Doing what you love is good for you.

In my Free Living Fitness manifesto I said

Fitness should be the result of living your own full and joyful life

This principle is for me, the most important of all, it is the anchor of the who FLF concept.

Why?

My role is to help people improve their health: To help people make their bodies stronger, more efficient, more comfortable and longer lasting! There's a lot of ways to get to that place but in my opinion, the best, most sustainable route to good health is doing something you love.

Because for any positive change to become a habit, it has to be something that you keep coming back to. The rewards have to be greater than the cost. Fitness in itself should be a great reward. You get to be healthier, avoid disease, improve your quality of life and extend your life expectancy. But how many times have you heard someone say something like....

"I'd rather have this cake and deal with the diabetes later"

"I don't want to live an extra few years if it's no fun"

"Ugh, I'm going to blow off this workout because it's cold today and I'm not losing much weight anyway"

Health and fitness goals are often far off and abstract. One of the greatest challenges for a personal trainer is supporting a client in setting goals which are achievable, tangible and rewarding.

But I also wonder whether this is where we should be looking. The more I learn about the psychology of motivation, reward and willpower, the more I understand that the external factors and distant goals aren't the important focus. At least not when the path to the goal is flexible. Intrinsically rewarding tasks always come up top.

When I set fitness goals, I think about what has worked for me in the past, and that is almost always goals that revolve around the "how" - the thing I do and how much I do it, not the result I am hoping for at the end of it.

So find something you love doing. Make a commitment to keep doing it regularly until it becomes a part of your life that you want to engage with, that you can't imagine being without. And that's when the benefits start rolling in.

This is one place where personal training can really come into its own. The right trainer, with a broad training skillset can really support you in exploring new ways to bring healthy activity into your life - and help you stick with it.

For me the activity that got me off the sofa was dance, you can read a bit about that on my dance blog. I dance every day, because it makes my day brighter. I also walk my dog every day, because if I don't she nags me, and because I find a lot of tranquility in the process, as well as racking up my daily steps.

Have you discovered your fitness passion yet? I'd love to hear about it, let me know in the comments or on Instagram or Twitter using #freelivingfitness

Comments

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