Top Tips for Starting Your Diet & Exercise Plan

We’ve outlined a few things that you’ll need to do to get started with your exercise and diet planning that include:

• Setting goals.
• Choosing your exercise.
• Setting a schedule.
• Choosing a diet.
• Making meal plans.
• Checking in.

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Identify and set some goals.
As with most things in life, it’s going to be tough to accomplish anything in fitness without setting achievable and quantifiable goals. Set some benchmarks for yourself with things like:

• Run a mile in less than X minutes.
• Reduce body fat percentage by X%.
• Bench press X pounds.
• Fit into size X pants.

Set a mark that you can definitively reach and then celebrate when you reach it. It’s also recommended that you set short-term goals to help you reach your long-term goals.

After you’ve identified and set your goals, write them down. Writing down your goals is a great way to hold yourself accountable for your persistence and check in on your progress. Put your goals where you can track them every day as a reminder of the goals you’re working toward.

Choose an exercise regimen.
Before you start any exercise, you need to decide what kind of exercises you want to be a part of your plan. Do you prefer to lift weights or run on a treadmill? Do you want to do a combination of the two? Put together a plan that says how often you’ll be doing weight training, stepping onto a treadmill, stretching, or anything else you plan to do. Anything you want to include in your exercise routine should be a part of your plan, so you can account for it as it comes up. Do you play pickup basketball games with friends every Tuesday night? Include that as a part of your routine because you’re never skipping basketball night, right?

Plan your workout schedule.
You don’t have to hit the gym every day to reach your fitness goals. Your exercise frequency is entirely up to you and your everyday schedule. So, take some time to review your average week and figure out the best way your exercise time fits. Once you’ve established when you can work out, bake it into your schedule. Early morning trips to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are now a part of your normal routine. Tuesday night basketball and Thursday afternoon yoga are as well. Or whatever you decide to do with your workout schedule. If you need help keeping track of when you’re heading to the gym, put it in your calendar with a reminder. Use your phone to help keep you accountable for the goals you’ve set.

Determine your diet plan.
When you’re building a new diet and exercise plan, you’ll want to take a look at how you want to adjust your eating. Of course, you do get to eat more when you work out because you want to replenish what you’ve burned. But you also don’t want to overeat, so it’s important that you’re tracking what you eat. After you’ve determined your diet plan, find a free, pre-made template or a handy app that makes it easy to track what you’re eating on any device. This is one of the easiest ways to make sure that you’re not overeating and meeting your diet goals.

Tip: Don’t fall for fad diets. Sometimes you’ll find strange diets on exercise blogs or things you hear at the gym where somebody lost 20 pounds in a month by only eating some exotic fruit. This isn’t normal. Medical professionals agree that a healthy diet and being active are the healthiest way to lose weight.

Create meal plans.
It’s normal to fall into the trap of wanting to make fast and easy meals each night. But it’s not always the best option to meet your fitness goals. Build a schedule with meals, so you know what you’re having for dinner tonight rather than standing in the pantry eating a serving of potato chips while trying to decide if you want potato chips with dinner. Scheduling meals is an effective part of diet planning because it saves you from making tough food decisions at the moment. You can even use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help you generate recipes in seconds!

Tip: Build snacks into your meal plans. It’s normal to get munchy between meals, so make notes for yourself that include your favorite snacks to help you reach for a bag of carrots instead of a handful of cookies.

Check in on your goals.
After a month or so, check on your goals and see how your diet and exercise plan is going. Do you need to adjust anywhere? Are you getting enough to eat? Are you losing weight too fast? How does your body feel after exercising? Waiting a month to answer these questions gives your body a chance to adjust to the changes. Are you going to feel hungry if you’re cutting back your daily caloric intake? At first, yes. But after a few weeks, you might decide that it’s not so bad. Or maybe your schedule changed, and you don’t have Wednesday nights available for water aerobics at the club anymore. Make any changes you need to your plan, adjust your goals as needed, then get back to it.

No matter what kind of personal fitness or wellness goals you have, putting together a diet and exercise plan is the key to success! Follow these steps, and you’ll find that you’re well on your way to self-improvement.