Why Fitness & Nutrition Changes Can Be So Hard and How to Make it Feel Easier

By Raquel "Rocky" Herron, Fitness Manager, and Megan O'Reilly, AFPA Certified Nutritionist and Wellness Consultant 

If you've ever made a personal goal to lose weight, eat healthier, or exercise more, you probably know that achieving the goal isn't always easy.  If you struggle with getting in more exercise or eating more nutritiously, you are not alone.  Consider these facts. A few years ago, the CDC published a study that reported only 80% of American adults get their recommended aerobic physical activity in each week. Another report states that 76% of adults do not get their recommended servings of fruit per day, and a whopping 87% do not get their recommended servings of vegetables per day. So what is making it so hard for all of us to get enough exercise and healthy foods in?

	Raquel "Rocky" Herron

The answer is two-fold. Number one, knowledge. Do you know how many minutes of exercise the USDA recommends? Do you know how many servings of fruit, vegetables, protein, grains, and dairy are recommended for you? If you don't, you won't know what goal to aim for. 

Once you have the knowledge of the changes you need to make, it is still not easy! In fact, the hard part is from over. The second reason why making fitness and nutrition changes is so hard is simple: change, any kind of change, is hard!  

Megan O'Reilly

The biggest mistake we see is often termed the "overhaul mindset."  People want to see big changes, real fast! We plan to overhaul our entire way of eating and exercising all at once, and expect our drastic changes to stick. Reality check:  this does not work! For most of us, the more changes we try to make, the harder it is to stick with them all.  We end up overwhelmed, giving in to our excuses and feeling like a failure. 

To combat this common challenge, strategically plan one small but realistic change at a time. For example, if healthier eating is your goal, focus only on improving your breakfast choices for a few weeks. Once you have made one successful habit change, add another. In this healthy eating example, perhaps your second small change could be to add just one vegetable to your lunch for a few weeks. Let the success of one small change provide momentum for creating and achieving another small goal. As time passes, your small habit changes will stack upon each other to create exactly what you are looking for: REAL, LASTING, SUSTAINABLE changes.  The slower we go, the easier it feels.

One challenge to this moving slow theory is that we all want results, real FAST right NOW. However, if you think about your attempts at exercising or dieting in the past, chances are you can relate to falling victim of the "overhaul mindset."  If it didn't work for you in the past, chances are that it is not going to work for you now.  If you are interested in learning how to make an exercise and eating plan that will work for you, with long term results, come join us Wednesday November 1, 6:30-7:30, at the Chillicothe Public Library. Our free presentation will include the current exercise and nutrition guidelines, tips for overcoming excuses, and suggestions on implementing small changes one at a time. 

Hopefully, one of those small changes will include deciding to exercise, or at least become more consistent with your workouts. To help you with this challenge and to show you what group exercise can do for you, Pearce will be offering Black Friday Fitness Bash that will provide a small sampling of group exercise to include Step Aerobics, BODYPUMP™, BODYATTACK™, Hip Hop, and Zumba®.  Our Black Friday fitness event is free and open to the public. Classes begin at 8:30!