Why It Might Be Worth Setting Yourself a 30-Day Fitness Challenge

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If you’ve ever tried to tone up or slim down, you know that it can be difficult to stick to your healthy habits right out of the gate.

From day one, most people struggle with staying motivated and making smart choices.

Other times, you might end up setting unrealistic goals or no goals at all, causing you to get discouraged very quickly without hardly making progress–or giving yourself the chance to.

That’s why it’s always a good idea to sit down and write out your goals.

When it comes to fitness, setting a 30-day fitness challenge for yourself will accomplish many things.

Number one, it will give you a realistic goal to aim for in the next four weeks.

Plus, it gives you the chance to decide how exactly you’re going to reach that goal.

For instance, you can make cutting out soda apart of your 30-day challenge.

In your 30-day challenge, you could make drastic changes or minor changes.

In either case, if you plan correctly and stick to that plan, you will definitely see results in 30 days.

Generally, it’s considered safe to lose 2 pounds per week. But, weight loss isn’t linear.

Most people also experience a larger drop during their first few weeks of dieting because you’ll lose some water weight when you change your diet.

So, if your goal is to lose weight, make sure to keep things realistic.

In 30 days, you might aim to lose 8-10 pounds. If that’s your goal, figure out what the challenge is going to be and how you’re going to accomplish it.

For instance, maybe you’ll limit yourself to 1,500 calories a day and exercise for an hour in order to create a caloric deficit.

Plenty of web calculators exist that will enable you to see just how much you can eat and how many calories you should burn in order to lose a certain amount of weight.

If your goal is fitness related, as in you want to gain muscle or tone up, your 30-day challenge will likely be centered around eating health, getting more protein, and getting lots of exercise and physical activity in.

Whatever the case may be, keep things realistic, lay out a plan for yourself, and stick to it! In a month, you’re bound to see results.

Three 30-Day Fitness Challenge Ideas

Looking to lose weight? Tone up? Get a ripped bikini body?

Whatever you’re aiming for, a 30-day fitness challenge is a great way to jumpstart yourself on the path to better health.

If you give yourself the chance to stick to a change (or multiple changes) for an entire month, you will most definitely see results.

However, many people make the mistake of trying to change too many things so they get overwhelmed and discouraged.

Others hardly make any changes, and while baby steps are good, they can also be discouraged at the 30-day mark because the results are minimal.

That’s why the trick is finding a balance between quantity and difficulty.

You need to make changes that you’re comfortable with sticking to and able to stick to, but you also need to avoid overwhelming yourself by trying to quit everything cold turkey and change overnight.

Easing yourself into changes is often the best way to go.

So, here’s three examples of some 30-day challenges you should consider taking on.

1) Clean Up Your Diet

In this challenge, you’ll cut a new weakness out each week.

You need to start by identifying unhealthy dietary habits you have and then deciding the one that will be easiest to cut out or at least cut back.

For instance, if you drink multiple cups of coffee in a day, consider cutting it to one or two in the first week.

In the second week, you could continue cutting coffee and/or focus on cutting down on something else while maintaining your minimal coffee intake.

The idea is to cut back on unhealthy eating habits gradually throughout the whole month. By the end, you’ll crave less of what you don’t need.

2) Get More Active

With this challenge, you’re going to gradually add physical activity into your daily routine.

If your goal is to be more physically active overall, try to make small changes.

Like parking farther from the door, walking to work, or jogging around the neighborhood.

Figure out one or more activities that you can realistically stick to and then decide how often you need to do them.

3) Try a Spot Tone Challenge

While you can’t spot reduce, you can spot tone!

That means working a particular muscle group will cause it to firm up and look super sharp.

That’s what makes 30-day squat challenges so popular.

Try one, adding more squats to your routine each day until 30 days are up.

You’re bound to have a bigger, tighter bottom by the end of it!

How to Know When You’re Pushing Yourself Too Hard When You Exercise

Although exercise is usually good for you, if you aren’t careful, it is very possible to accidentally push yourself too hard and actually suffer injuries while exercising.

It can be hard to do, but you absolutely have to get used to the idea of not pushing yourself too hard when exercising.

Here are a few signs to keep an eye out for when exercising.

High Heart Rate

One of the best indicators that you are pushing yourself too hard is if your heart rate starts spiraling out of control.

Most high-end fitness trackers measure heart rate, so if you don’t already own one, you should definitely consider investing in one.

Generally, you can get your heart rate going pretty high and be fine.

When you want to start being careful is when your heart rate starts going off the charts.

An easy to figure out when to start taking it easy is to subtract your age from the number 220. If you are 35, subtract that from 220. You end up with 185.

That is what your heart rate should hover around when exercising. If it goes way above that, consider taking it a bit easier.

You Feel Pain When Working Out

The old phrase “no pain no gain” has a lot of truth to it.

But where people often get confused is that they assume that it refers to any pain, it doesn’t.

Here’s an easy way to understand whether pain is good or not.

Feeling pain a day or so after a workout session is good, it means you worked out hard and it’s having an effect.

Feeling pain during a workout is a sign that you’re taking it too hard. It means that your muscles aren’t able to deal with the stress you’re putting on them.

Nausea

Another telltale sign that you are going too hard is nausea.

Now, nausea is understandable if you just ate and are working out (although why anyone would ever do that is a mystery).

If you haven’t eaten recently and are starting to feel sick while working out, then you want to stop immediately.

That is a sure sign that your body is simply not getting enough oxygen to keep up with your pace.

You need to slow down a bit so that your body can get enough oxygen to all your muscles.