Top 3 Tips When Starting a new Fitness & Nutrition Journey

Author: Shaela Daugherty, Founder & CEO

Ever started a fitness regiment or set new health goals only to stay strong for a few weeks and then give up or start slacking? You aren’t alone. Just start asking your friends if this has ever happened to them before, chances are almost all of them will say yes. There is so much that goes in to living a healthy lifestyle.

Making all those changes at once can be daunting, overwhelming, and exhausting. It may feel good for the first few weeks to make all those changes, but then life happens, and typically that means we start “slipping” on those goals. Starting a health journey is like building a house or bridge, you start with a plan, then you start putting pieces into place, and yet we treat our health journeys like something we can make happen overnight. We treat this journey like we can just wake up one day and exercise + drink all the water + eat all the veggies + have the appropriate amount of protein + eat within a specific carb range + meet all the goals + lose weight + gain strength + sleep better + have more energy. All of these are great goals, but they have to be built into your lifestyle if you want it to be long lasting. It takes times to build a house, especially if it's done by hand, so too does it take time to build the healthy lifestyle you want.

Here are my top 3 tips to get your health journey jumpstarted. They may seem simple, but I’m handing you the tools I teach all of my one-on-one clients to make lifelong changes, not just an overnight or temporary one:

1. Make one small change at a time
2. Keep this change going till it becomes normal
3. Add on a new habit

Make one small change at a time

Choose one thing to change at a time, will it start with your nutrition or will it start with your exercise regiment? Choose which way you are going to start first, and then find one small change you can make. For example, if you choose to start with nutrition, choose ONE aspect of your nutrition to start with first, like drinking more water, or eating vegetable at every meal, or eat breakfast each day.

Keep this change going till it becomes normal

Once you have chosen your small change, stick with that until it becomes a normal part of your routine. For example, if you chose to start drinking more water as your first step to better nutrition, keep working on this goal until it becomes completely normal for you. This may take 1 week, it may take 3 weeks or even a month. But don’t start working on another small change until this becomes a new normal for you. It will be SO easy to want to change everything at once, but lasting change takes time. Taking time to re-establish YEARS of not great habits/behaviors that got you where you are, is worth the wait to having the healthiest lifestyle you have ever had in just 1-2 years.

Add on a new habit

Once you have established this new routine, then add on another small change. Going with our water example, once it becomes normal for you to reach for water instead of a soda or tea or other sugary beverage, then add in one more small change. Maybe the next small change is to eat vegetables with every meal. Now stick with this change until it becomes a habit as well. Adding on one small change at a time is your way of building your new healthy lifestyle.

This process will take time, it will not happen overnight. In a time and age where we can have anything ordered and to our house within hours, it’s not easy to wait for physical or lifestyle changes. These changes are worth the patience and worth the wait. Do you want to be able to stick to a healthy lifestyle long-term without worrying about cheating on your diet or exercise? Start here, start with these tools, they will catapult you into the lifestyle you want.

If you need more help, check out this blog here on how to make healthy habits last.