Meditation and Fitness Motivation
If you’re trying to lose weight and get fit, you should practice meditation. In it, you can find the motivation to stay on track and accomplish your goals. Meditation has a lot to offer.
It can improve your health, help you sleep at night, give your immune system a boost and calm any stress you might be experiencing. There are many forms of meditation, some more popular than others.
Guided Imagery for Fitness
This is one of the easiest forms of meditation that you can start and practice. This form is perfect for the person who has a busy lifestyle. It can help you learn to shut out distractions and center yourself.
This type of meditation uses the mind and body connection for you to create imagery. What you see in your mind becomes real and you react to that image of reality as if it already existed.
That’s why guided imagery is so helpful when it comes to fitness motivation. It can be hard to stay on track and keep going forward when you don’t see your improved self.
You’ll use the meditation on videos or CDs or in another form as the means to lead you to a meditative state. The visualization of what you see will lead you toward the motivation you need for fitness.
During the process, you’ll reach a place of complete relaxation. The reason that this is important is because it helps you let go of whatever it is that’s holding you back in weight loss.
This might be something like past failures or feelings of anxiety or depression from what you’ve experienced before when trying to lose weight. When you have failures in the past with weight loss, it leaves a subliminal message in your brain that can hinder your present day attempts.
But by using guided imagery, you change the message that your brain is holding onto concerning weight loss and fitness. You replace it with a message that’s full of hope and is positive.
“If you think it, you can have it” is one of the basic beliefs found in guided visualization. The practice allows you to keep your focus on your goal without all of the baggage of negativity hanging on.
By using guided imagery, you can create what you’ll use to have success because you see it, then you own it because you take the steps to reach that goal.
What this practice does is that it frees your mind, allowing you to find that important mind and body connection. Healing from what held you back in the past as well as true power can flow from that and give you a strong motivation.
Visualizations Help Keep You Motivated
Visualization isn’t the same thing as guided imagery – though they are often talked about as if they are. Using visualizations is a means of reaching whatever goal you want to come to pass.
You can use this practice to achieve fitness. You might be someone who has been on a weight loss cycle more times than you can count and each time, you lost your motivation.
Nothing that you did seemed to work no matter how hard you tried. If you try visualizations, then you’ll have a tool that can be used to not only get rid of extra weight, but also to help you feel better.
It can help to give you a stronger, better workout and keep you on the right track regardless of how long it will take you to reach your goals. When you use visualization, it changes your way of thinking as far as how you perceive weight loss.
It also helps you overcome the things that often making losing weight and getting fit more difficult. You can use visualizations to change how you see food and how you think about exercise.
By using the method, you’ll discover that getting fit is no longer something that you dread. Instead, you’ll have the motivation you need that will make you look forward to exercising.
When you use the mind and body connection, you can achieve greater things. Start by seeing your body as you want it to be. This should be what you imagine your body is going to look like after successful weight loss and exercise.
In other words, see yourself as the end result or after picture. Imagine that you’re full of energy, that your body weight is in the healthy range. See that your abdominal muscles are toned.
Picture the strength of your muscles. Imagine the easy and fluid way your body can move. Visualizations work to give you the fitness motivation because when you’re relaxed and you use visualization, your mind is more open and accepting.
Practicing visualizations helps you stop some of the things that can make you lose your motivation such as stress. When you feel stressed, it can make you want to eat and not work out.
It can steal your motivation. Because visualizations can stop stress, this is one battle that you won’t be fighting like you may have done in the past. You’ll discover that with visualizations, what caused you to feel stressed before and led to you losing your motivation doesn’t affect you that way anymore.
Visualization keeps you from letting other issues like unhealthy food cravings cause you to lose your motivation. During the process of visualization, you can learn to see the food that triggers your lack of motivation as ties that keep you held in place. You can picture those ties being cut one by one until you can freely move forward.
Mantras to Help You Keep Your Fitness Motivation
If you’re not familiar with what a mantra is during meditation, it’s simply a word or noise that you make over and over again while you’re in a state of deep body and mind relaxation.
This word or sound can be something that has meaning to you or you can use some common ones. One of the most common mantras used is the sound of “om.”
Whatever mantra that you use, though, should be used solely for keeping you relaxed and in the meditation zone. To perform the mantras, you can sit somewhere with your eyes closed and simply say the mantra repeatedly.
Some people say it to themselves while others speak it softly out loud. What happens as your saying the mantra is that it is taking you into a side of yourself that you’re usually not connected with.
This subconscious is what holds the key to the mind and body connection that you’ll use to find and keep your fitness motivation. Using mantras can help you focus on the positives such as loving your body.
When you love your body and want the best for it, then it changes how you look at fitness. It’s a whole lot easier to keep your motivation strong when you’re doing it from a place of love rather out of a sense of having to.
Mantras help you stop seeing the perfect time to get started or to stick with fitness. A mantra can clear the excuses from your mind and cause you to get in touch with who you truly are.
When that happens, it will change your attitude from can’t to can. When you change how you see fitness, you change your fitness motivation. Connecting with your inner self through the use of mantras keeps you on your fitness track.
They can help you focus on what you specifically want in ways that will allow you to set easy goals that aren’t so challenging that you can’t reach them. Mantras help you find that truth that you need to see that helps you to move forward.
Mantras can also help you plan for success. When you use mantras you get to tap into what’s really important to you and let everything else go. One of the things that mantras can do for you that work to keep your motivation strong is they allow you to see why you wanted to get in shape in the first place.
When you stay focused on why you want what you do, then keeping the motivation is easy.
Affirmations Can Make a Difference in Your Motivation
An affirmation is a statement. It’s a positive thought or even a phrase spoken out loud that helps you stay motivated. You can use affirmations in all areas of your life and when you use them in the area of weight loss and fitness, you’ll see that they help strengthen your motivation.
For affirmations to work correctly, you do have to put an end to any thoughts that aren’t positive. You need to take that internal voice that may not build you up and you have to silence it.
You do that by letting yourself tune in and becoming aware of what your self-talk is. Then you take steps to correct any negativity. You do this by replacing what was negative with what is positive.
Affirmations are a great way to find self acceptance and to learn how to love yourself better. You can use suggested affirmations or you can create your own. One affirmation you can use is one that focuses on how you feel at the moment.
Keep in mind that the affirmations do need to be as specific as possible and always phrased in a positive way. For example, you would not say something like “I’m tired of being overweight. I choose to be healthy.”
You can use the second sentence but you wouldn’t use the first because it has a negative connotation to it. When you use affirmations, they help you feel empowered.
They make you rightfully believe that you can accomplish whatever you want to do. Some good affirmation sayings for fitness motivations are ones like: I choose to exercise” and “I am feeling confident” or “I am learning to love myself and to love the changes I’m making.”
Your affirmations can focus on things that often derail fitness motivation such as stress. You could say something like. “I choose to let go of stress” or “I am focusing on the positives I am surrounded with.”
If you’re someone who has struggled with weight loss or fitness failure in the past, then you could have an affirmation that specifically dealt with that. You wouldn’t mention the failure because you’d restate it so that it was positive.
You could say something like, “I am choosing to let go of the past” or “I am able to do what I choose to do.” When you use the power of positivity that’s found in affirmation meditating, you’ll discover that you develop an I can attitude that keeps you actively seeking your fitness goals.
You can use your affirmations any time. You can choose a specific time during the day and can use them at home or at work. These affirmations can be said first thing in the morning and then off and on throughout the day if you choose.
Mindful Meditation for Weight Loss Motivation
Mindful meditation comes from ancient meditation methods. It means to be mindful one oneself. When you practice this form of meditation, it means that you’re living in a way that makes you fully present.
You’re allowing yourself to feel and to think without criticizing or offering any kind of judgement upon yourself. This is especially helpful in the area of weight loss and fitness because people tend to criticize themselves pretty harshly when it comes to their bodies and to the ups and downs of weight loss.
For this type of meditation, you sit still with your back straight. As you breathe in, you concentrate on those breaths. Then when you exhale, you also concentrate on those breaths.
As you do this, your mind and body will relax. Your mind will experience a variety of thoughts and you go through many different feelings. Don’t judge yourself for anything that occurs with your mind or feelings while you’re in the midst of mindful meditation.
Mindful meditation can work to help your life overall as well as in certain focused areas like the things that you do. Fitness involves eating as well as working out and taking care of your body.
Mindful meditation can help you to be mindful during the times when you must focus on your body. One of these times is found during meals. When you practice this method while eating, it can teach you to be mindful of the food that you put into your mouth.
It will help you be fully present. In the past, you might have eaten a meal and then found yourself later wondering what you had to eat. That’s because you weren’t fully present while you were eating.
Keep your focus on the food that you eat – on what it tastes like, what it smells like and how your body is enjoying that food. When it’s time to work out, focus on the good that it’s doing your body – on how it’s helping your muscles, how it’s boosting your energy and giving you strength.
Mindful meditation helps you focus on fitness so that you can concentrate better and not be distracted. It allows you to pay attention to what’s important. It also helps you relax while working out and boosts your mood.
Mindful meditation can help you live in the present and keep your focus on your fitness goals so that your motivation doesn’t wane.
