Fitness Isn’t Torture – Our Grande Prairie Gym Is All About Getting Priorities Straight

fitness It’s so natural for kids (at least it used to be). Kids don’t think about fitness. They jump on their bikes (if they can unglue themselves from screens, that is), scale the monkey-bars, break out the hockey sticks, and get right to it. But something happens as we bloom into adults. For many of us, ‘blooming’ is not the best word choice. Our metabolism slows down, we find ourselves sitting down to work, and life becomes so busy that moving around enough is no longer on the menu. On top of that, we’re constantly assaulted by unhealthy, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor food. Fitness suddenly becomes an important priority – but sadly one for which we often don’t have enough time or energy.

What is fitness?

This is an important question for us here in Winston’s Fitness in Grande Prairie. A common definition of fitness is the ability to perform physical activity while having the strength and energy to feel as good and as healthy as possible. Obviously, this means different things for different people. Here at the gym, we have people with different levels of fitness. Some are pro or semi-pro athletes and for them ‘performing physical activities’ goes far beyond what the average person needs to do. On the other end of the scale are people who have never exercised or are perhaps recovering from an illness or injury. But for all of us, the goal is always being healthy and feeling good about ourselves and how we’re reaching our goals. Here we offer some tips on how you can make a difference in your quest toward health and fitness.

Fitness must be a priority and a lifestyle choice

A common misconception we often see in our Grande Prairie facility is that getting fit is a phase that you have to go through – that you’ll suffer through some training and diets and emerge fit and ready to go on as before. The truth is that getting in shape is a lifestyle choice. If you want to gain a basic level of fitness or take you it to a new, higher level; you need to change how you move and eat and consider that change a permanent thing. You can’t stop eating XYZ for a month and then go right back to old ways. Your body will go right back as well.

This means being fit must be a priority. Being fit is a choice about what you value. If you value health and feeling good about yourself, you will focus on healthy choices. The right mindset is that your fitness level is an expression of what your priorities are. To change your fitness, you must change your priorities. This doesn’t mean living off of protein shakes and giving up on your family and friends. It means finding ways to integrate getting in shape into your life.

The role of diet in fitness

A major part of prioritizing fitness is looking at what you eat. This can be difficult. Anyone who has tried eating based on nutrition labels has probably had to bring out a calculator to count calories, proteins, sugars, etc. Here at Winston’s Fitness, we have better ways of looking at diet than counting each calorie. There are many tricks that make eating right much easier. Sometimes it means avoiding certain foods but replacing them with something else. Sometimes it means identifying when, and why we eat unhealthily and creating strategies to help us at those times. This is an area where a getting in shape and nutrition expert can really help. Having a professional help with a diet plan is a great way to learn good habits and it takes the uncertainty (and the math) out of it.

Everyone’s idea of fitness is different

As we mentioned above, fitness means different things to different people. This is an important realization when we are creating a fitness plan. The first part of any planning is setting up goals and milestones. For someone it could be getting to the gym after work a couple times a week, for someone else it could be increasing the aerobic capacity of the body with a specific sport in mind, someone else could be searching for how to improve overall fitness after an injury. Realizing that we all have different goals lets us think about what it is we want to achieve, make sure our expectations (and especially the time frame for them) are realistic, and it lets us work with professionals effectively to achieve those fitness goals.

Fun and motivation are your weapons

Having an end-goal in mind also makes for great motivation. Motivation is key to sticking to a plan or getting back on track when we’ve stalled. Here, in our Grande Prairie gym, we focus on making sure people are motivated and having fun. This is because we’ve found over the years that only those people who have clear goals to focus on AND who have fun on the way are likely to keep at it and ultimately succeed. After all, if fitness is a lifestyle change, it needs to be fun for it to have any hope of continuing through the years.

Fitness is a choice, it shouldn’t be a chore.

Call or visit us to discuss your fitness goals and how together we can develop a plan to meet those goals.