5 Tips to Staying Committed and Accountable to At-Home Workouts

A new year means new goals all around! For the majority, it also means developing better habits for their health. I can highly relate to that.

Thankfully, this year has looked different for me. I’m not struggling to get into a healthy routine, because I’ve been living a healthy and balanced routine since October 2020! I know, though, that this can’t be said for everyone.

So, today I’m going to be sharing my top five tips that you can implement through the new year to help you stay committed and accountable to achieve your healthiest year yet!

First and Foremost

The number one rule to sticking to a fitness regime at home is that your ‘WHY’ has to be bigger than anything else. What I mean is, that you have to have a goal that isn’t just to be healthy for the sake of being healthy.

I struggled for years to figure this one out, and while I was trying, it wasn’t enough. I would get off track. I would quit mid-program, stop showing up, start memberships that I didn’t stay committed to, start diets, and give in immediately after three days. We’ve all been there.

It wasn’t until 2020 that my mindset shifted completely and we started truly getting into hiking and backpacking. I was so out of shape, struggling for breath on easy incline hikes, that I would make terrible time and not be able to finish even a 3-mile hike.

I hated that I couldn’t enjoy this amazing hobby of mine, that I had to turn around because I was incapable of making it back down before I lost the light, or I was so miserable trying to catch my breath that I couldn’t stop and enjoy the views. Let alone, the best views — I couldn’t even MAKE it to the end to see them!

Hiking became my driving force. It became my ‘why.’

To truly enjoy hiking, I had to make a change. I needed to be in shape and healthy so I didn’t have to struggle so much to just enjoy being in nature and enjoy time with my partner without stopping every half mile.

Designate the Time

One of the most difficult things for me was the excuse of time. We all consistently say ‘We don’t have the time,’ or that the ‘day got away from us.’ Each of us has the same 24 hours in the day!

Set a time that works for your schedule and time block your workout. The best part about at-home workouts is that you don’t have to factor in travel time, all you need to do is get up and push start.

I make sure that my workout happens at lunchtime, and I specifically stick to workouts that are 30 minutes or less. For me, I feel the best and most productive in my day between 10 am to 12 pm, before having eaten any big meals.

The point is, we DO have the time, we simply need to make it HAPPEN versus sitting and eating chips and binge-watching our favorite show on Netflix for the umpteenth time.

Take Action, No More Excuses

Now, I understand not everyone works from home, even with the craziness happening in the world right now. So, determine where you can do a 30-minute sweat session in your day.

Does it require having to wake up a little earlier in the day before you leave the house? Do you need to take advantage of the time when you get home from work?

Think of it from this perspective, you can either spend 30 minutes watching your episode (sometimes we spend HOURS), or you can spend that time being active, and then decompress.

The minute that I started prioritizing action over excuses, my motivation completely changed. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to listen to your body and take a rest when you need to, we don’t need injuries, but you need to be able to determine that balance and shift your mindset from a ‘maybe’ to a ‘let’s do this!’

Patience is a Virtue

No one sees results right away. There’s no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to your health and fitness so that mentality needs to be wiped clean from your mind. We all would like a quick solution, but ultimately the journey is worth every bit of your results.

Tying back to our number one tip, this correlates back to having a strong ‘why.’ Your why should not be to “get thin”, or to just see changes physically. It needs to tie to something outside of physical results, but internal to you.

We give up so easily when we don’t see results immediately, and I can say right now that sometimes I have abs after completing a program, and sometimes I don’t! How I feel I performed through the program is what I strive for, how it makes me feel afterward, and that sense of ‘hey, I showed up today!’

The physical results are a bonus to overall feeling amazing and confident in yourself! Patience is key, and giving yourself the grace to not be perfect, to struggle, yet still show up each day is worth more than a quick fix.

woman flexing arm and smiling at the camera

Have an Accountability Partner

Staying accountable is so much harder alone. While we may all have different goals we are trying to achieve, having someone we can share those goals with makes us more likely to stick to a goal.

I have completely different goals than my partner Clay, yet we still show up together and help each other stay on track. In addition to him being my main support, he’s also the person I can complain to when I’m truly not feeling it on any given day. We uplift one another on those days and push each other to show up versus quit.

While you may start your journey solo at first, you never know who you are influencing when you begin to make changes. Clay wasn’t always on board with my at-home workouts, but after I completed a program and he saw my amazing results, but more importantly, my change in attitude and overall motivation, he started his at-home program aligned with his goals.

Not only do we have each other for support, but we continuously have support through our Passion-Fit community. Our ongoing group is a safe space where we can all work together towards our individual goals.