Celebrate Your Fitness Accomplishments

Another 12 months have passed by. And if they went by a little faster than you had planned, you may not have checked off every last thing you wanted to accomplish with your health and fitness goals.

Don’t fret. Even if your plans haven’t gone quite as planned, chances are you still accomplished a great deal, probably much more than you’re currently giving yourself credit for. Really. We’re not just being nice.

Look at it this way: While the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, it also seems that the roads to success and satisfaction are often characterized by an infuriating number of train crossings, tollbooths and multigoal pile-ups. They are also frequently devoid of road signs indicating pesky areas of construction, detours and merging traffic. So you don’t always know what obstacles are coming or even recognize them when you hit them. But hit them you do, and as a result, it sometimes takes you a little longer than you’d like to get where you’re going. Fact of life.

Rather than beating yourself up about how long it’s taking you to reach your destination, take a peek in the rearview mirror and consider for a moment just how much territory you’ve already covered. OK, so maybe you’re not as toned as you’d hoped you’d be. But perhaps you’ve started eating a little healthier, and you’re feeling a little more energetic and confident as a result. Maybe you’ve also managed to put a few miles on the bike you bought three years ago but never rode until last spring. This is the kind of stuff you need to acknowledge as forward progress, not evidence of a job undone.

The point is, if you’re doing anything at all, even if it’s just shifting your attitude, making some smarter choices or developing your health-and-fitness knowledge base, you’re building momentum and opening up pathways to bigger accomplishments. And if you fail to credit yourself for that, you’re setting yourself up for unnecessary hurdles in the future. You’re also cheating yourself out of a lot of well-deserved satisfaction.

Pride in the Process

“If you really want to succeed, you need to start viewing your fitness accomplishments from a positive perspective,” asserts Jennifer Davis, MS, a health psychology counselor for the Duke Center for Living in Durham, N.C.

Viewing last year’s successes in sharper relief can also help prime you for even more success in 2007, Davis notes, because it helps you assemble evidence that you are, in fact, making health and fitness a greater priority in your life. This helps upgrade your goal-oriented pursuits from the dreaded “should” or “have to” status (or worse, “total failure” status) to a progressive and positive part of your current identity.

“Taking stock this way helps you clearly communicate to yourself that being active and living a healthy lifestyle are truly important to you,” says Davis.

But this whole looking-back endeavor isn’t just about a fluffy, feel-good review. It’s also about plotting out how you can build your current momentum into new accomplishments for the coming year. Once you can confidently say to yourself, “Hey, I did accomplish a lot after all,” and accept that every long journey unfolds incrementally, you’ll be primed to start drafting a health plan for the next 12 months, perhaps with some ideas you gather here.

Your Fitness Successes

While it’s important to set long-term fitness goals that suit your objectives, it’s also important to have plenty of supportive, short-term strategies that put your bigger ambitions into daily practice and perspective. The fact is, every fitness goal — from losing 10 pounds, to bench-pressing your body weight, to competing in a triathlon — ultimately comes down to a whole lot of moment-by-moment decisions, the little things you do (or don’t do) while no one is looking. So let’s consider for a moment what a few of those things might be.

Planning/Contemplation

During the past year, did you:

• Recognize the need or desire for more activity in your life? Take stock of your current fitness status?
• Get a medical checkup or seek advice from your health professional about an appropriate fitness program?
• Consider ways that being in good shape can support your success in other areas of your life?
• Set and document any fitness goals?
• Identify one or more realistic fitness role models? Visualize your body at its most healthy, beautiful and vital?
• Explore and identify your specific fitness motivations, likely obstacles, rewards for success, consequences of failure?
• Manage to formally schedule (write in your calendar) specific times to work out or be active? Show up for planned workouts, even some of the time? Even once?
• Get off track but then start up again?
• Investigate any outdoor activity areas (nature trails, climbing walls, bike paths, etc.), classes or outings in your community?
• End the year with a better idea of what type of fitness plan might work for you, or a better sense of how to work around your biggest obstacles?

Education/Support

During the past year, did you:

• Become more interested in health and fitness information (for example, did you take more interest in fitness-related media, conversation or activities)?
• Realize that you don’t know as much as you’d like about how to get in shape, or that you aren’t really applying what you know?
• Share your goals or intentions with other people? Ask for their support, or ask them to help hold you accountable?
• Seek out any information, guidance or support related to getting in shape or taking your fitness program to a new level (books, magazines, Web sites, conversations with trainers, health pros and fit friends)?
• Become more discerning about “get-fit-quick” schemes and celebrity-endorsed “miracle” equipment?
• Keep a journal or log of your fitness activities at any time? Did you discover anything in the process? Have any insights about your own patterns of activity and inactivity, motivation, and lack of interest (for example, did you notice that you do better being active at certain times of the day, week or year, or that you enjoy exercise under some circumstances but not others)?
• Experiment with different kinds of fitness routines or activities? Did you find that you liked some better than others?
• Ever notice that some activity (whether a yoga class, a morning walk or an after-dinner ball game with your kids) really made you feel better and was definitely worth the time?
• Become aware of the importance (and potential synergy) of pursuing a balanced fitness regimen, including strength, cardio, flexibility and balance (proprioceptive) training?
• Learn to accept and be grateful for the body you have right now, including its inherent ability to change?
• End the year knowing more about fitness, and your own fitness patterns, than you did at the year’s outset?

Execution/Momentum

During the past year, did you:

• Direct some of your daily choices and actions toward achieving better fitness (for example, did you start taking the stairs, walking after dinner, watching less TV, making it to the gym more often)?
• Manage to stick with a scheduled workout or activity plan, even marginally? Achieve a more balanced fitness program than you had last year? Build in more variety? Identify your appropriate workout-intensity zones?
• Take real pleasure or enjoyment in any of your fitness activities? Experience any sort of fitness-related “rush” or exercise high? End a workout or activity session feeling proud and happy?
• Ever push yourself even a little past what you thought you could do?
• Use activity as a way to de-stress, relax or wind down?
• Attempt to spend more time being active with friends and family?
• Participate in any athletic events or competitions? Work out in a class or with a group?
• End the year feeling more hopeful and excited about your fitness than when you started?

Your Nutritional Successes

You may have discovered that when it comes to habits, few are more deeply ingrained — and more maddeningly unconscious — than the ones having to do with what we put in our mouths.

Fortunately, our eating habits don’t have to be perfect for us to be healthy. Even small improvements in our diet can make a big difference in how well our bodies function. The nutrients we’re taking in can have an especially big impact on how strong and energetic we feel and, by extension, how willing or able we are to exercise. So in evaluating your nutritional progress this year, it’s important to consider awareness as well as outcomes, and to perceive even your most disappointing “failures” with a view to what they might have taught you.

Planning/Contemplation

During the past year, did you:

• Realize that your body needs and deserves better nutrition than you’ve been giving it?
• Contemplate or investigate how you might improve your eating habits?
• Inquire with your health professional or nutrition specialist about what type of eating plan or dietary changes would be advisable for you?
• Come to a better understanding about how nutrition supports your general health, immunity, energy, athletic potential, mood and ability to handle stress?
• Set any healthy-eating goals? Document any of them? Create a plan toward achieving them?
• Abandon your healthy-eating plan or lose momentum, but then get back on track?
• Shop at a food co-op, health-food store, natural grocery or healthy-food area of your market?
• Remove any unhealthy items from your home? Quit buying any unhealthy, overprocessed or “problem” foods (trans fats, refined carbs, sodas, etc.)?
• Start carrying healthy foods and drinks with you? Start patronizing healthier restaurants?
• End the year with a better idea of what changes you’d need to make, and what resources you’d need to seek, to improve your eating habits?

Education/Support

During the past year, did you:

• Become more interested in nutrition (for example, did you find yourself reading and interpreting nutrition labels, reading nutrition-related articles, or understanding nutrition concepts)?
• Share your healthy-eating goals or intentions with other people, especially those with whom you live? Did you ask for their support, or ask them to help hold you accountable?
• Seek out any information, guidance or support related to healthy eating (books, magazines, Web sites, conversations with trainers, health professionals or health-savvy friends)?
• Begin to see the difference between “being on a diet” and eating for good nutrition and health management?
• Keep a journal or log of your eating? Have any insights about your own patterns of eating (for example, did you notice that you tend to eat poorly when stressed or overtired, that you feel better when you include protein at breakfast, avoid processed carbs, etc.)?
• Experiment with different kinds of eating schedules or different ratios of macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbs)? Find that your body responded to some regimens better than others?
• Notice that certain foods don’t agree with you, or that they set you up for wanting more and more?
• Become aware of the importance of eating well to support your training?
• End the year knowing more about nutrition, and your own eating habits, than you did at the year’s outset?

Execution/Momentum

During the past year, did you:

• Direct some of your daily choices and actions toward achieving better nutrition (for example, did you start eating a better breakfast, cutting back on caffeine and soda, taking your lunch to work, learning to cook new, healthy dishes, or ordering takeout less often)?
• Manage to stick with a healthy-eating plan for any length of time, even marginally? Take notice of what threw you off and when you tended to cave in to temptation?
• Achieve a healthier, more balanced diet than you had last year? Eat a wider variety of foods? Start incorporating more organics and high-quality foods? Drink more water? Take a daily multivitamin? Get more omega-3 fats?
• Take some real pleasure or enjoyment in eating healthy? Experience any sort of nutrition-related energy boost?
• Get up from a healthy meal feeling satisfied and pleased with what you’d consumed?
• Break or weaken a stress-related eating or drinking habit? Enlist the support of a healthy-eating buddy or coach?
• Attempt to serve healthier foods to your family? Eat together at the table more often? Seek out healthier food choices while traveling or vacationing?
• End the year feeling more confident, in control and motivated toward healthy eating than when you started?

Taking Stock, Taking Credit

If you’ve been able to say “yes” to any of these things, or if reading through these examples has shaken loose any insights about other accomplishments or areas of progress, congratulations. Give yourself some gold stars! You’ve made headway, and with luck you’ve also made some sense of what it takes for you to make positive change in any area of your life.

Take note of what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve learned and what you want to do more (or less) of in the coming year. Then take pride in the fact that this year, your good intentions actually took you somewhere you wanted to go — in the direction of your hopes, your values and your most promising future.

Your Year in Review 

Using the ideas from this article and your own instinct as fodder, reflect back on your year with a view to what you feel were your biggest successes, achievements or areas of progress. Take a moment to document them here, along with your areas of continuing challenge, then use the lessons you’ve learned from your breakthroughs to generate new momentum in the areas where you feel most sluggish.

1. List your top three accomplishments this year.

2. Name three lessons you learned from these successes (about what works best; how you’re wired; what conditions, support or timing best predispose you to success)

3. List your top three areas of challenge over the past year.

4. Name three lessons you learned from these challenges (about what clearly doesn’t work for you, what types of obstacles you’re most vulnerable to, any tendencies toward self-sabotage, etc.).

5. Consider how you can apply these lessons to the goals you intend to set for 2007. Write yourself a brief note summarizing what you’ve learned, and tuck it into your journal for reference down the road. When you find yourself at an impasse or detour, take the paper out and read it. You may be surprised at how wise your own advice sounds just a few weeks from now!

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This article originally appeared as “Celebrate Your Fitness Success” in the December 2006 issue of Experience Life.