Common Pitfalls That Can Get In The Way Of Your Health Goals

Change isn’t easy, especially when it comes to health and fitness. 

No matter how good your intentions are to meal prep every week, get to the gym every other day, and avoid the tempting treats, you’re going to run into some challenges sooner or later. But it’s all about how you handle these challenges that makes all the difference. 

Read on to learn some of the most common pitfalls and obstacles to getting fit, so that you can be prepared and not let them get in the way of your success. 

1. Not making enough time

Getting fit is a huge commitment. It requires a ton of planning, discipline, and willpower, especially if you are just starting out and are trying to break bad habits. 

Ultimately, though, getting fit means dedicating time towards your goals. If you don’t give yourself enough time every single day to cooking healthy foods, getting your workouts in, and prioritizing your health over your leisure time, you may find that you aren’t making nearly as much progress as you should be. 

Be realistic about how much time it’s going to take to reach your goals, and schedule accordingly. 

2. Underestimating how important your diet is. 

It’s a common train of thought that working out and hitting the gym is enough to gain muscle, lose weight, and make your body healthy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way.  

There’s an old cliché that states that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet, and in most cases this is true. Even if you’re dedicating time to getting your workouts in, you can easily stunt your progress by eating processed, unhealthy foods. This is even more true if you’re trying to lose weight, since exercise alone doesn’t always burn enough calories to yield real fat loss results when your diet isn’t being taken into account. 

The best way to make sure that you’re eating the right foods for your goals every day is to meal prep, either on your own or with a meal prep delivery service that can make it easier to track your calories and your nutrition.  

3. Not planning ahead. 

Similarly, most people can’t just “wing it” and expect to see huge changes in their fitness. If you aren’t meal prepping and aren’t giving yourself a workout schedule to follow, it’s that much easier to put your goals on the backburner if something more temporarily fun comes up. 

To set yourself up for success, make sure that you’re setting a schedule for yourself. It doesn’t have to be super-precise, but just make sure you’re being specific about the workouts that you have to do and the foods that you have to eat in order to make a change. 

4. Having a black-and-white mentality. 

Your mental approach to your goals is just as important as what you are doing physically to get there. Many people approach their fitness goals with an all-or-nothing mentality: in other words, they can fully dedicate themselves to reaching their goals initially, but when an unexpected challenge comes up that sets them back a little, they give up completely and end up setting themselves back a lot more. 

Realize that you are going to have challenges that get in the way of your journey – after all, that’s a part of life! It’s all about moving forward and continuing on. If you have an unexpected meal out, get straight back to your meal prep for the next meal. If you have to miss a workout, just make sure you get to the next one. This is very often the difference between success and stagnation for many! 

5. Letting yourself fall into a “rut.” 

Getting fit is not always going to be fun or exciting. After the initial motivation starts to wear off, it can be easy to let yourself fall into a rut. Those same healthy foods might not be as appealing as they once were and those workouts you’ve been doing for months might not be hitting quite as hard as they were at first. 

So the best way to avoid this is by not letting yourself fall into a rut to begin with! Make it a point to switch it up every couple of weeks so that you can stay engaged and excited during the process. Play around with new recipes, order different items from your meal prep delivery service, and cross-train with various kinds of exercises. You’ll continue to challenge your body and keep yourself on track without getting too bored. 

Getting fit isn’t always easy, but being successful is all about sticking to it long-term and changing up your mentality to deal with the challenges.