Fitness Friday| Being Accountable

It’s the third of May, which  means for many of you, you are 3 days into a new/ your newest fitness and health drive. I love the start of a new month, as it’s a chance to set some new challenge and goals for myself. So have you started off strong or are you already dwindling?  If you haven’t had the best of starts remember that every day is the chance to start again… whatever you do do not wait until next month or the next Monday, just pick yourself back up and start again now! A great way to motivate yourself is to become accountable for your actions, that’s what I have been working on this week.

This week I have been taking part in Tone It Up’s Bikini Series, which is essentially 8 weeks of exercises, motivation and recipes to get us girls bikini ready. What the Tone It Up girls have taught me this week is the importance of being accountable. If you follow me on Instagram you will notice that I have been posting daily “Check-In” pictures which are part of the Bikini Series challenge. The idea is that you take pictures of each of your meals and your exercise efforts, make a little collage of them, tag it as #bikiniseries and share it with the world. This means that you are sharing your healthy lifestyle to the world and you are being accountable for your actions. It definitely makes me think twice about what I’m eating if I know I have to photograph it and share it with others, as I want to feel proud of my diet not ashamed.

Being accountable is very important when you are wanting to lose weight, change your lifestyle or up your exercise efforts. You need to be responsible for your actions when you are living a healthy lifestyle, and you need to think about the choices that you are making when you are wanting to become healthier. When you are accountable you think twice about buying that chocolate bar, you think about what you are eating and question whether this food choice is going to help you reach your goal, or are you going to regret it in half and hours time?

There are a number of ways to become more accountable. It doesn't have to involve shoving your healthy lifestyle in front of everyone and their dog. You can be accountable without shouting it from the rooftop. Here are a number of ways to become more accountable and help you on your healthy lifestyle journey;

• Start a food journal- One of my most successful attempts at losing weight was when I kept a very strict food journal. I counted every calorie that passed my lips. This made me extremely accountable, helped me lose weight but more importantly taught me about food. I would eat 1200 calories a day and when I first started with the food diary I would run out of calories come lunch time, but over time I learnt about food and nutrition and learnt that healthier food had lower calories which meant I could eat loads! From 4 months of keeping this food diary I learn so much!
• Keep an exercise journal – This is what I currently do. I use a wide range of methods to measure my performance during my workouts. I massively increased my running performance thanks to the Nike Run App. Apps such as these measure how far you ran, how long, how quick you were and how many calories you have burnt.
• Plan your week- This is a must for me. Every Sunday I sit down and plan my meals for the week by looking through recipe books and magazines. I have a little calendar that I mark with what I’m eating for dinner on that day and I have a calendar that shows me what workouts I am doing each day. This forward planning means I don’t over spend on my shops, I have healthy food in my flat and I can plan my rest days around other events in my schedule that week.
• Start a weight loss blog- If you are reading this then you will know that this is my weight loss/ health gain blog! I started a few years ago now because I wanted a creative outlet where I could share my knowledge and thoughts on health, fitness and beauty. Fitness Fridays have been on the blog for a year now and have become very popular, as a result you lovely people are my motivators. Your tweets, emails and views on my blog encourage me every day to live healthy and lead by example. I would be a massive hypocrite if I blogged about health but didn't live a healthy lifestyle myself!
• Create realistic short, medium and long term goals and track your progress- If you don’t have goals then you have nothing to motivate yourself. Whether your goals are to run 5k, fit into a certain dress or pair of jeans, eat healthy 6 days out of 7, compete a triathlon, or to have some killer abs, if you have something to aim for your efforts mean more to you.
• Take pictures of your body- This is a great way to measure progress, as you very often don’t see any changes yourself and don’t believe others when they comment that you have lost weight. If you have a photo diary you can see the changes with your own eyes! You'll be amazed at your results and the changes in your body.
• Take your measurements-  Measuring yourself give you a much more realistic view of how your body is changing. Your weight is not a real indicator of health as it can be affected by water, hormones, muscles gained or the time of the day.
• Post photos of your meals- “If you wont’ tweet it, don’t eat it!” This is a more public way of making yourself accountable, but I’ve found the daily check in I mentioned above have really helped me this week.

I hope you have made a strong start to the month, but if not how about adopting one of the methods I have mentioned to help motivate yourself! If you have started strong how do you make yourself accountable? Do you have any other methods that I haven’t mentioned that others will benefit form hearing?

Don't forget to check out my blogger of the week Cantara from Gym Bags and Glad Rags. If you enjoy my fitness post you will fall in love with her blog. She is a stunner with a great blog!