The art of keeping fit

All of us have been through this at some point in our lives. We look at ourselves in the mirror and feel the need to shed weight or achieve better muscle tone. Many hit the road or trail determined to get there, but few do. What's the secret? I progressed all the way from 60 to 90 when I was bitten by the fitness bug. I have thereafter fluctuated between 61 and 70. They say the tougher part of success is maintaining it and I can see why. Keeping fit, in my opinion, is all in the mind. Of course, you need to drag yourself out of the bed and start pushing your body but a lot of positive thought precedes that. The things that I have found useful are :

1)When you are at home (this is the most dangerous zone to be in) you know the refrigerator is stuffed with goodies. So any moment you feel hungry you immediately head for you know where. The problem with me is that I visualise myself walking to the refrigerator taking out a bar of snickers or something and muching on it. And invariably that's exactly what I end up doing! This struck me a few weeks back and I have since weaned myself away from such visuals. No more kitchen sojourns for me now! And for  good measure, I leave some apples, fibre biscuits around so that I can munch on them whenever I get the urge. And after lunch or dinner, I pop 1 or 2 cloves to escape the more sinful urges.

2)Dragging yourself out of bed early in the morning for a workout is one of the most painful experiences. Here too, filling your mind and feeding it positive thoughts will help you quickly hit the tracks. Previously I used to tell my mind negatives in the form of - walked a lot yesterday and you deserve a break today, the legs are aching, feeling feverish and so on. Now I feed it positive thoughts like the goal to be achieved for the week and how skipping a day will make it all the more difficult. I also think of other positives to be gleaned from my workout, I visualise how the trousers fit snugly, feeling positive at work and energised. It's worked wonders for me.

3)One of the things that jolted me back to strive for fitness was the realisation that unless one is healthy it impedes performance. Losing days together at business is enough of a disincentive. Besides, being the sole bread winner also got me up and running, literally.

The human mind visualises everything, so make sure that it is all positive images.