Happy New Year’s Eve my friends! I cannot believe another year has come and gone – time goes by too quickly!

I made it to the gym yesterday and I gotta be honest with ya’ll. I’ve hit the gym 2-3 times a week since Rome…which is not enough in my book but I’m not beating myself up about it, at least I’ve made it. A majority of the time, even though I’ve hit the gym, I’ve been, as Jillian Micheal’s would put it, phoning it in. Yep, that’s right – I’ve been at the gym but doing a half-arsed workout.

But I’m going to stop phoning it in, starting now.

I got in a semi-good workout on Sunday. Monday, I met my friend Alexa for a spin class which actually was a pretty good butt kickin’ workout. And yesterday, I did it myself – I got to the gym and ran 2.5 miles, which is the longest I’ve run since the week after Rome. After my run, I did some 20 minutes of weights (arms) and felt amazing. It was the first time since before Rome that I’ve actually felt an adrenaline rush working out – I was floating.

Leave it to a good workout to remind
us how good working out makes us!

You all know I’ve struggled a lot this month with my working out. Every week I’ve posted something about struggling or my lack of excitement around working out. One of the TOP questions I get asked is…

How do you keep yourself motivated?

And my answer? You can’t. It is impossible and is not realistic to expect to be motivated to be healthy 365 days a year. What you have to do is set yourself up so that on those days when you don’t have the motivation to do it yourself, you have backup. Back-up like friends who will take us to the gym kicking and screaming. DVD’s at home so we can do something when we don’t feel like going to the gym. And a gym membership so that we have a place to go and just be. As humans, we have to fight through life. Being healthy is easy when we are motivated. People struggle because of the frequent occurrence of not being motivated. That’s why diets fail, because we are no longer motivated.

If you are reading this because you have a new-found sense of motivation to be healthy, understand one thing. Being healthy means fighting FOREVER. It means being excited to workout one day and then throwing a 4 year old like temper tantrum the next day. It means being excited to try a new vegetable one week and then forcing yourself to eat your peas and carrots the next.  If you chose to accept the challenge of being healthy, be ready for the fight of your life.

I’ll leave you with words from my friend, Leah. Leah lost 170lbs and has maintained it for years – she is also the creator of Mamavation. Leah said it best on Twitter the other day:

@bookieboo: What do I do when I don’t feel like exercising?I do it anyway. That’s it. No secret. I call it “sucking it up!” #mamavation

On that note my friends, I’m off to start my long holiday weekend with a visit to the gym. What are YOU going to do to set yourself up for success?

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