How to Make Health and Fitness a Lifestyle – Tips For Busy People

Making health and fitness a lifestyle is an integral part of personal success. By treating your body right, you help make yourself feel and look the best you can. This has a lot of positive effects that can bleed over into your personal and professional life. 

To get healthy and fit however, it’s important to develop a mindset that will help you make health and fitness a lifestyle. It’s about more than just singular actions you take at one time. It’s about how you view your health and fitness over the long haul on a daily basis. 

Below are seven ways that can help you make health and fitness a lifestyle.

Consistency over volume

When it comes to being healthy and fit, it’s better to focus on what you can do in a repeatable way. In other words, doing a little bit each day will trump concentrated efforts over a short period every time. When you set out to make health and fitness a lifestyle, it’s important to develop realistic goals that work with your lifestyle and schedule. 

This means figuring out the best time to work out based on the rest of your day. If you’re an early riser, this may mean working out first thing in the morning. If you’re more of a night owl, evening workouts may be more your speed. If you’re busy with a family, you may have to squeeze it in during your lunch break. 

No matter your fitness routine, opt for something you can achieve each day. Don’t feel the need to work out at a specific time because of what some self-proclaimed fitness experts may tell you. Do what works best for you. 

Eat right

Exercise is important. It has so many positive effects on the body. It can help you live longer. It can help you better manage stress. And it just makes you feel better in general – the release of endorphins will put you in a great mood. 

But you may have heard the expression, “You can’t outrun a bad diet.” That’s true. Exercise and diet are both a major part of being healthy and fit. Your diet is what has the most effect on your weight loss. If you think of your body in terms of being a machine, the food is the fuel. Without eating the proper nutrients, you won’t be able to work out effectively. You can also feel sluggish, meaning less productivity in other aspects of your life. 

Focus on a diet of whole foods over processed ones. Limit the number of times you eat out per week. Keep a food journal to track what you eat. 

Don’t overdo it

If you’ve gone a while without exercising or have let yourself fallen off a little bit, it may be tempting to hit the ground running. When you commit to making health and fitness a lifestyle, you may want to work out a lot to compensate for the missed time. 

Staying physically fit means keeping to a regular schedule of exercise. But don’t try to do too much. Too much exercise can have negative impacts on your health. Excessive exercise can hurt your immune system. It can leave you feeling overtired and unable to go about your daily routine. 

Exercise is a necessary part of making health and fitness a lifestyle, but listen to your body. If you’re moving beyond typical soreness into pain territory, stop working out. Make sure you give yourself a manageable schedule of activities to avoid injuring yourself. 

When you work out, do what you love

One way to making health and fitness a lifestyle is to only take part in physical activities you truly love to do. Some people adore running. Others can’t stand it. If you don’t like it, don’t feel as if you need to slog through another treadmill session in the name of physical fitness. There are options for you. 

What kind of sports do you like? If you like basketball, racquetball, or soccer, perhaps you should join a local league where you can play these sports. If you like what you’re doing, you’re more likely to do it more regularly. Plus, you’ll have more fun while you’re doing it. 

Get a fitness tracker

Whether it’s an app, a smartwatch, or both, having some kind of fitness tracker can help you stay on track. If you’re not working out enough in a particular week, your tracker can remind you of that and motivate you to get more active. If you’re having a good week and achieving your goals, your tracker can motivate you to keep going or set new ones that push you a little bit farther. 

A fitness tracker can help you manage your activities. It will show you what you spend the most time doing and what you’re improving at. 

Have an accountability partner

As great as a fitness tracker can be, it’s not the only way to remind yourself to continue pursuing a health and fitness lifestyle. Having an accountability partner can be a tremendous way to keep yourself honest. Your accountability partner will be tasked with making sure you’re sticking to the routine you’ve set for yourself. And, in turn, you’ll be responsible for holding them accountable as well. 

An accountability partner can be anyone you’re comfortable with. It can be a friend or family member. Or if you want a little separation from your personal life, you may be able to find someone you’re friendly with at your local gym to help you out. Whoever you go with, the important thing is that you’re honest with them about your health and fitness goals and that you ask them to really push you as you set out to accomplish them. 

Consider a personal trainer

You may want to get physically fit, but you may have little experience working out at the gym. Gyms can be intimidating for those who have either never been to one or used it very little. But that’s why most gyms have personal trainers. 

A personal trainer can guide you through the right workouts you need to develop strength and stamina. They can give you one-on-one coaching to help you get better in the gym. They can also serve as de facto accountability partners, motivating you to get in the gym more regularly and being more effective at working out when you do. 

Making health and fitness a lifestyle can be challenging, but you’ll find it’s so worth it. Adopting an approach to health and fitness that emphasizes your own personal accountability combined with reasonable, actionable goals will leave you in better shape than you’ve ever been. You’ll feel better as well, leading to more personal and professional success.