Ways to Stay Motivated When You Don't See Results

It's perfectly normal to want to see fast results when you start a new exercise plan, and it can wreck your motivation if nothing happens, or worse yet, you gain weight. There are, however, reasons to stick with it, and ways you can stay motivated when you don't see results as quickly as you want.

Ways to Stay Motivated When You Don't See Results image courtesy of Pixabay

Stay Motivated When You Don't See Results

Even if you aren't seeing changes on the scale, if you are sticking with your exercise regimen, there are still changes going on inside your body. Exercising builds muscle, increases your strength, and releases endorphins that make you feel more positive.

Use more than one way to measure the effectiveness of your workouts. The scale might not be the place where results show up first, and weight loss can take longer than expected, especially as your body ages.

Understand that your body changes and responds differently to stimulus than it did when you were younger. For example: when I was younger, I could drop 6 pounds overnight by eating 2 Snickers bars before bed. If I did that now, the only results I would see would be heartburn around 3 am.

Know yourself and the things that inspire you, and use them. If fitting into a certain outfit inspires you, put up pictures of it where you can see them frequently. If the health dangers that come with being overweight frighten you, put little notes around that remind you of the potential for heart attacks, diabetes, and other weight-related diseases. (Personally, I like to keep it positive, but everyone is different, so find your inspiration, and use it to your advantage.)

Know that getting healthier and fitter is a journey you can take and succeed at, regardless of your age or starting point, and the key to succeeding isn't in seeing immediate results, the key is (keys are) starting, adapting your regimen to fit your life, sticking with it, and increasing your efforts regularly enough to keep it challenging.

Yesterday completed my seventh day of daily workouts and sharing info about the experience here on Fat and Cranky. This morning I got up and rushed to the scale expecting a loss of at least a pound, only to be greeted with an extra pound that wasn't here when I started. THAT was the inspiration for this message, and a reminder about using more than one metric to measure results. 

If my weight were the only thing I was using to measure success, this fitness project would be done right now. But using how I FEEL as a measuring guide as well as weight, and the fact that my jeans are touch looser, lets me know I am making progress.  

Also, I know it's going to take more than just adding a short workout session each day to change my weight very much, I just chose light exercise as a place to begin. It supposedly takes 21 days to make something a habit, so my first focus is just creating the habit of exercising and finding ways to be more active. 

This week I plan to increase the workouts a bit, and begin tracking my water consumption, so I start getting the recommended eight 8-ounce glasses per day - and then next week I'll start looking at dietary changes.  (I'll be posting about that some more later today.)

So, how about you? Did you make any positive changes last week? If not, today is a great time to do something for yourself, and it can be anything you are comfortable doing, or you can follow my workout routines, they're posted in order on the Fitness page here on Fat and Cranky so you can try them in the order I did or choose the ones you like any time. 

Laure J