If you haven’t realized by now, our everyday planning revolves around the different events going on all year long.
These seasons, or cycles, during the year affects everything we do, including trying to stick to a fitness routine.
The first season is the beginning of the year when we make our New Year’s resolutions. Most of us promise ourselves that we will lose weight and get healthy. We’ve just gotten through the holidays with excessive partying, eating, drinking and shopping. No time to think about dieting or going to the gym. The New Year is a great time to begin our health resolutions (again!).
For the first few weeks of the year, we go headstrong into our fitness routine, making good on our New Year’s resolutions. Then the cold weather sets in and we go into a hibernation mode, staying inside and eating comfort foods to get us through the rest of winter. We figure we’ll wait until the warmer weather comes in, the second season, where we can thaw out and get outside and start moving again.
We notice that the weather outside makes us feel alive, feel more energetic, more motivated to get that extra weight off, especially since bathing suit season is just around the corner. This is usually a successful season because there’s no hiding our bodies in the warm weather. We stick to our diets and exercise because we are on set schedules and we are highly motivated by our fear of trying on bathing suits.
We are looking and feeling good, then summer activities start and then our third season begins – graduations, kids home from school, vacations, barbecues and party after party. Daily routines go out the window along with our diet and exercise routines. Summer flies by and we realize we haven’t spent much time on our fitness goals. We’ve noticed our little summer weight gain and resolve to get back on track when the kids are back to school and we are back to a set schedule.
We get the kids settled into school and after school activities and then we can schedule in our fitness routine. This is our fourth season or cycle, also a successful one because we can plan our days better and we want to get off that summer weight gain and finish off our New Years Resolutions before the holidays are here and our seasons start over.
Life is what it is and we have to deal with all these distractions, but we always seem to get back on track. We just need to be sensible in those cycles that are crazy or chaotic and we need to be stronger and more disciplined during the successful cycles when there is some semblance of order in our lives. If we learn from our mistakes year to year and cycle to cycle, we will succeed.
