Keeping up your exercise resolution is hard work!  Cast your mind back to early January. Do you remember how fired up you were? 2015 was set to be the year that you got on track and stayed on track with your business, personal and health goals. You were totally focused, 100% confident of your success and nothing was going to get in your way. Fast forward to end February and statistics show that nearly 50% of you will have fallen off the wagon.

Sticking to a regular exercise routine is tough when you’re at home but a business trip can derail your best intentions. Since you’ve already been ‘good’ for a few weeks and you’ve started to feel better and not so desperate to make a change you lose your original enthusiasm and motivation.

So what can you do to avoid slipping back into your old behaviours? How can you get back on track and recapture that January focus?

◊  Revisit your 2015 goals at least once a day. Remind yourself what you’re trying to achieve and be specific. When you frame your goals in concrete terms it lessens the gap between expectations and outcomes, increasing your sense of success and satisfaction. So if you want to run more, how often and how far do you want to run?

◊  Always schedule your exercise sessions in your diary. If someone else manages your diary make sure they know that your exercise sessions are as immovable as a meeting with your CEO! Whether it’s a brisk walk or a hardcore workout if it’s in your calendar you’ll be much less likely to skip it.

◊  Apply Pareto’s 80/20 rule to your exercise routine as well as your work. Time is the most often quoted excuse for not exercising but a workout doesn’t have to take a huge chunk out of your day. A HIIT workout need only take 20 minutes and you can easily knock out a few bodyweight circuits in your hotel room before breakfast. ◊

◊  If the thought of hitting the hotel gym is just too much focus on a target such as 12,000 steps a day. It’s surprisingly easy to achieve especially if it’s a multi destination trip which will mean lots of traipsing across airports for connecting flights. 

◊  If you spend the first couple of nights of a business trip socializing with colleagues instead of working out, don’t tell yourself there’s no point in trying to get back into a routine. A couple of missed workouts will not ruin all of your previous hard work as long as you don’t let it.

Your health has an enormous impact on your energy levels, mental acuity and productivity. Staying on track with your fitness resolutions isn’t just about losing weight or building muscle it will keep your career on track too.

©  Extravitality 2015