When you join a gym to embark on a fitness journey, one of your first questions is probably, “How fast will I see results?” That’s a fair question since you want your hard work to pay off as soon as possible. But the reality is that most fitness goals like losing fat, gaining muscle, and getting stronger require consistent lifestyle changes over a long period of time. None of it happens overnight.

The desire to see positive health changes is great, but without a lot of patience and a solid plan, some people find themselves getting discouraged before they reach the finish line.

Why is it so difficult to change your body composition and maintain it over the long haul? In this blog, we’ll discuss some common setbacks that people face at our Thornton gym and how to overcome them.

1. Not Feeling Confident About Your Body

You might think that wanting to improve your body would be the top motivation of going to the gym in the first place, but lack of body confidence is actually the No. 1 reason why people skip their workouts. In fact, in an English study, 75% of women said that they want to go to the gym and be more active, but fear of judgement keeps them away.

The Solution

No one should feel like they’re being judged at the gym. Make sure to join a gym that’s friendly, welcoming, and supportive of your fitness goals. AFAC gym is proud of the support and encouragement we give to all our gym members, regardless of their age or ability. We work hard to create a positive environment where you’re not just a member of the gym, but also an important part of our fitness family. We’re here to assist you and cheer you on every step of the way!

2. Fatigue

Whether it’s physical, mental, emotional, or all of the above, fatigue is probably one of the hardest roadblocks to overcome when you’re trying to reach your fitness goals.

Working out at the gym requires a good amount of energy. It takes energy to get dressed, actually travel to the gym, and finish your cardiovascular and/or strength training workout. It also takes energy to consistently shop for and prepare healthy meals. When you add these tasks to an already busy and stressful life, it can be overwhelming to stay on the gym grind for a sustained period of time.

The Solution

When it comes to pursuing a fitness goal, remember that it will be a marathon, not a sprint. Make gradual, deliberate changes over time instead of big changes all at once. This will help you learn and maintain habits instead of getting overwhelmed and burned out.

Also, plan your gym workouts and meal preparation at times when you have the most energy. If you’re the type of person who is exhausted at the end of the day, schedule your gym workouts for first thing in the morning. Then you’ll have it out of the way. Plus, working out at the gym can give you more energy, which in turn can motivate you to work out!

3. Lack of Motivation to Go to the Gym and Eat Healthy

At the beginning of your fitness journey, you were probably excited to go to the gym and dig into your healthy meals. However, after that initial spark of motivation, it can be tough to stick to the daily grind. Some days, going to the gym might be the last thing you want to do.

Losing motivation is extremely common and it might be a big reason why you start skipping your gym workouts and falling back into unhealthy eating habits.

The Solution

Even the fittest person at gym isn’t motivated every second of the day. Sometimes, the key is to find something or someone outside of yourself to hold you accountable. Having to answer to someone other than yourself gives you another source of motivation when you aren’t feeling it. Outside motivation can come in the form of friends, loved ones, support groups, gym partners, personal trainers, and group classes.

Also, remember that motivation follows action, and not the other way around. Ironically, going to the gym is what will give you the motivation to work out when you get there. When you’re struggling and procrastinating, force yourself to go to the gym. Once you’re around other people working out and start moving yourself, you’ll find renewed energy to finish your workout — and you’ll feel so proud of yourself that you did! All it takes is that first step.

Surprisingly, one study found that the No. 1 source of motivation to exercise more is competition! In the study, researchers divided participants into four groups to monitor how various sources of motivation affected their exercise behaviors. The four groups were team support, individual competition, team competition, and a control group that didn’t have any support or competition.

Overwhelmingly, competition motivated participants to do the most exercise every week. Attendance rates in the competitive groups were 90% higher than in the control group, and data showed that both individual and team competition drove participants to work out at about the same rate.

On the other hand, researchers were surprised to find out that participants in the team support group were even lower than in the control group.

From the study, it appears that competition triggers a ratcheting up of physical activity that creates an upward spiral within the whole group. Each person’s physical activity raises the bar for everyone else and creates a contagious chain reaction that increased levels of exercise for every participant.

However, too much support and social networking without a competitive element demotivated individuals. If one person in the supportive group stopped exercising, it created a domino effect in the form of unspoken permission for the rest of the group to stop exercising, too.

4. No Time to Exercise at the Gym

At times, it can feel like keeping up with your fitness routine at the gym is a full-time job. When you have other responsibilities like work, taking care of your family, maintaining your home, and socializing, your fitness goals can take a back seat. But if you really want to be successful, you might need to reprioritize.

The Solution

When you feel like you just don’t have time to work out, remember that most fit people don’t have much free time, either, but they find ways to manage limited minutes to meet their goals.

That means you need to make your gym time a priority that you treat like any other item on your to-do list. For example, instead of listening to your favorite podcast on the couch at home, take your device to the gym and listen while you ride a spin bike or lift the barbell. You might also find that you need to wake up earlier in the morning to make time for that gym workout. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but the results you get will be worth the effort in the end!

5. Not Staying Consistent

Consistency is probably the No. 1 factor when it comes to achieving your fitness goals. The biggest changes happen when you make healthy lifestyle choices every single day. It’s those daily habits that add up to results.

Unfortunately, sporadic workouts at the gym and the occasional healthy meal won’t get you any results. You need to make better choices most of the time if you want to experience meaningful outcomes. You don’t need to be perfect — skipping the gym once or eating a piece of cake won’t ruin everything — but you do need to be consistent.

The Solution

During your fitness journey, you’ll need to drop bad habits and pick up better ones. One way to do this is by committing to a new habit for a set amount of time. One study found that it takes about 66 days to make healthy eating habits an automatic behavior. It also takes about 1.5 times longer to make exercise an automatic behavior. Also, the time it takes to form healthy habits varied widely across individuals in the study — from as few as 18 days to as many as 254 days. This makes it difficult to predict how long it takes for a person to adopt a simple health behavior.

Regardless, gym and healthy eating routines take time to establish. And, research shows that adding too many changes at once is difficult to sustain. The best advice is to add in one or two non-negotiable changes at a time and give yourself three months before adding one or two more. This slowly builds into a fitness routine that truly does work for you.

6. Expecting Fast Results from Your Gym Workouts and Diet Program

After you’ve been working out hard and eating all the right foods, you’d hope to see some physical progress in a couple weeks, right? The truth is, however, that it’s normal not to see any obvious changes in your body right away, or even after a few weeks. Even when you do everything right to lose weight, gain muscle, and alter your body composition, you won’t see much progress day to day. Sticking with your program over the long term will yield the biggest gains over time! It’s all about consistency.

The Solution

It can be helpful to reassess what results and progress look like to you. Instead of focusing on the scale or how your body looks, try paying attention to other ways to track your progress, such as:

• How your clothes fit — Do your pants feel looser around the waist? You probably lost some belly fat! Does your shirt feel tighter around the chest, shoulders, and arms? You probably gained some muscle!
• How your measurements have changed — Take regular measurements of your waist, hips, forearm, and wrist. Write the measurements down and track them over time.
• How your body composition has changed — The InBody 770 at AFAC gym can measure your fat mass, muscle mass, and more to give you a comprehensive analysis of your body and the progress you’re making.
• How your gym performance has changed — Is your performance at the gym better than it was when you first started? Are you lifting heavier weights, or do your lifts feel easier? Has your endurance changed on the cardio equipment? These are all signs that you’re making progress toward your goals.

7. Not Setting Concrete Goals for Yourself

If you’re having trouble reaching your fitness goals, take some time to examine the goals themselves. You might have a general idea of what you want your physical fitness to look like — for example, you might want to lose weight, lift more weight at the gym, and eat better — but these goals aren’t easy to measure. Being too vague with your goals can make it hard to plan a roadmap on how to get there.

The Solution

Have you ever heard of SMART goals? This is one of the best strategies for goal setting at the gym or any other area of your life. The acronym for SMART stands for goals that should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timed

Setting your goals within these parameters gives you a much clearer picture of what you’re trying to accomplish. For instance, instead of saying, “I’m going to work out at the gym more,” it’s better to aspire to, “I’m going to the gym and work out one hour per day, six days per week.”

8. Not Getting Enough Rest After Your Gym Workouts

Consistent and frequent gym workouts are the key to achieving your goals, but you must also give your body enough rest. As a matter of fact, the real progress happens when you rest and get plenty of sleep, which gives your muscles a chance to recover and grow.

The Solution

Take a couple days per week to recover from your workouts. This is especially important after heavy lifting so that the microtears in your muscles can be repaired and reinforced with new muscle tissue. You don’t always have to be completely dormant during your rest days, either. Yoga, walking on the treadmill, cryotherapy, and other gentle forms of active recovery can keep you moving while your body recuperates.

9. Not Switching Things Up at the Gym

When you first began your fitness journey, you might have had a lot of gains, but over time your gym workouts will feel easier and your progress will slow down.

The same workouts using the same equipment for the same amount of time will only get you so far. As you get stronger, you’ll need to improve your fitness levels and continually challenge yourself.

The Solution

Change up your workouts at the gym so that you continue to challenge your body to get stronger! You can:

• Increase the weights you’re lifting at the gym or the number of reps you do with each set.
• Shorten your rest period between each set or slow down your lifts to really focus on muscle contraction.
• Experiment with different kinds of sets like supersets, drop sets, or AMRAP (as many reps as possible).
• Do new exercises at the gym, for example, if you’ve been lifting with machines, try free weights like dumbbells and kettlebells. Or, if you’ve been on the treadmill or elliptical every day, try the StairMaster or rowing machine.

10. Not Focusing on Diet as Much as Your Gym Workouts

Achieving your fitness goals is not only about hitting the gym every day. Diet is also a huge part of your success. We’ve all heard the old saying, “You can’t out-train a bad diet,” and that is very true. One study found that women who exercised consistently and improved their fitness levels, but didn’t change their diet, actually gained fat mass.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, gain muscle, or both, eating a healthy diet makes all the difference.

The Solution

Plan out healthy, balanced meals that align with your fitness goals. Pay attention to calorie count and make sure you’re getting the right amount of lean proteins, high-quality carbohydrates, and healthy fats. This might mean you have to plan out and prepare meals in advance. You can also use a fitness tracker like MyFitnessPal or hire a meal prep delivery service that plans out calorie counts and macronutrients.

Make Your Fitness Goals a Reality at AFAC Gym

Achieving your fitness goals is all about making sustainable behavioral changes over the long term — specifically, establishing healthy eating habits, looking beyond instant gratification for the bigger picture, and tracking your progress as you go along.

As a member of AFAC gym, you have access to the best strength training and cardiovascular training opportunities to see your goals all the way through to completion. Our dedicated staff is here to assist and motivate you, so please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

To learn more about becoming a member of AFAC gym — the best gym in Thornton, Colorado — please stop by or give us a call anytime. We’ll be happy to assist you. You can also contact our gym owner, Susan, at 720-849-0245 or susan@adventurefitness.club for assistance.