“I’m Fergalicious (so delicious)

My body stay vicious

I be up in the gym just working on my fitness.” – Fergie

Whether or not you feel your body is “Fergalicious”, hopefully we can all agree that fitness is important to living your best life!  That said, fitness should be part of your IDW lifestyle and not perceived only as a goal that you work on when you want your body to be “vicious”.

Let’s break down the barriers to entry on fitness and discover how you can incorporate it into your everyday life, rather than focusing on it as a “goal” that you implement when you need to fit into a dress for an event or want to look smokin’ pool side this summer.

Why Fitness Is Important

To keep it simple, modern society is far too sedentary!  Think about it. We sit when we work, we sit when we drive, we sit when we eat, we sit when we watch movies & TV.  There is just a lot of sitting each and everyday!  If you don’t make fitness a priority in your life, you could easily spend far too much time sitting on your booty instead of shaking it and getting your heart-rate up.  Humans were not “designed” to be sedentary creatures.  We were meant to move!  So if modern life makes it harder to move all day long, then we have to work a little harder to move our bodies and make them work how they were intended by incorporating fitness into each and every day.

Fitness as a Lifestyle vs. a Goal

This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s all about mindset.  If you view fitness as part of your every day life, you are much more likely to find ways to be active regardless of whether you make it to your favorite gym class on any given day.  When fitness is part of your life, you will prioritize 30-minutes each day to move your body in an intentional way because you know it will make you feel good.  When you only focus on fitness at goal time (i.e. a special event, an upcoming vacation, a big birthday, etc.), you will likely work hard for a short amount of time and then stop completely.  While it’s great to set goals and also step up your fitness game at specific times, working consistently on 30-minutes of activity each day is more beneficial for your physical and mental health overall.

Find the Joy in Fitness

There are times when you will want to maximize your fitness effort to reach a specific goal.  For example, perhaps you are training for a 5K and you have never run more than 1 mile at a time before.  You will work hard during your training period and find joy in the victories of your progress along the way.  But what about when you are not training for that race and you are just living your life that incorporates fitness?  You still have to celebrate your victories and find the joy in the process!  If it’s not Simple, Sustainable & Fun you are not going to keep it up!  So, make a game with yourself if you need some motivation and treat yourself to some self-care time at the end of each week to congratulate yourself on prioritizing your fitness.  Buy yourself some cute workout clothes that you look forward to wearing during your daily sweat sesh.  Or make it extra fun by spending time with a friend while you workout.  When you make the experience joyful, you will find it much easier to become part of your lifestyle rather than a chore!

The more you incorporate fitness into your everyday life, the better you will feel about yourself mind, body & soul.  Definitely leverage goal setting and motivation to keep your fitness progressing, but remember that fitness should be part of your overall healthy lifestyle, and not just something you do once in a while when you are focused on a specific end result.