At some point along anyone’s health and fitness journey, passion withers, motivation vanishes, and complacency sets in. You forget why you even started to fall in love with your healthy lifestyle in the first place.

Falling back in love with fitness and recovering from the thunderous jabs that life delivers at times isn’t an instantaneous process. Instead, it’s a day-by-day process that requires a methodical focus on the present moment to build your fitness habits back to normalcy.

Here are some steps to slowly fall back in love with fitness.

1. Accept your current self and situation

What’s in the past is in the past.

While you may not be as happy as you were with your old physique, odds are those perceived happy moments floating in your head weren’t as sunny as you think. Those happy moments were most likely brief because you moved on to the next objective.

Why weren’t you as happy in the past as you think you were?

You most likely created a different story and character that glosses over the not-so-fun moments (we’re all guilty of this). You’re creating a story presently that fits what your beliefs are; thus, you’re idealizing your past while subconsciously torturing your present self.

Happiness is fleeting and as we accomplish fitness and physique goals, our default baseline and expectations grow as well.

This step of falling back in love with yourself starts with accepting your current circumstances and forgiving yourself for everything that has transpired.

2. Be rational, objective, & re-frame your situation

Did I gain weight? Absolutely.

Did I gain some fat? Absolutely.

The scale told me I was 15lbs heavier and at one point 20.Was all this fat? Absolutely not.

Why is that?
The scale is a liar and doesn’t consider your water weight a key contributor to the sudden flux of added weight. Don’t let the scale play games with your heart. 

Looking at the big picture, it’s doubtful that your excess weight in this time frame is all fat. Most of your excess weight consist of water. A few careless weeks isn’t going to significantly raise your body fat.
Everyone falls off the wagon and loses their way. The worst thing you can do is beat yourself up for it. This only leads to negative self-talk and beliefs. Instead of criticizing and self-loathing, approach this fitness reset with some compassion. Look at the past objectively, view the present with optimism, and look to the future with endless possibilities.

3. Just focus on doing

Woody Allen once said: “half of life is showing up.”

When it comes to climbing back aboard with our fitness, let’s increase this to 90%.

You can worry about toning your thighs, how much weight you have to lose, the amount you want to bench, or how big you want your arms—sure. But it’s about doing and being. The type of action or exercising performed isn’t the priority, it’s the simple act of exercising that should be the focus. You can always switch later, you just need to get back into the correct mindset of being active.

What does this mean?

Think about the habits and character traits that you desire more so than the results you seek. Those results only manifest through the implementation of those positive habits and character traits. You can’t control the timetable for results and other outside metrics, but you can control the actions and habits necessary to give yourself the best chance of making those desires a reality.

4. Show some gratitude

It’s not sexy, but appreciating yourself works wonders for your psyche. Take a moment and think about how you felt and what you were capable of before you ever started to workout. Think about what accomplishing those first few fitness goals felt like?

You probably felt on top of the world, like nothing was impossible. But as we know by now, happiness is fleeting. With success comes raised expectations which are where you currently sit. You know what you can do and what you’ve accomplished in the past. Think about your mindset currently and realize what you expect now out of yourself is most likely something you didn’t expect ever out of yourself

That’s a damn good feeling that you must never forget. So while you’re striving to fall back in love with fitness, think about what you initially wanted to do and accomplish.

For some, it was losing 20lbs, benching 200lbs, playing in the park with their kids without running out of breath, run a marathon, get off blood pressure medications and other various medications.

It’s about perspective. We can look back on our past fitness selves and accomplishments, but let’s also look back to square one before we accomplished anything and look where we are now.

Give thanks to what has been accomplished, but realize that the best is yet to happen. Version 2.0 of yourself is waiting. Crush your previous baseline numbers, take it slow, and go have some fun!

Source: Julian Hayes II, The Art of Fitness & Life author