Health and wellbeing: How simple steps help you get fit and stay fit

Struggling for keep-fit motivation? Insta fitness guru Lisa Lanceford explains how to achieve your fitness goals in 2022 and beyond

When it comes to improving your fitness and health, who wouldn’t want to find a quick fix?

The amount of work and effort required to alter your body composition, build muscle and reduce fat can feel completely overwhelming, especially as it often means an overhaul of your entire lifestyle. And if you want to continue to feel the benefits, those lifestyle changes are forever – they are not something you can just do for two weeks.

With such a huge task ahead, it’s no wonder so many people are tempted by supposed shortcuts. The problem is none of them work. Literally none of them. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

The only way to transform your body is to exercise and eat food that nourishes you and supports your body goals – and to keep doing it. There’s no point pretending that it’s easy. The only way you’re going to be able to achieve it is through a pretty dogged sense of discipline, and that is just not easy.

When we see others who are fit and strong, it’s easy to think they’ve always been that way and that you could never be like them but, from my own personal experience, that is not the case.

Find an exercise you love

Discipline is such a big part of my life now, but it’s something I’ve had to learn and make progress with, and it certainly isn’t something innate.

What changed for me was growing up a little bit and finding something I really loved.

The high I got from fitness classes was so amazing that it made me want to change my whole attitude.

I got addicted to that feeling, so in a way I didn’t need as much discipline to keep going back – it’s obviously far harder to motivate yourself to do something you don’t enjoy.

I always say the first step to physical discipline is finding that niche that really gets you into exercise, because the more you like doing it, the easier it will be to keep going back.

It could be yoga, martial arts or rowing – it doesn’t matter as long as it’s something that hooks you in.

Set small goals

Obviously, there are days when I’m not feeling it, and from time to time I will fall out of my routine and lose that discipline.

Like most of us, I really struggled during lockdown, and after years of consistency I totally lost my rhythm.

Very quickly I lost definition in my arms, and seeing the years of hard work ebbing away felt really demoralising. That cycle can easily turn into a downward spiral if you let it but, as hard as it is to get back on track, the sooner you start, the easier it will be.

Whether you’re starting from square one, or trying to get back into positive habits, my approach is always the same: setting small, achievable goals is the best way to begin your journey to a healthier, happier you.

You may have an overall target in the background and that’s great, but focusing too much on that more often than not ends in defeat before you make it over the first hurdle. The mountain looks unconquerable from the bottom but if you focus your gaze on the first plateau, you’re more likely to set off.

Mental strength

Fitness has definitely helped me to believe in myself and push myself to do things I would never have done before.

That’s the amazing thing about the relationship between physical and mental strength – by building one, you inevitably build the other, often without even really thinking about it.

Just as my body has developed over time, so my mental strength has become more and more resilient.

When I think back to my school days and how discipline was presented as something really boring, I had no idea it could be such a force for change. Now I would say that I’m actually a routine kind of person.

Creating a clear routine and rhythm to my days and weeks has really helped me with my discipline and makes getting to the gym and sticking to my nutritional goals much more manageable.

What you tell yourself in your head has a huge impact on your ability to be consistent and take the steps you want and need to reach your goals. If I think, “I can’t be bothered to go to the gym, I’m not really feeling it today”, it’s incredibly hard to pull back from that.

And the next day it’s really easy to say the same thing.

And the next, and so on.

Extract from 7 Steps to Strong by Lisa Lanceford, Century, £16.99, out now