How to Stay Motivated in Achieving Health and Wellness Goals

Staying motivated is often described as the impossible task but not only is it possible, it’s also a requirement of a healthy and wholesome life. With this in mind 99FM’s MYD Heart sat down with Antja Du Toit, a Biokinetics Practitioner from BRG Biokinetics in Namibia.

Antja explains that “Motivation can be defined as the direction and intensity of a person’s effort. Motivation can have varied forms like intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. A person who has extrinsic motivation only focuses on the rewards, while a person who has intrinsic motivation strives inwardly to be competent and self-determining to reach their goals” Antja notes too that motivation is necessary for us to keep ourselves committed to achieving our goals.

While we know the importance of sticking to your goals, 99FM’s MYD Heart wanted to know from Antja how we develop motivation in our exercise or health programs, to which she outlined key focus areas to help us stick to the plan. Antja explains “A person has to believe exercise is of value in order to build motivation to do it.” Antja notes that the main factors in loosing motivation include things like a lack of variety and fun in your exercise program, or not seeing results. Another main factor that causes a person to loose motivation is not having a support system.

She outlined a few strategies people can use to create sustainable motivation:

• Self-efficiency. A person with high self-efficiency believes in their ability to perform a task and achieve goals. To build self-efficiency:

1.) Ensure early success, meaning choose activities you are certain you can do successfully;

2.) Watch others, especially people similar to you, succeed in the activity you want to do;

3.) Find a support system.

• Positive self-talk. This means for example, I love to exercise, I will enjoy my workout today, I am able to do the exercises.

Motivational guru Napoleon Hill said: “Success comes to those who become success-conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure-conscious.”

• Setting SMART Goals.
Goals need to be :
Specific
Measurable
Action oriented
Realistic
Time-bound
For example: “I am going to exercise today” is less effective than coming up with a specific and action oriented plan, “I am going to the gym at 07:00, do 15minutes of treadmill, 50 crunches, 20 push-ups and 15minutes on the cycle.

• Commitment contracts. These are great when committing to a behavioural change, establish a “contract” with a partner or friend.

• Reward. Give yourself a real reward, an extrinsic reward is so powerful because your brain can latch on to it and make the link that the behaviour is worthwhile. Overtime the motivation becomes intrinsic, as the brain begins to associate exercise with endorphins (the feel good hormones which is secreted during exercise)

If you want to get in touch with BRG Biokinetics take a look at their website here : BRG Biokinetics

Biokinetics (which means Life Through Movement) entails the functional ability improvement of individuals by means of scientifically designed physical activity programs tailored to individual needs. Exercise therapy as part of a multi-disciplinary approach to aid in the recovery of patients from either disease or injury restores function and plays an integral part in preventative lifestyle modification strategies