4 research backed steps to improve health and fitness

Author: Mann Ghatt

There are 6 categories in our life which we need to focus on and constantly improve for a happy life. All these 6 categories are inter-related to each other. When we make progress in one category, automatically, the other 5 categories also improve to a certain extent. Similarly, when we neglect any one category, automatically, the other 5 categories are also negatively affected to a certain extent. The first category out of these 6 categories is health and fitness.

We all want to be healthy and fit, but many of us truly realize the value of health only after it is lost. Once health is lost, we need to work very hard to restore it, and, in some cases, we cannot restore it. Greatness of our body is — it is extremely forgiving. It forgives us for years and years of our wrong eating habits, poor exercise habits. Only after bearing the brunt for many years, it breaks down one fine day. Once it breaks down, it takes anywhere from a few months to several years to restore it to a healthy state. When we start working on our health and fitness right when we are in good health, we can prevent many of the diseases and live a happy life.

Another great quality of our body is — even though we might have eaten wrong foods for several years and did not exercise at all, the day we start making positive changes in our diet and exercise, our body responds very quickly. It takes just a few weeks of consistent effort to start seeing changes in our body. That’s how magical and reliable our body is.

Our body is one of the greatest gifts we received in life. So, let us create a plan to take good care of our body and improve our health and fitness with the below 4 steps.4 steps to improve your health and fitness:

1.Create empowering beliefs: Your beliefs shape your reality. Your beliefs determine how fit and healthy you stay in your life. So, creating empowering beliefs about your health and fitness is the first step on your journey. With negative beliefs in place, even the best of the diet plans and exercise plans fail because your own beliefs stop you from achieving the results. Ask yourself what are your negative beliefs about health and fitness category and also be aware of your conversations and thoughts to find your negative limiting beliefs. Once you find your negative beliefs, remove and replace them with positive, empowering beliefs.

Below are some examples of empowering beliefs about health and fitness which you can create in your life

  1. My body is designed to be healthy
  2. My body can heal itself if I take good care of it
  3. My diet and exercise are in my control
  4. My body responds very quickly to healthy changes I make in my life
  5. My body is my friend
  6. I enjoy exercising
  7. It is effortless for me to stay healthy and fit

2. Create a vision: Understand what you want to achieve in the health and fitness category. Understand your heart’s desires for this category. Don’t think whether achieving your goals is feasible or not. For a moment, think that you can achieve anything you want in your life and ask yourself questions like below

  1. How does my ideal body look like?
  2. How does it feel to be healthy and strong?
  3. How do I look when I am fit?
  4. What kind of clothes will I wear when I am fit?
  5. How do my relationships transform when I am healthy and fit?

Take some time and find your answers to the above questions. Once you have your answers, write down your vision statement as if it already happened. This clear vision helps you in tuning your subconscious mind and achieving better results. Below are some examples of vision statements for the health and fitness category

  1. My body is strong, healthy and fit
  2. I am fit, healthy, youthful and beautiful.
  3. I radiate health and well-being
  4. I am happy with my body
  5. I have perfect body weight
  6. I have perfect health

3.Understand your purpose behind your vision: In this step, list down all your reasons why you want your body to be healthy and fit. Understand why you want to achieve what you want. The important point is that your reasons should excite and inspire you. You can list down some reasons like below, which resonate with you.

  1. I love being healthy
  2. I want to become a role model for my child
  3. I want to look fit and wear nice clothes
  4. I want to feel confident about my body
  5. I want to play and run along with my kids
  6. I want to live a healthy and long life
  7. I want to be disease-free

Take some time and write down all the reasons why you want to work on your health and fitness. The stronger your reasons are, the better will be your commitment to your vision.

4.Create your action plan: Any goal can be achieved only when it has a concrete action plan. Create a massive action plan that gives you outstanding results. Your plan should be such that you should be able to follow your action steps even when you are busy, and your days are packed. Your schedules should not become an excuse or obstacle in achieving your goals. Some examples of the action items you can plan to do are as below

  1. I will be mindful while eating food
  2. I will practice yoga thrice a week
  3. I will practice strength training twice a week
  4. I will create my diet plan suitable for me
  5. I will plan my schedule to sleep well for 8 hours
  6. I will plan to cut down my sugar consumption by 50%
  7. I will plan my meals to be healthy and tasty

Write down all your action items and refer to this article "10 steps to achieve your goals". This article will help you plan your action steps in such a way that you can practice them even on a busy day.

Once you have all these 4 steps in place, it becomes a cake-walk for you to achieve your goals related to health and fitness. Most of the time, we randomly pick up our action steps like eating millets or cutting sugar or exercising and start doing them without any planning. Very soon, we give up these steps because we did not plan them well. Our action steps are derived without the first 3 steps listed above. Without all the above 4 steps in place, it becomes challenging to sustain any action steps for a long duration and achieve permanent results.

So, take time and create these 4 steps for one of the most important aspects of your life — your health and fitness. Your health and fitness are precious, and they are in your hands. Take action now and achieve what your heart desires

Wish you health and fitness.