Bored with your current exercise and physical fitness routine? Need to just start one in general? Or perhaps you can never stay committed and motivated with your physical activity plan and goals.
If so, then this article is for you! In this article, I run through the basics of creating a good exercise routine that is tailored to you. These tips will help you to stay inspired, motivated, and committed so that you can reach your holistic fitness goals!
What Is The Holistic Approach For Health And Fitness?
The holistic approach to health and fitness is considering your wellness as a whole, as opposed to segmenting the different factors of your lifestyle.
Holistic health and fitness incorporates balancing your nutrition and regular exercise, with adequate rest and repair.
You’ll want to ensure that your diet, exercise, and rest routines are tailored to you, balanced, and aligned with some kind of overall plan. This allows you to be flexible and to create variety, whilst also ensuring that your overall goals are being reached and maintained.
For example, it’s best to create a well-rounded exercise routine containing a balance of strength-based physical activity, flexibility and stretch-based movements, and cardio fitness.
And similarly, with your diet, you’ll want to design a nutrition plan that covers a variety of different moods, daily routines, preferences, and perhaps even cravings. This allows you to treat yourself without going overboard, and to be disciplined and committed to healthy eating without being too strict and making yourself bored.
Rest and repair are also vital aspects of health and fitness. Many of the benefits of physical activity and exercise are actually built during the rest and repair stage in between physical activity, as opposed to when you’re exercising, such as muscle.
So you’ll want an exercise plan that is a well-balanced combination of physical activity to train your body, with rest and repair so that your body can adapt and build in fitness, strength, and flexibility.
How To Make A Workout Plan For A Woman
Here are some great steps for you to follow so you can break down your workout plan. You can use this if you’re a beginner wondering where to start, or if you’ve fallen off the wagon.
If you’re feeling bored, uninspired, and unmotivated—which leaves you struggling to be disciplined and committed to your exercise routine—then it’s great to come back to these basic steps so that you can review, evaluate, and adapt or pivot where necessary.
We go through different seasons in life—not just with the natural environment through spring, summer, autumn, and winter!
As a woman, you also travel through inner seasons every month with your menstruation cycle.
And you also go through different stages and seasons in life too, in correlation with your biology such as menarche and menopause.
So, you may find that you need to not only tailor your exercise routine to your inner seasons, but you may also have to evaluate and make updates when you feel that your exercise routine needs a fresh approach because it no longer fits your current needs.
If you want to learn more about menstruation and your inner seasons, then check out my blog article here.
It’s great to brainstorm and journal your holistic health and fitness using these steps as a guide. Consider each step using the SWOT analysis model…
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Consider your strengths and weaknesses for each step, so that you can leverage your strengths, and prepare for your weaknesses.
And also consider where there are possible opportunities that you can take advantage of, and threats that may derail you so that you can avoid them.
Step 1 | Analyse Your Overall Goals For Health And Fitness
The first step of your holistic fitness planning is to evaluate what you want to achieve on the whole with your workout routine…
- Do you want to get stronger?
- Do you want to build a particular body shape with the growth of lean muscle mass in certain areas?
- Do you want to focus on fat loss in certain areas? Or perhaps overall weight loss?
- Do you want to increase your stamina and endurance through cardiovascular fitness?
- Do you simply want to be able to touch your toes?
- Do you want to increase your overall flexibility?
- Do you want to support the healing of an injury?
- Do you want to feel happier and healthier by getting in more movement because your work leaves you quite sedentary?
- Are you training for a marathon?
- Do you want an exercise routine that caters for your menstrual cycle?
- Do you want to use your fitness to support the management of a particular disease, chronic condition, or disorder such as lowering high blood pressure?
- Do you want to use health and fitness to support your mental health and decrease anxiety?
- Is your health and fitness journey a part of your self-love and self-care to support your wider lifestyle?
Get really clear on your motivating factor, and what you’re looking to achieve from your fitness journey. If you’re not super clear on what you’re aiming to achieve, you’ll either not reach your goals (because you haven’t defined them), or you’ll derail your own progress by getting bored or sidetracked.
Having a clear goal enables you to track if your holistic fitness routine is effective because you can measure your results.
Step 2 | Analyse Your Current Physical Activity And Exercise
Evaluate what you’re currently doing, so that you can begin to think about how you’ll bridge the gap between what you’re doing physically, and what you want to be doing physically.
What is your current physical activity and exercise routine like?
- Do you have a current physical activity routine?
- Do you mainly sit at a desk for work, drive your car, and walk around the house?
- Do you cycle and walk everywhere?
- Do you have a personal trainer at the gym?
- Do you go to a weekly yoga class?
- Do you have a home gym?
- Do you do exercise classes on YouTube at home?
- Do you go swimming every week with your kids?
- Is your current physical activity balanced between strength training, mobility, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness?
- Do you incorporate rest days into your physical activity routine?
- What is your sleep quality like?
- What are the ‘strengths’ of your current exercise routine?
- Where are the ‘weaknesses’ in your current exercise routine?
What is it that you’re currently managing to achieve in terms of your physical activity? What does your current physical activity and exercise look like every week? Or is it non-existent?
Step 3 | Analyse Your Current Diet And Eating Habits
A huge part of health and fitness is diet and nutrition. Without the correct diet, you can sabotage your fitness goals. For example, if you’re looking to lose fat, but are eating too many calories—you simply won’t see the results you are looking for.
And if you’re looking to build muscle, but are not eating enough protein and calories, you won’t see any muscle gains.
Similarly, if you’re looking to improve endurance but aren’t eating enough calories to fuel your body (energy-wise), you’ll struggle with maximising your stamina potential.
Evaluate what you’re currently eating…
- Do you intuitively eat? Or do you count your calories, micronutrients and macronutrients?
- Do you have any dietary requirements, medical considerations, or allergies?
- What types of foods do you eat? Packaged? Wholefoods? Junk foods? Take outs? Home cooked?
- Is your nutrition well-balanced? Do you eat a range of food types? Or do you tend to stick to certain food types?
- Do you have any type of eating disorder or mental health condition that impacts your eating habits?
- Do you have certain cravings that you tend to satiate?
- What triggers you into eating junk food, or food which doesn’t serve your holistic health and wellness?
- What are the ‘strengths’ of your current diet?
- Where are the ‘weaknesses’ in your current diet?
Understanding your current habits and requirements helps you to get really clear on how you can bridge the gap between where you are, and where you want to be with your diet and nutrition.
A good diet and adequate nutritional plan will support your fitness journey and help you to reach your holistic health and wellness goals.
Step 4 | Brainstorm Enjoyable Types Of Physical Activity
Now you’ve established what you’re currently doing, you can begin to think about what you would like to be doing instead. What would your ideal physical activity routine look like?
Do you have any particular activities in mind for your exercise routine?
- Are there any classes that you’d like to do regularly?
- Are there any new classes that you’d like to try?
- Perhaps there’s a skill you’d like to develop within your exercise routine such as kickboxing, yoga, self-defence, gymnastics, skating, or dancing.
- Would you like a wider range of physical activities to choose from? Perhaps you tend to opt for the same boxercise class but require more variety to prevent boredom.
- Would you like a better at-home exercise schedule to save travel time?
- Do you want to get out of the house more to go to the gym, exercise classes, or into nature?
- Do you want to do different classes or activities on different days?
- When will your rest days be? Will you have full rest days, or active rest days with some light walking?
- Do you want to exercise on your own? Or do you prefer being sociable when you exercise (which can sometimes help with accountability too)?
- Are you interested in getting a personal trainer, or fitness coach to guide, motivate, and hold you accountable for your exercise program?
- Do you have to take into account certain health conditions?
- Would you like to try weight training for the first time?
YouTube is a great way to explore new types of exercise from the comfort of your own home. If you want to explore different physical activities you can easily find classes on YouTube for a variety of different styles and activities.
Here are some fun ideas to get you going; yoga classes, pole dancing, shuffling, callisthenics, belly dancing, pilates, Zumba, hip-hop dancing, barre fitness, skipping rope workouts, HIIT workouts, and home gym free weight classes.
Step 5 | Brainstorm Enjoyable Types Of Nutrition
Now you’ll need to consider the nutritious foods that you like eating, and your ideal nutrition plan so that you can capitalize on your preferences.
Paying attention to what you like eating, combined with what is truly healthy for you, helps you to build and stick to eating a better nutritionally complete diet. This way, you have fewer obstacles to overcome, because you genuinely enjoy what you’re eating.
It’s really vital to not only think about your ideal diet but also about what you really enjoy eating, and what’s practical for you.
Your aim is to find a variety of foods which are not only delicious but that also suit your lifestyle. If you’re strapped for time, you’ll want to avoid meals with lengthy prep times.
What do you envision your ideal diet looking like? What would you like to eat in your ideal nutrition plan? And what would you ideally include for better nutrition?
- Do you have any dietary requirements or allergies to cater for?
- Which foods contain the nutrition that you need?
- What nutritious foods do you particularly enjoy eating?
- What does your ideal healthy and balanced diet look like?
- Which healthy and nutritious foods do you find wholesome and delicious?
- What foods can you use to satiate cravings? Are there delicious and healthy meals or snacks that can satiate your salt, fat, or sugar cravings? For example, can you swap chocolate for dates?
- What type of healthy meals and snacks realistically fit into your lifestyle and daily schedule?
Step 6 | Assess Your Exercise Schedule And Routine
Knowing your typical schedule and habits is a huge part of ensuring that you can stick to your exercise routine for the long term. You really want to avoid ‘binge’ exercising and the all-or-nothing mentality.
Quite often people get the urge to get fit and healthy and then create an unrealistic workout plan for their lifestyle in the long term. You might find this intensity easy to maintain for a month or two, but then will most likely eventually fall off the wagon.
You really want to avoid this yo-yo and find a happy medium of exercising enough to keep you fit and healthy, but avoid creating an elaborate exercise plan that is simply too much for you to keep up with in the long term. Your physical health is a long-term commitment, especially if you want results that last.
The benefits of exercise manifest when you’re able to stick to your physical activity routine over a long period of time, they don’t appear overnight!
- What does your current exercise routine look like?
- Do you like to exercise daily? Or weekly? Or do the weekends work better for you?
- What time of the day do you tend to fit exercise into your schedule?
- Do you find home workouts better because they involve less travel time?
- How can you fit exercise into your routine in such a way that makes it enjoyable and easy to maintain for the long term?
Step 7 | Assess Your Eating Schedule And Routine
Knowing your eating habits and schedule inside out is going to help you to work with your natural tendencies and preferences, as opposed to fighting them.
Evaluate your current eating schedule and routine to see what your common habits are, and when you like eating.
You’ll also want to consider lifestyle factors that might influence your eating schedule, such as, if you share mealtimes with friends and family members.
- Do you eat at set times during the day?
- Do you have breakfast, lunch and dinner? Or mainly snack throughout the day?
- Do you sit down to eat? Or do you eat on the go?
- Do you have a lot of time to eat? Or is your schedule pretty busy?
- Are there certain meals in which you have more prep time? And certain meals which are under a time constraint?
- Do you like big meals? Or do you prefer more regular smaller meals?
- Do you skip meals?
- Do you eat with friends or family? Or do you eat alone?
Step 8 | Define A Good Exercise Plan And Routine
Now you know your current exercise habits, routines, and preferences, you can really define a good exercise routine that realistically bridges the gap between what you currently do, what you want to do, and what is sustainable for you.
Consider all of the aspects that you have journaled about such as your common physical activity habits, and what is best suited to your lifestyle, combined with what you truly enjoy.
Create an exercise plan that is a good balance of strength training, mobility, flexibility, cardio, and rest.
And most importantly, for the best chance of success, create a balanced exercise routine that fits in harmony with your lifestyle so that you can keep it up for the long term, as opposed to yo-yo-ing with your diet and exercise.
Remember to take into account the seasons and other environmental factors that can influence your exercise plan, exercise routine, and preferences.
It helps to write yourself a schedule so that you can keep track of what you’re doing, and any executive decisions that you’ve made based on your current evaluation. This also creates an easy foundation for you to do future analysis so that you can further tailor your exercise routine if need be.
Step 9 | Define An Achievable Nutrition Plan And Schedule
The next step is to define a good, realistic, and sustainable diet plan that is a combination of your common eating habits with delicious nutritional recipes that you truly enjoy eating.
You’ll want to make sure that all your bases are covered. So for example, if you have certain common cravings—find healthy alternatives that help you to avoid junk food or food which doesn’t contribute to your overall health and wellness. Perhaps you can swap artificial sweets for fruit smoothies?
Remember to take into account the seasons and other environmental factors that can influence your meal plan, eating routine, and preferences.
Write down a meal plan so that you can stay organised with your decisions, and this also creates a good foundation for future evaluation of your diet.
Step 10 | Test Your Exercise Routine + Diet
Now you get to test your theories! Start your exercise routine and diet to test if your meal plan and exercise routine work in practice!
Try and commit to your exercise routine and diet for one month and see what happens…
Make notes of anything important that you notice along the way that may be different from your initial self-evaluation.
Step 11 | Check In And Evaluate Your Exercise Routine
You’ll want to regularly check in with yourself to evaluate if your diet and exercise routine are working effectively for you, or if you’ve fallen off the bandwagon.
Remember that your needs and lifestyle often change. It’s important to regularly check in so that you can adjust, tailor, and pivot if needs be. This helps to ensure that you’re always working with yourself, as opposed to against yourself.
If things aren’t working, simply go back to Step 1 and reassess your current situation so that you can create a better holistic exercise and fitness plan which suits your immediate needs.
If you’d like to learn more about women-centred yoga which prioritises women’s wellness, then check out my article here.
Conclusion
Holistic health and fitness do not have to be hard work, when done right it is quite easy to create and implement a good exercise routine that works for you.
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