Month / February 2016

5 Ways to Keep Your Fitness Resolutions www.strongandworthy.com

5 Ways to Keep Your Fitness Resolutions

If you have made resolutions this year that are self-care related, such as making fitness a priority, eating healthier, losing some weight, or getting more sleep, you’ve made a commitment to yourself. Such commitments have proven hard to keep for many, and rightly so. We’re all leading incredibly busy lives, struggling as it is to find bits of extra time in our days for the extra things we want to do, never mind additional things we may not want to do.

And there is the problem.

Even with the best of intentions, if the resolution you’ve chosen is something you dread or genuinely don’t enjoy, it is destined to eventually fail. If something is going to be dropped from your to-do list in March, you can bet it’s going to be that thing that you hate but have been forcing yourself to do each day.

So, what’s the workaround?

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Tea for one

Break out those “good” dishes.

We talk a good game, don’t we? About the importance of self care. About knowing how critical it is in order to function and be fulfilled in our lives and our work.

We adore Pinterest boards dedicated to it, reaffirming our love affair with the notion. From inspirational quote pins by Oprah to the ever-popular “can’t fill an empty cup” analogy, all styled beautifully with artful backgrounds. Such a romantic idea, self care is, isn’t it? Like some kind of dreamy other world we get to occasionally get a wistful glimpse of while admiring other fantasies on the internet. As we stay up past 2am to meet a deadline…

Such images and quotes are beautiful but they’re not realistic, right? I mean, we don’t actually bother with setting aside dedicated time for ourselves because seriously. Those 50 million things on our ever-growing to-do lists aren’t going to miraculously all complete themselves. Self care, it would seem, is but a glamorous fantasy.

It’s that “good” porcelain teapot, safely displayed behind the glass doors of our china cabinets, expensive and frivolous and so very rarely used. It’s that indulgent spa gift card a friend gave us 6 years ago that is still probably somewhere amidst the chaos in our wallets. It’s the $10 purple orchid we swoon over and then walk away from in the grocery store flower department. Surely that $10 is better spent on something more practical, anyway.

The notion of self care, like using that teapot or gift card or buying that flower, is lovely and romantic, but the reality is, there’s no place for such things in day to day life.

Why?

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