In the maintenance stage, you’ve been exercising
regularly for long enough that it’s become a habit.
You’ve created a routine that works for you, and (if
you’re doing it right), you’ve started seeing
the benefits you originally wanted in your life. There are
still a few traps that can derail you, though. When this
happens, and you find yourself no longer exercising, you’re
in Prochaska’s ‘Relapse’ stage. Most ‘traps’
will either involve a change in your life circumstances,
a change in your goals, or a combination of both –
so if you’ve been exercising regularly for a while
and suddenly find motivating yourself difficult, ask yourself
what’s changed.
CHANGES IN CIRCUMSTANCE
If your circumstances have altered, you’ll usually
be well aware of what’s happened and how it’s
affected your motivation. For example – you might
enjoy exercising in a gym, then take a sudden drop in income
that doesn’t allow you to keep your gym membership.
Your working hours might change, making your original workout
timeslot unavailable. Someone you exercise with might decide
to stop, or you might injure yourself somehow. All these
things will disrupt what was an effective routine, and if
you don’t actively plan to work around the disruption,
it can sap your motivation to keep exercising.
If this applies to you, imagine you were back in the Contemplation
stage, and look at the motivation suggestions for this stage.
Revisit your main goal for exercising. Is it still valid?
If so, move through the suggestions for the Preparation
stage. Your initial ‘how’ no longer works –
so what needs to change? If you can no longer keep the routine
that used to work, what can you still do that’s convenient,
enjoyable and affordable? If you’ve kept a fitness
journal, go back through the entries you made when you were
setting up your routine. What did you think of to try then
(and didn’t end up using) that you could experiment
with now?
CHANGES IN GOALS
If your circumstances haven’t changed, it’s
likely your goals have. Perhaps your initial goals aren’t
relevant any longer? If this is the case, don’t beat
yourself up about it – instead, ask yourself what
you *do* want now. Perhaps you started off enthusiastic
about training for a triathlon, but quickly found the required
time and effort unbalanced your life. Perhaps you began
wanting to lose 20kg, then realised as you had to replace
your entire wardrobe that you actually preferred being curvy
– now you just want to feel healthy and energetic.
Remember, it’s your life and no-one can tell you what
your goals should be. It’s OK for goals to change
– what’s not OK is to keep grimly putting time
and effort into something you don’t actually want
any more.
Remember there’s a difference between wanting to
take a day off, and losing long term motivation. Part of
any successful plan is allowing yourself occasional rest
days. Taking one or two every week doesn’t mean you’ve
moved into Relapse – in fact it’s necessary
to avoid overtraining. It’s also OK to vary your workout
intensity from week to week – alternating weeks of
pushing yourself with weeks of coasting. This strategy (called
‘periodisation’ when it’s done to a specific
plan) is actually far more effective for reaching fitness
goals than pushing yourself as hard as you can every single
workout. If you’re starting consistently skip workouts
though, you need to figure out why and do something about
it.
GETTING HELP WITH MOTIVATION
Finally, as we suggested for those in the Action stage,
if it’s getting harder to stay motivated despite all
of the above suggestions, think about working with a personal
trainer. In fact, a trainer can help you manage your motivational
difficulties whatever stage of Prochaska’s model you’re
at (or even if you’re not quite sure where you are
right now!) If you’ve thought about hiring a trainer
in the past, but the time has never been right, Optimum
Life Ltd has an offer that might convince you to finally
make the investment in yourself, your health, and your happiness.
If you e-mail us on mailto:optimumlife@xtra.co.nz during
October, you’ll be able to sign up for a full Total
Fitness Membership at a 25% discount - only $US30 per month
(when you consider that most trainers charge between $50-100
per session, you can see why it’s such good value!)
As you can see from this article series, the question of
how to motivate yourself to exercise isn’t an easy
one to answer (if it was, we’d all be exercising regularly,
and there’d be no need for this article!). The best
way to motivate yourself depends very much on where in the
stages of change you are at the moment with respect to exercise.
Figure out where you are in the model, then try the relevant
suggestions for getting yourself moving. If you have any
questions, comments or feedback, please don’t hesitate
to contact us – we’d love to hear from you.
Otherwise, may every day bring you closer to your Optimum
Life.
>>
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