**GUEST POST** Getting on Track & Staying Motivated

Hello everyone!

My name is Christina, and I blog at Gym2kitchen. I love to write about my life and how I spend most of my time either being active or enjoying great food.

When the ladies at Grounded Turtle Yoga asked me to write a guest post I couldn't say no, and that's not just because Katherine happens to be my sister :)

Fall is my favourite season for a number of reasons. For many individuals, fall is an excellent time to self-reflect and take on new challenges or goals. If your goal is to take better care of yourself through physical exercise, here are 3 steps I use to stay motivated and on-track.

1. Schedule and mentally prepare

Look at your schedule and find time to be physically active. Put these events in your calendar as you would a dentist or doctor's appointment, and imagine you have to pay a cancellation fee if you move them. Make sure to add these into your life in achievable increments! It may seem like a good idea to go full throttle on Day 1, but it's important to be realistic and reasonable with yourself.

Once you have your workouts down on paper, it's time to mentally prep for them. Visualize yourself making time out of your day to be active. Imagine how you will feel after you finish - accomplished, proud, sexy, happy, etc. Use that feeling as motivation to get going when you feel like pressing the snooze button or changing straight into your PJs when you get home from work. I truly believe mental preparation is my secret weapon!

Another way to stick to your schedule is to use the people around you to hold yourself accountable. Once you have a workout plan in place, share it with your friends, mom, dog - anyone that will listen! Not only does it help make the idea of the workout more tangiable, it gives you a network of people who will keep you on track. Heck! They might even join you on your journey of self-improvement.

2. Be Prepared

It's a lot easier to make time in your life for physical activity if you plan for it. For example, sometimes I swim lengths before work. To do this in the morning, these are the steps I take the night before:

- Pack my workout bag with my swim gear and shower stuff

- Lay out the outfit I will wear to and from the swim complex as well as the outfit I will change into for work.

- Make sure my breakfast and lunch are packed and prepped the night before.

The best part about being prepared? It's a sneaky way of mentally preparing you as well! As you're laying out your clothes you're imagining putting them on in the morning, working out, and achieving your goal.

3. Be gentle with yourself

Living a healthy life is a journey, not a pass/fail examination. There will be days when you can not resist that extra hour of sleep, or your husband's homemade pretzel chocolate pie. Could you imagine life without them?!

When you lapse on a certain goal the problem isn't usually the lapse itself, but the emotions afterward. If you beat yourself up every time you make a "less than healthy" (I even dislike using the word 'bad') choice it will only lead to regret, self-hate, and feelings of hopelessness. Those emotions are a recipe for not reaching your overall goal.

Imagine your life is a teeter totter of decisions - on one side, "Healthy" and the other, "Less Than Healthy". Try to live your life so that the Healthy always has more on the scale. There will be times when "Healthy" will be much heavier weighted than "Less Than Healthy" ... and other times it will be barely more than equal. Just work hard to always keep that teeter totter in your favour.

Well, I hope I have giving you some new tools to help you set goals for yourself this season! If you would like to learn more about what I do to stay happy and healthy, be sure to follow me at gym2kitchen.wordpress.com!

#guestpost #reflections #autumn