With the start of the New Year, many of us have made resolutions to improve our health and fitness. While having specific health and fitness goals in mind is excellent, people often go to extremes to accomplish these goals. They try the newest fad diet or workout trend and often end up exhausting both their mental and physical energy.

This usually leads to either quitting altogether or reaching these goals and being unable to maintain them, ultimately resulting in burnout, failure, or injury. Because of this, I propose you ditch the extreme unrealistic goals and aim to change your lifestyle.

When you start to view health and fitness as a lifestyle rather than a part-time hobby or 30-day challenge, you develop behaviors that will improve many areas of your life.

Living a healthy lifestyle can inspire creativity and teach you discipline, adaptability, and balance. This will not only leave you looking and feeling better, but you will show up as a better version of yourself for the people in your life that truly matter.

Health and fitness are about more than the way you look, the food you eat, or the weight you lift at the gym. They’re about the way you feel, your quality of life, the focus you have at work, your ability to move and your psychological state.

When you’re truly healthy, you are in a better mood and can physically do more. You can do things like walking your dog, going hiking, or paddle boarding. Not being able to do these things can drastically impact your experiences and limit your quality of life.

Here are a few tips to make health and fitness a lifestyle:

Find Exercise You Enjoy

This is important when it comes to staying consistent with your workouts. If you are continually doing exercises you don’t enjoy, and they leave you feeling drained physically and emotionally, it’s only going to last so long. You are better off finding exercises that make you feel good, and you can stick to long term, even if it’s not the most intense. Consistent low-intensity exercise will always triumph inconsistent high-intensity exercise.

Be Patient

Remember, results take time. Be easy on yourself. Nothing good comes easy. Learn to fall in love with the process and the person you become throughout the journey.

Don’t Give Up The Foods You Love

Be a firm believer in never giving up the foods you love. Find a way to make your favorite foods healthier. If pizza is your favorite food, don’t give it up. This will leave you feeling deprived. Get creative and use clean ingredients to make your healthy version.

Don’t Compete With Anyone

This is your life and your journey. No two people are the same, so you should never compare yourself to others. As long as you wake up every day and try to be better than you were yesterday, you are on the right track.

Try New Things

Step out of your comfort zone. Try a new fitness class with a friend and explore different foods. Grocery shopping based on what’s in season is an easy way to begin experimenting with different foods and exposing yourself to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.

If you have never meal prepped before, try it out! Stepping out of your comfort zone and switching things up will keep things interesting and help you stay motivated and inspired to make this way of living a permanent lifestyle.