How and When to Start Your Fitness Journey

So you've had physique or wellness goals for a while, and you're now looking to hire a coach to help you improve your health and fitness. But once you find the right coach, you know, the one with advanced education in mindset and behavior change who can help you maintain your results for life, you find yourself saying something along the lines of:

"I'm ready! But I think I'll wait until the holidays are over."

Or

"I'm ready, but I have a vacation coming up, so I'll get started once I'm back."

We've had many conversations that start out like this. You have fitness goals and are ready to adopt healthy habits, but you want to wait for the "perfect timing" before you get started with an exercise routine or being more mindful of your nutrition habits.

This mindset may stem from the feeling that once you start your fitness journey you have to give up all your favorite foods (you don't!) or that you'll have to spend endless hours at the gym (you won't!).

Yes, once you start a fitness journey, you will need to create healthy habits, follow an exercise routine, and eat a highly nutritious diet. But being fully committed doesn't require extremes.

Why Start a Fitness Journey

Starting your fitness journey can significantly impact your mental health, provide you with more energy and stress relief, and help you avoid illnesses such as cancer, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular or kidney diseases.

Starting a fitness journey is not just about changing your body, losing weight, or increasing your physical activity levels. Creating a healthy lifestyle means you can live a longer, better, and healthier life that includes doing all the things on your bucket list without feeling overwhelmed by exhaustion or lack of energy.

Remember that a fitness journey shouldn't involve extreme measures. Starting small, setting realistic goals, and finding activities you enjoy can make the process easier and more sustainable. (You might even want to try out a vision board to get you started on what your journey may look like!)

So ditch the "I'm ready, but..." excuses and start creating a lifestyle you love! Here's what we would say to you if you came to us with weight loss or any other fitness goals and wanted to wait until a "better time" for starting your fitness journey.

The Best Time to Start a Fitness Journey

⁣The "I'm ready, but..."⁣ statement happens year-round! 

We hear it all the time, especially around the holiday season, but that's not the end of events that keep you busy. Next, someone will have a birthday, then you'll go on vacation, or be stressed, or a million other excuses will come up.

Whether it's the holidays or a vacation that's approaching, it feels like it makes sense to put your health and fitness goals on hold until they pass, right?

Stop right there — we're calling you out.

The truth is, this perspective might be what holds you back year-round. There will never be a perfect time. So why not now?

The idea of a fitness journey is to create a healthy lifestyle that you can maintain long-term. This includes navigating holidays, parties, vacations, and other life stressors while maintaining your progress.

You can hire all the personal trainers and fitness coaches you want, but you'll never reach your fitness goal if you only put in the work when it's easy.

Say your goal is to lose body fat. When you work with KJO Coaching, we teach you how to lose fat without giving up your social life. We teach you how to navigate stressful situations so they don't completely derail your progress. We teach you how to make fitness work for your lifestyle.

That's the key sign of a sustainable lifestyle and fitness routine. You can maintain it even when life gets hectic and you don't feel like you need a break from it.

Your Mindset and the Psychology Behind Starting Your Fitness Journey

⁣A lot is happening in the "I'm ready, but…" statement, so let's talk about what's really going on. 

Hint: thinking this way is mostly not your fault.

Here's what we see within this statement:

Psychological Factor #1: Discrepancy

When you make "I'm ready, but..." statements, it's likely because you want to focus on your health and fitness but don't believe you can during a particular time of year or phase of your life.

Your internal desires (the desire to improve your health) are being squashed by external circumstances (holidays/vacations/parties/etc.), and you don't believe you can have both.

When you're in this position, you don't believe in your internal ability to navigate these external circumstances. Your mindset is at play here. You know that you can change (growth mindset is trying), but not right now (fixed mindset wins).

Psychological Factor #2: Assumptions

You're ready, but you assume you can't do it because of the obstacles (this is where some if-then planning comes in handy!). ⁣

You have the assumption that you have to put your health and fitness goals on pause during the holidays, while on vacation, or during a stressful time in your life.⁣

YIKES!

What's worse is that you will likely become a self-fulfilling prophecy because of this assumption.⁣ (because you're assuming you can't balance the holidays and your health, you won't be able to.)⁣

The holiday season is especially tricky because you and anyone who wants to improve their health might also see this as a last chance (to indulge, enjoy, etc.) before starting to focus on health and fitness. This mindset may result in eating and drinking all the things now because there's a fear that they won't be available later (ever heard of all-or-nothing thinking??).

Psych Factor #3: Social Norms

⁣Social norms tie into assumptions, which leads to that discrepancy and mindset issue we already discussed above.⁣

Good ol' society tells us 24/7 that health and fitness equal dieting⁣.

And dieting means no Christmas cookies, no birthday cake, and no poolside cocktails.

We're led to believe that the only way to reach our health and fitness goals is through restriction, deprivation, and a complete overhaul of our current lifestyle. 

If that's the mindset someone has, then, of course, it's silly to hire a coach during a stressful or busy time of the year. Who wants to be deprived, restricted, and change up their entire life during the most fun parts of their lives?

Not us, which is why we don't subscribe to this all-or-nothing mentality. We know we can live life to the fullest without sabotaging⁣ our goals.

The Best Time to Start Your Fitness Journey

The reality is that there's never a perfect time to start a fitness journey. Never. You'll always be able to find a reason to wait if you look for one.⁣

Health & fitness goals DO NOT…WE REPEAT: DO! NOT! Need to take away from your life experiences.⁣

You don't need to be restrictive and deprive yourself of all the foods you enjoy for the sake of health. You also don't need to go through an entire lifestyle overhaul.⁣

In fact — it should be the opposite.⁣

A good coach will help you navigate holidays and life stressors without feeling the need to go jingle balls to the wall on food and drinks with plans to just "start later."⁣

They will work with you to plan for your lifestyle, preferences, and priorities in a sustainable way, no matter what events or holidays come up. This will (and should) look different for each person because you, your life, and your goals are unique to YOU.⁣

A good coach, the kind who will help you achieve your goals without making you hate your life, will consider all of these unique aspects before they set you up with a plan. That's the only way to achieve true long-term, sustainable success.

How to Reach Your Fitness Goals

Whether you want to lose weight, build muscle, or maintain your current physique, there are a few things you can do to get yourself started on the right track.

First and foremost, you have to decide to commit to your fitness routine. As we mentioned, there is no such thing as the perfect time to get started, so do yourself a favor and get started now.

Not next month. Not on Monday. Right now!

Start Your Fitness Journey Right Now

Starting right now doesn't mean you have to go to your kitchen and throw out every piece of chocolate, every bag of chips, and every bottle of wine you have. We encourage you to start right now because you're more likely to succeed if you start small rather than trying to overhaul your entire life.

Starting right now might look like committing to a fitness program by applying for coaching with the KJO Coaching team. Or it could be as simple as swapping that soda you're drinking with a glass of lemon water.

Baby steps.

Create Healthy Habits

Having a daily routine that aligns with your goals will help you stay motivated and consistent.

Say you have a goal of losing weight. You can create a healthier lifestyle for yourself by choosing to incorporate lean protein with every meal. Chicken, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and white fish are great options.

Adding more protein to your diet is a great first step because protein helps keep you full, reduces cravings, and helps your muscles recover after workouts. Additionally, this works well because rather than focusing solely on ditching old habits, you can focus on creating new habits by seeing what you can add to your life rather than take away.

Try Habit Stacking

Notice that above we only mentioned one habit to add to your daily routine? That was intentional.

While you can choose any habit to get you started, the idea is that you start with just a few things you can realistically do before adding more habits. You can connect these to things you're already doing to make them even easier (e.g. if you want to increase your fitness level and you already strength train, you can add some cardio to the end of your workouts or have a day dedicated to cardio).

Try making a vision board if you aren't sure where to start. You can outline what changes you want to make and start picking and choosing from there.

Using a vision board is also a cool way to see your progress come to life as you build more and more healthy habits. Starting small like this is also beneficial for your mental health since you won't be overwhelming yourself by trying to change several things at once and then giving up a month later because you took on far too much.

How to Habit Stack

If you take a habit-stacking approach, you'll want to choose a few things you can easily do (or stop doing) that will get you closer to your goal. This might look like eating more protein, strength training 2-3 times a week, and eating all your meals without distractions (i.e., away from the computer/phone/TV).

Focus all your efforts on these habits for several weeks or months (however long it takes you to make them habits you don't have to think about), and then add a few new ones that will get you moving toward your goals. Then rinse and repeat.

What if I Don't Want to Lose Weight?

You can diet and pursue fat loss if you want to, but we understand and celebrate that not everybody has a weight loss goal. In fact, you may be pursuing weight gain for any number of reasons (such as to gain muscle). Or, you may want to maintain your current weight and physique.

All of these goals are good goals and ones worth pursuing. They all also require an aspect of fitness if you want to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Fitness doesn't just mean exercising and eating fewer calories. Our fitness journeys involve ensuring we're getting enough exercise to build and maintain muscle for longevity and mobility (while also taking breaks and not overworking ourselves!).

A fitness journey also means paying attention to our nutrition to ensure we get enough protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats to sustain all our bodily functions and support recovery from our workouts.

Telling yourself that you don't need to pursue fitness because you're happy with your current fitness level is a form of self-sabotage. You can't maintain the results you've achieved if you don't continue strength training, doing cardio, and paying attention to your nutrition habits.

You deserve to have a strong and mobile body throughout your entire life, and you can't do that if you neglect exercise and nutrition once you achieve your desired fitness level. You have to work to maintain it!

Start Your Fitness Journey With Us

Ready to stop getting in the way of your success?⁣ Are you done letting assumptions and society determine your outcomes for you?⁣

If you're fully committed to creating a healthier lifestyle, we're fully committed to helping you achieve it! The team at KJO Coaching takes an extremely personalized approach to health, fitness, and wellness coaching.

We understand that not everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, and we understand that everyone has unique obstacles that may make it hard to find motivation to continue or even begin prioritizing their health.

We'll help you prioritize your health, fitness, wellness, and mindset so you can spend less time worrying about what to eat or how to get enough workouts in. We can help you build a stronger mind, life, and body (and make it last this time)!

Apply for 1:1 coaching with our team to get started!

Want to get a jump start on putting an end to self-sabotaging behaviors? Check out our FREE Self-Sabotage Workshop Series. You'll learn to combat your cravings, end all-or-nothing thinking, and learn the science (and strategy!) behind the psychological barriers that keep getting in the way of your health and fitness goals.

Connect with us!

Email: [email protected] 

IG: @coachkaseyjo @kjocoaching