do next to keep us from falling into the same trap again and keep our motivation up?
I would recommend you do at least one of the following;
1; Take a before picture and then take a bi-weekly or monthly “during” picture. It’s very difficult to keep track of your weight loss, or muscle gain, if you see yourself every day. You’ve probably found this yourself when bumping into someone you haven’t seen for a while and you can see that they’ve lost weight. When you comment on this they, quite often, will be surprised at you noticing as “no one in the office has commented on it”. This is because we tend not to notice small changes and when a small change happens every day it means that the change can go unnoticed for months. Taking a picture every month will help you see your results and seeing your results is a powerful motivator. This is why personal trainers and gyms do it, it keeps you wanting more. Hang the picture up somewhere you can see it, and put the “during” pictures next to it. It will be a scrapbook of your success.
2; Use the scales, regularly. I am a big fan of twice weekly weigh-ins but would at least do a weigh-in once a week. The reason I like to do them more often is because the set of scales I have seems to be very temperamental and my weight seems to change like the weather. And I live in Scotland so the weather changes a lot!
I can weigh myself on a Monday and be 91.7Kg and two days later I can be 92.3Kg, even wearing the same clothes. 2 days later again I can be 91.3Kg. So actually the trend is down even though I had one day where it went up. BTW, just in case you’re thinking “Wow, that’s 200lbs, who is this guy telling me how to keep motivated??”, I am 6”4.
When it comes to weighing in it’s the trend that matters, not the daily weight! If your goal is weight-loss then your daily weight is not nearly as important as the weekly trend. If you weigh yourself every day you will notice your weight going up a bit if you’ve had a big meal the day before, there is nothing wrong with this. Don’t panic and say “Ohno, I had better be good now and compensate for that meal I had yesterday”. We are trying to build a sustainable healthy life-style, fluctuations will happen on a daily bases as sometimes our eating habits change for a day or so, so over-compensating for a big meal you had the day before is not something we want to do. It is important to keep track of your success so a regular weigh-in is important to help us do this. And keep a log of your weigh-ins! Again, it will be a log of your success.
3; Tell other people what you’re going to do that day. I am a naturally lazy person. “WAIT A MINUTE!”, I can hear you think, “A Personal Trainer isn’t supposed to say this! I will never read anything you write again!”. Bear with me, all will become clear I promise. On my days off, I like nothing better than to just sit around and watch telly all day. I know there’s vacuuming to be done, and I know I could really squeeze a nice home work-out in, but I am naturally lazy so I want to sit on my bum. One way for me to force me off that couch is to post what I’m going to do on Facebook. “Going for 10k run in 5 even though it’s raining” makes me feel better, as I’m telling my Facebook friends that I’m “hardcore”, and now I have to live up to it. I have to run the full 10k and have to do it at a decent pace. No chance of me going to walk for a few kilometers if I know I have people who will be timing me on Facebook. And they will. There is no chance of me backing out of running that 10k once I have posted on Facebook that I will do it. There is nothing more sad than someone saying they will do some exercise only for them to then later post that they couldn’t be bothered doing it. Sure you might get a few likes on your “Couldn’t be bothered going for that run so watched Quincy instead” post but deep down all your friends are not impressed at all.
Even Quincy looks dissapointed.
Motivation is probably the most important obstacle we all have to overcome if we want to achieve our goals. If we have the right motivation we can make anything happen. Next week I will have a look and get you some great motivational posters and quotes that will get you through another week. For now though, get on those scales and get a happy snap of yourself!
Take care,
Your friend,
Peter
Castle Personal Training 
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