It is important to understand if your walking level and goals match your abilities to achieve your objectives. The reason a walkers motivation weakens is because they are on the wrong track.
BEGINNERS: If a person has leaded a sedentary life and they have created a goal of losing 50 pounds in 4 months, it will not happen. Most people are overweight if they have sit around for years. To lose weight a person has to do Brisk, Interval, Nordic, or Power walking. It is important if you have not been physically active to start slow and steady. However, when you start your “beginners” program your goal needs to include a 30 minute daily walking exercise. To lose pounds during this time, you must eat 25% less food than you normally consume. This is the stage you are building your strength and testing your endurance.
MODERATE: You lead an active life and once in a while you intentional exercise, but not on a regular schedule. You do the best you think you can by squeezing in a couple of hours a week of exercise. When you start your regularly, consistent walking program and you go beyond strolling or slow walking to hit the brisk level, you will most certainly maintain your current body weight and that can be a good thing. Your achievable goal could be to maintain your weight and build your strength and endurance.
ADVANCE: All of your life you have participated in sports and exercise programs. With your doctor’s approval, there is no limit to your achievements in walking. Many runners, who have aged, have turned to walking to continue their healthy benefits. Chances are if you have been physically active in a program, you do not have a weight challenge. You are the ones which could easily achieve a lean, mean body that will aide you in your on-going aging process.
I encourage you to be accurate in choosing your walking abilities and levels; set realistic goals; get up and get going.
Tags: exercise, Healthy Walking, motivation process, never give up, Rosalie Lynch, Walking Goals
Why do we stop and start in reaching our goals? So many people achieve their momentum and a crisis in life stops our momentum. It is almost impossible to get started again and re-gain our momentum.
Gaining momentum in our lives runs into difficulty when we run hot and then run cold. Let me explain it this way. I was reading an illustration on “not stopping” in our efforts in reaching our goals and it involved water.
If you want to boil water you will do three things: 1) put the water in a kettle; 2) put the kettle on a stove; 3) and then turn the heat on. If the heat is turned off, even for an instant, the water will not boil, even though the heat is turned on again later. If one continues to turn the heat on and off the fact remains that the water will never boil.
To relate this to real life when we want to achieve a goal we 1) create our business plan; 2) plan our action steps; and 3) and then implement. All of a sudden we experience a set-back or failure. It is not advisable to go back and re-do what we have created; it is time to “adjust” and create an alternative plan or action step or the method of implementation. Unfortunately many people just give up and say something like “well, that didn’t work” and throw the project out the window.
No one had a greater commitment and staying motivated to a walking exercise program than I. My father died and my world shut down. My motivation and commitment disappeared. My energy evaporated. After a few months a friend told me that my past walking program is “out of the window” so I had to create new ways of walking so that I would look forward to a new adventure in my life. Upon research, I discovered there are 22 different walking styles to choose. My kittle of boiling water had been turned off so I had to get a fresh kittle of water and heat it up; which is what I did. With making a few adjustment and adding new ways of walking, my commitment, motivation and enjoyment came back.
In the same way, if there are gaps in all of our lives that stop the momentum it is important to create a new plan of action and get started with renewed commitment and motivation and maintain your concentration.
Tags: change plans, Gaining Momentum, motivation process, never give up, Rosalie Lynch, staying focus
Many people are looking for changes in their lives. They are searching the Internet; they are talking with their friends, family and even strangers; and they are going to religious services to seek out how to make a change and have a different life.
However, in the beginning taking charge of our life can become a difficult task to accomplish. My experience in taking charge of my life was fun in the beginning, hard in the middle and then once accomplished forgetting about the long term effects of the change. It is like a dieter that starts a diet, loses the weight they wanted, was proud and healthier, then went back to their old eating habits and gained the weight back.
A dieter like this is shocked when they wake up one morning and see their weight back and shouts: ”What happened, I thought I took off this weight?” Yes, they did take the weight off and felt great and went back to their old life and the weight was back. My change had to do with medical problems and establishing an exercise program to walk once again. It was hard, but do you know what made the difference in my life? It contained 3 steps in processing a written plan for me to establish in my mind.
1) Why do I want to change this in my life – write down your answer!
2) What is my motivation and what is my commitment – write down your answer!
3) Start at that very moment – don’t say “I’ll start this weekend”. Don’t do that – start immediately at this moment.
I will share my walking motivation statement with you as an illustration of creating a motivation statement. I read this each and every day and it motivates me to get up and move by body by walking. Don’t use abstract language-make it personal. The “who”, “what”, “why” and “when” language needs to be incorporated; such as: Continue Reading »
Tags: exercise, Healthy Walking, motivation process, Rosalie Lynch, walking
