Improving your pullup game or training to run your first 10-K can be frustrating. But you should know that even people with six-pack abs and marathons under their running belts have been in your shoes.
Click through for advice from women who crushed their fitness goals when the going got tough.
Dell Farrell, 25, quit extreme workouts and dieting to become a certified personal trainer and bodybuilder. She says that when she looked at every obstacle as an opportunity to improve, it took away her stress. So if your packed schedule is making it hard to get to the gym, learning to say "no" or improving your time-management skills buys you time to work out and teaches you a life skill. Obstacle, obliterated.
"Focusing on my nutrition and physical fitness is fun, it's not something I’m forcing myself to do," says Farrell. If you feel like your workout is retribution for that donut you ate yesterday, why would you ever want to exercise? But if it’s something you get to do because you enjoy it, you’ll be more apt to stick with your fitness goals, she says.
Farrell says jotting down how you want to feel after reaching your goal, how you feel now, and what you'll do to accomplish your goal is a great reminder of where you started and where you're going. Revisit your memo to yourself whenever your willpower wanes.
"There were weeks when I was super-motivated to train hard and eat right," says Farrell. "Other times I would feel the complete opposite." When that happened, she says she took a week off to get excited about training again.
When pastry chef Kira Ottaway, 29, wanted to get in shape, she created the Rock Your Life Fitness page on Facebook to blog about her journey. "I shared my strengths, setbacks, and inspired others who were trying to get in shape too," she says. That accountability kept her on track with her workouts and healthy diet.
"Sometimes I still want to skip a workout, but I know I won't feel good about it later," says Tami Siwiecki Whittier, 48, an elementary school teacher who worked with a personal trainer to get fit and stop stressing over the scale. "My trainer says, 'You don't regret working out, only not working out.'" So when you're not feeling that class or run, ask yourself how you’ll feel after your workout. Better?
If a certain type of sweat sesh makes you dread working out, do something else, says Jasmin Singer, 36, who lost 86 pounds and wrote the book Always Too Much and Never Enough about her newly discovered love for running. "When I started running outside, I realized I liked moving my body, so I went with it," she says. "It was life changing."
"I think the progress itself is what kept me going," says Diane Haro, 27, who lost 99 pounds and is now an instructor at the Chicago-based women’s-only gym Studio Phoenix. Seeing that her hard work was paying off kept her amped. You can use an app like MyFitnessPal or a note on your phone to keep track of your milestones.
Anxiety has a way of effing up just about everything in our lives including fitness goals. "Stress made me want to give up," says Haro. "The more stressed I was, the less I wanted to exercise." For Haro, carving out some alone time to refocus her intentions and relax helped her overcome that roadblock.
"There were times when I planned to run and I just didn't want to get out of bed," says Singer. "Since I knew self-sabotage was always a possibility, I did everything I could in advance to make getting up and running as easy as possible." She'd set out her clothes the night before, have the coffee machine ready, and make sure her post-run breakfast was prepped.
When you really don’t feel like working out, make a deal with yourself to try exercising for 10 minutes, says Singer. If you still don't feel like working out after that, you can stop. "After 10 minutes, I never, ever want to quit. By then, I'm enjoying it," she says.
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