Spring is known as a season of rebirth. Emerging from the darkness of long winter months, people often look toward spring as a fresh chance to reinvent their routines and focus more energy on their personal wellness. With wellness and fitness going hand in hand, it’s important for us to understand just how we can make these integral parts of life a priority before spring even arrives. This way when it does, you can be fully invested in your new routine and ready to tackle the season with a fresh perspective. 

Here are just a few of the ways you can start prioritizing your wellness and fitness right now. 

 

FOCUS ON POSITIVITY

When it comes to both wellness and fitness, positivity is your best friend. In terms of wellness, having a positive outlook makes you feel better overall. There’s a reason why the adage, “positive thoughts attract positive energy” exists. Once you have a positive mindset, you can reflect on your actions to express more gratitude. By doing so, you’re putting more positivity into the world and getting a boost of it yourself. 

For fitness, being positive can help you to achieve your goals faster. With a negative mindset of, “I can’t do this” or “this is too hard” you’re more prone to giving up on your fitness goals. When you break things down and look at them through a positive lens, it becomes easier. Instead of the negative, you can think, “even though I can’t do this yet, this is what I can do to get there” or “while this is hard, I’ve made this much progress and will get there.” It’s all about looking at things in a different, more positive way.

 

IDENTIFY STRESSORS AND FIND A REMEDY

Stress is one of the biggest reasons why people want to shift and put a bigger focus on their wellness and fitness. When you’re dealing with large amounts of stress, it can feel as though you have a large, dark cloud over you at all times. Because of this, it can be hard to take the time you need to appropriately attend to your personal wellness and work toward your fitness goals. Only by looking for the appropriate remedies can you do anything about it and move forward. 

The number one stressor is concern about finances, and your mental well-being is directly connected to your finances. While even thinking about finances, let alone dealing with them, can cause people to feel overwhelmed, it’s important to have a plan of action before the situation gets out of control. The word budget is thrown around a lot, and may even cause you to roll your eyes. But coming up with something, especially a budget you won’t hate, is the best solution to tackling your financial stress head on. Once you do that, you can have your financial wellness in check and work on other parts of your wellness and fitness journey.

 

DEVELOP A PLAN

For a lot of people, it’s easier to follow and stick to something when there’s a direct plan in place. This is also true when it comes to your personal wellness and fitness. Having a plan can make it easier to prioritize both and meet your goals. When it comes to actually making a wellness and fitness plan, start with your meals since this will help with both. Meal prepping can make eating healthier much easier than if you have no plan in place for your daily meals. Not only will cleaner eating make you feel better, but it’ll also give you an extra boost of energy to help with those fitness goals. 

Having a plan also helps when it comes to more stressful situations. For example, when buying a home, a mortgage pre-approval can offer you both peace of mind and allow you to develop a plan of what price range you can explore when it comes to house hunting. Having a document and plan like this in a high-stress situation can help you focus and also prioritize other important parts of your life. Not to mention, the extra peace of mind can be a huge help for your mental health.  

 

HAVE OPTIONS

Having a plan in place is important to ensure you prioritize and reach your wellness and fitness goals. But, it’s equally important to make sure you have multiple options to choose from to help you get there. Things happen and plans change, but you still have goals to meet. Make sure you have a backup, whether that be a go-to healthy take-out option for when you don’t want to cook, or a home workout space for when you don’t feel like leaving the house. 

Finding healthy options for take-out is one thing, but a home workout area is a little more involved. Whether you’re taking a Live Virtual Class or a class On Demand, you will have different requirements depending on the format. Then, when it comes to the actual space you’re going to use, make sure it’s a dedicated area of your home where you can effectively and safely do your workout. You might not need any weights, but we recommend a mat and plenty of room to move if you like Zumba!

 

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE PUTTING IN YOUR BODY

Clean eating will help you prioritize both your wellness and fitness. Consuming processed foods, which has for a long time been the norm in the U.S., can deteriorate both your overall wellness and fitness. When you don’t know what harmful chemicals you’re putting into your body, you can’t actively work to better yourself. It’s also important to set aside common misconceptions about food, like thinking all fat is bad. In fact, the right fats are essential to your body’s wellness and fitness; so make sure to include healthy fat foods in your diet. 

Clean eating extends beyond food, and includes what you’re drinking. The absolute best thing for you is water. Look for ways to increase your water intake so you can stay hydrated. By drinking your daily allotment of water, you’re giving your body part of what it needs to give you more energy and make you healthier overall. Not to mention, there’s also beauty related advantages to drinking enough water as well.

 

FIND YOUR MOTIVATORS 

Prioritizing wellness and fitness can be hard to do without the right motivation in place. Of course, every person is going to find motivation in different forms, but it’s still important to find what yours is. Often, people feel they need to make these areas of life a priority because they feel something is off. That can be because of stress, low self-esteem or because they’re struggling mentally. Identifying what your reasoning is can be the motivation you need to make a change.

Second motivation is needed when you encounter struggles on your journey to your wellness and fitness goals. Finding a trainer can help you find external support and motivation. There also needs to be some internal motivation happening too, because you need to be fully committed and make these parts of life a priority for your own benefit. 

Prioritizing wellness and fitness is a journey. By following these tips, you can get started now and enter this spring well on your way to a better you!