Recommitting to your goals means recommitting to yourself

While summer isn’t technically over under mid-September, it starts to feel like fall the minute back-to-school sales and Halloween candy fills the aisles at the Supermarket. Fall already?

Summer has its own rhythm and its own priorities. Whether it’s vacations, camping, socializing, or just general spontaneity, summer may feel a little more relaxed than the schedules we keep for the rest of the year. For some of us, summer may actually be more hectic than the rest of the year. We struggle to cover our colleagues’ vacations and find every weekend occupied with family reunions and weddings. No matter if you’ve had a lazy summer where sleeping in was quickly normalized or a chaotic summer full of deadlines and late nights, you may have had to put your fitness goals on hold to accommodate real life.

It happens but a short detour is not a total derailment. Now that your schedule has settled down, it’s time to start recommiting yourself to your health goals. Here are some ways to prioritize fitness:

• Meal planning. Spend some time on the weekend, or on a quiet weekday, to take care of lunches and dinners for the rest of the week. Making your food, preparing the ingredients, or at least deciding in advance what days are take out/pick up days can help you feel more in control of your eating habits.

• Carve out some exercise time. You need to schedule in your exercise time just like you would plan a meeting or activity. Without this, it’s easy for other activities and commitments to take precedence over working out. Treat this time as non negotiable and just as important as anything else on the calendar.

• Take a class. If you sign up for a fitness class, show up — and make sure you are on time and ready to work. Include travel time in your schedule so you aren’t rushing or being overbooked. While a drop-in class is enough motivation for some of us, committing to being on a specific bike or attending a class where your absence may be recognized (either financially or socially) can be extra motivation to make sure we honour our commitment to ourselves. We’ve even launched some great classes at TrainingSpaces, so we hope to see you there.

It’s time to picture your goal and reassess.  Nothing happens overnight and a fad, crash diet isn’t going to be the solution. Instead, you need a new plan. What’s one thing you can do today that will take you one step closer to your goal? Can you spend five more minutes on the treadmill or add another session to your yoga practice? Is it time to ask for heavier weights that will push you out of your comfort zone and nudge you a small step towards what you want to accomplish.

The fact is the summer break is just that, it’s a break. It’s a time out but it’s time to re-engage and re-commit yourself. And only you can prioritize you.