The Top 14 Fitness Tips From a Personal Trainer
These top 14 fitness tips from personal trainer NikkiFitness will help you achieve your fitness goals and lose body fat! Nikki created the Military Wife Workout DVD, and works with Crunch Manhattan as a group fitness instructor and personal trainer.
Before the top fitness tips, here’s a quip about fearlessness from the great Kathleen Turner: “Fearlessness at twenty springs from not knowing what challenges lie ahead,” she said in Send Yourself Roses. “Fearlessness at fifty comes from having wrestled with lifes’ challenges and learned from them.”
Be fearless when you’re setting and achieving your goals - and send yourself roses along the way! Here are Nikki’s top 14 tips for fitness goals and losing body fat. And, click on her Military Wife Workout DVD to get additional motivation!
The Top 14 Fitness Tips From a Personal Trainer
1. Figure out what your barriers to exercise and eating well are, and make a plan to conquer and avoid those specific barriers. This tip for achieving your fitness goals involves tackling each barrier or excuse, and writing down ways you can solve the problem.
2. Put one sneaker in front of the other. Many of us waste too much time saying we need to work out but dread the process. Trick yourself by just getting dressed for it and not really thinking about the next step. This tip for losing body fat involves taking one step at a time! Before you know it, you’ll finish the cool-down and feel amazing.
3. Make yourself an upbeat iPod play-list or CD and dance around as you straighten up at home; find a hip-hop or African dance class at the gym; learn to bellydance at an adult education class or at the Y; plan a girls’ night out dancing. You can find a great list on my website - NikkiFitness.
4. Set fitness goals that are realistic and specific, and having a set time period as your goal will help you stick to a new fitness plan. Write down your plan of action for every day, week, etc. Make sure it is something you can measure and not just the end goal, but the milestones along the way. Start with a plan that you think you can accomplish or exceed. For example, go walking for 30 minutes at a time. Then running for 20 minutes and see how many times you have to stop and walk each time. Eventually work up to running for 30 minutes and so on.
5. Make active dates to see friends and family and do something that doesn’t involve eating and drinking. Walk through the park, go biking in summer, ice skate or cross country ski in winter, walk the mall, take a yoga or cardio class, or run on a treadmill right next to my friend. This tip for losing body fat and achieving your fitness goals involves the buddy system!
6. Think of food as a fuel, not as a gift, which means passing on food that is high in fat and sugar, and taking HALF the portion everyone else heaps onto their plate at a party and packing up half your food in a restaurant in a doggy bag.
7. If you have to eat at a restaurant, identify the three healthiest things on the menu and pick between those. This tip for losing body fat and achieving your fitness goals involves enjoying your life, but balancing it with healthy plans.
8. Follow the food pyramid daily, by focusing on whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean protein and calcium, not sweets and fats. This tip for losing body fat involves a balanced diet - and taking a daily multi-vitamin.
9. Don’t eat unhealthy bad food that is lying around the office. Bring healthy snacks to your desk that are sweet and/or salty, like whole wheat crackers, almonds, grapes, or chocolate soy milk. Buy a slow cooker so that you can prepare a healthy meal in the mornings, and it’s ready for you when you get home (its like having a personal chef at home all day, and gives you that extra hour for exercise!)
10. Drink no more than two alcoholic beverages at parties and events (if necessary, cut extra drinks with spritzers) and have a snack before these events so you don’t attack the buffet line. This tip for losing body fat and achieving your fitness goals involves restraining your alcoholic intake so you can make healthy choices.
11. Drive less and walk more. Take the stairs when possible and never go a day without some exercise. To lose body fat effectively, make fitness a lifestyle habit.
12. Invest in a gym membership, if you don’t have one already, and use it! To achieve your fitness goals, you have to push yourself to stay active.
13. Weigh yourself every day to remember your goals and feel good about the choices you made yesterday. This tip for losing body fat involves connecting to your body.
14. Keep reading health and fitness columns online, subscribe to weekly e-mailed fitness tips like mine for regular inspiration, and subscribe to fitness magazines. Whether it’s a new and healthy dish you can make, news about a recent medical study, interesting moves to try at home, or another person’s story about how they reached their goals, any inspiration will help.
What do you think of these top fitness tips? Comment below, even if you didn’t like them 
