How to Start Your Fitness Journey

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One day, you wake up and realize that you’re ready to get fit from scratch. Or you may have been thinking about getting started in fitness for months or even years now. Either option is okay. You have to start somewhere, right? In this fitness journey guide, I will teach you how to start your fitness journey.

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What we will cover:

Research Health and Fitness

Before starting your fitness journey, it is best to start off with doing some research. There is so much research out there about this topic, you will probably get overwhelmed. Just keep researching until you feel like you have a basic understanding.

Some things you can research include the benefits of exercise, healthy recipes, what your calorie intake should be, what your macros should be, and workouts you can try at home or at the gym.

Doing this research will give you a good baseline to start with. Now you’ll know more going into your fitness journey so you don’t get as overwhelmed.

Set Health and Fitness Goals

Now that you’ve done some research, it’s time to set some health and fitness goals. You can search for health and fitness goals for beginners to give you some ideas. Some examples of goals could be:

Drinking at least 64 oz of water a day
Running for x amount of minutes
Doing yoga every day
Increasing in the amount of weight you lift
Decreasing your body fat percentage
Eating less junk food
Decreasing your calorie intake
Exercising 5 days per week

There are many more goals you can set, these are just some ideas. Make your goals specific to you. Think about what it is you want to get out of this. Do you want to get in shape? Consider increasing the amount of cardio you do. Do you want to lose weight? Decrease your calorie intake. Sticking to your goals is hard. Especially in the beginning. Learn the best ways to achieve your goals in 2020.

Create a Workout Routine

Once you’ve set some goals, it’s time to create a workout routine. Creating a workout routine is important because if you know ahead of time what you are going to be doing, it’s more likely that you’ll actually do it.

First, will you be doing cardio, strengthening, or both? I always choose both, but it depends on your goals. If you want to lose weight, I would recommend hitting cardio and strengthening. I got in the best shape and felt the most confident when I focused on cardio and strengthening. If you’re looking to become more of a body builder type, you probably want to focus more on strengthening than cardio.

Now that you know you probably need cardio and strengthening, what do you do? Decide what type of cardio you will do. Make sure it’s something you enjoy so that you don’t get burned out. It could be dancing, running, elliptical, HIIT, jumping rope, swimming, cycling, and many other options. Just make sure you’re getting your heart rate up.

The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity per week (think brisk walking) or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week (e.g. running).

For strengthening, I like to separate muscle groups into days. For beginners, it’s a good idea to do a 2 day split (at least for the first week). You can split your days into upper body and lower body. You’ll definitely be sore your first week. After you get the hang of that, start increasing your days working on strengthening. My split is: Monday- back and biceps, Tuesday- chest and triceps, Wednesday- Abs and extra cardio- Thursday- Legs, Friday- shoulders and glutes. This is just an example. You can mix whichever body part on whatever days you want.

I created a free list of every single workout you can do at home and at the gym for every single body part. You can sign up below to get access to it in my freebie library. This is perfect if you’re learning how to start your fitness journey.

How to start your fitness journey: Workout routine for beginners

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Track your Workouts

Since you know what your plan is, you need to start tracking your workouts. You should do this because seeing the progress you’re making is so motivational! I like to track my runs with the Map my Run app. I use Jefit to make a list of all of the exercises I plan to do on a specific day. You can put your weight and reps into the app and see how you progress over time.

To read about other must have health and fitness apps, click here.

Track your Nutrition

This is one of the most important steps if you’re learning how to lose weight or how to gain muscle. There are many factors that can affect your weight loss, but at it’s most basic form, it’s calories in versus calories out. Because of this, it is important to track your nutrition. My favorite app to track nutrition is Lose it. It has a large database that makes it easy to track your food.

Besides calories, you can also track your macros: protein, carbs, and fats. Here is a great article that goes into depth about what exactly macros are and how to track them.

I suggest tracking calories at first just to gauge how much you are actually eating. After you get a good idea about how much you are eating, you can learn to eat intuitively.

Keep in mind that tracking isn’t for everyone. If you have experienced disordered eating, I would recommend to stay away because it’s easy to get caught up in it.

One way to make tracking your nutrition easy is by using Freshly. You can also get up to a whopping $60 dollars off of your first four orders with the code LAUNCH15 when you sign up using this link.

Take Fitness Transformation Pictures

I could scroll for hours looking at transformation pictures. If I’m in a rut, looking at before and after body transformations is a great way to get me going. Although it’s more important to focus on your health than looks, it’s amazing to see the changes that exercise and diet can make in your body. You may not even realize how much you’ve changed until you look at the before and afters.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to upload them anywhere. You can keep them in a private album and check in every few months to see the progress you’re making.

Stay Motivated

Now that you’re on the right track, it’s time to stay motivated. This can be difficult, especially after a few months. However, for your health, it’s important to keep going. One of my favorite ways to stay motivated is to read motivational quotes. Motivation is fleeting, so it is important when you’re on your fitness journey to learn self-discipline. This is what will keep you on the right track.

Still struggling to lose weight? Try the Cinderella Solution. This program provides you with the diet and exercise you need to finally lose stubborn fat.

Best of luck on your fitness journey!