Fun with Fitness

BY KRISSIE AYLWARD, PFCCA FITNESS DIRECTOR

Welcome 2022!! It’s a blank slate, a new year, and time to create new goals. However, if we don’t create new habits, we may find ourselves sitting in the same place on Jan 1st, 2023, contemplating the exact same goals. Habits are never easy to break and take a lot more than just breaking the physical activity. We must break the mental attachment as well. That, my friends, can be the hardest part. When I was young, I had a habit of biting my fingernails. I would bite them until they would bleed. My parents tried everything to break that bad habit, but nothing worked. It was when I was about 20 years old, and I had just gotten engaged; I remember looking down at my ring and the sight of my fingers made me cry. From that day forward I never chewed my fingernails again. What does biting your fingernails have to do with fitness? Nothing really but the breaking of a habit has everything to do with it. For years I was content looking at my fingers and never letting the sight of them bother me. Until that one day, I decided I was done. It was a hard habit to break as my mental attachment to the habit was anxiety, so I had to find other ways to deal with that. We can become content looking at ourselves in the mirror day after day. Brushing our teeth, getting dressed, just going thru the motions, paying no attention. Until one day, our jeans don’t fit right, our shirts are too small, and maybe we find ourselves in a ball crying, wondering how it happened and what we are going to do about it. The first step is to make a conscious decision to make a change. To get honest with ourselves and become aware of what triggers we have that may have contributed to our weight gain. Do we feed our emotions with sweets? Do we stress eat or maybe not eat at all? Do we stop at fast food places rather than pack lunch? Are we addicted to caffeine? All these things create habits that become part of our daily routine. Eventually we do them without even thinking. I challenge you this year to think about the habits you’d like to break and the triggers that have created them. I challenge you to think about what good habits you could create to replace the bad habits. Create your habits around the goals you wish you achieve. For example, when you are stressed out you have no problem sitting on the couch binge watching the newest series on Netflix with a bag of white cheddar popcorn. You are feeding your emotions. What if you put on a pair of sneakers and went for walk? The exercise will produce endorphins which we call the feel-good hormones. Maybe you put some good tunes on as well and they bring a smile to your face. After 15 minutes or so your stress has lifted, and your mood has changed. Over the next 21 days you continue to go for a walk when the stress creeps up instead of bingeing on both the Netflix and the popcorn. That one new habit that you’ve created over time will help you shed some of those unwanted pounds as well as improve your mental state. Not to mention, others will notice as the smile on your face will become bigger and brighter! Let’s see those bright beautiful smiles ring in 2022!!! As always I look forward to seeing your faces fill the fitness center and appreciate your thoughts and comments. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2022!

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”

– Vincent Van Gogh