Stale Fitness Routines = Slow Progress

Stale Fitness Routines = Slow Progress

After a month of chaos I’m finally back on track, but it’s been tough!

Yesterday I realised that I’m losing the will to reach weight maintenance. When I started this journey at 200lbs, my motivation was sky high. I was sick and tired of being obese, so exercise and watching what I ate felt right. Loose clothes, weighing less on the scale, using dumbbells for the first time, and cardio exercises felt fresh and new.

Almost five years later, fitness feels stale and old.

Today I had to make some changes. For the first time ever, I’ve set myself a routine to stick with. Instead of my usual exercises of kickboxing, aerobics, dance, and strength training whenever I feel like it, I’m focusing more on strength training by reducing my cardio to 3 sessions of HIIT (High intensity interval training) per week.

Why change things?

January’s plateau was a blessing, even though it felt like a curse at the time. It was an important reminder that we should change our fitness routine regularly. I’ve seen recommendations range from 4-16 weeks, and some people change their routine every session. I changed my routine every week, but forget to change my exercise.

I’ve only been doing kickboxing, dancing, aerobics, and walking for the past five years. Every day I did one of those with yoga from time to time. Eventually my exercise list dropped to only kickboxing because I became obsessed with its high calorie burn. Monday, kickboxing. Tuesday, Tae Bo, Wednesday, Turbo Jam…No wonder I got sick of exercising!

What lesson can we learn from this?

Change your fitness routine AND exercises regularly. Boredom is a sign that your body has adjusted to the exercise, which means you’ll burn less calories. New routines and exercises shock your body because they’re unexpected, so you burn lots of calories! Even better, fitness feels fresh and new again because you’re not bored. From now on, I’m changing my fitness routine, exercises, AND calorie intake range every 4 weeks. If I get bored before then, I’ll change it even sooner.