When you are starting an exercise program you’ve got to get your head and your heart into it. That’s because if you aren’t convinced in your mind and committed in your heart, you’ll probably throw in the towel before you even start to sweat.

Trying to stay motivated is one of the major obstacles that women say they have when it comes to sticking to an exercise program. With such busy schedules, it’s easy to just pass it off in lieu of another duty. To help you stay motivated, here are some tips to make it easier to exercise.

1. Always keep a gym bag, packed and ready in your car. Clean workout clothes, shoes, a towel and an exercise mat tucked away in your gym bag will serve as a firm reminder to hit the gym.
2. Read literature about fitness and the benefits of exercise. Saturate your mind with information about a healthy lifestyle. The more you know the harder it is to deny the importance of regular exercise.
3. Browse fitness magazines and watch exercise programs on television. The visual stimulation will keep you focused on what you want to achieve.
4. Begin a fitness journal. Even if you haven’t started exercising, begin your journal and record your current weight and measurements. Write down your fitness goals and your plan for achieving them. Writing your goals is a powerful way to accomplish them.
5. Start each day with positive affirmations about fitness and healthy living. If you need some help with these, read my posts under the Affirmations category.

If you are just getting started with exercise and depending on your fitness level, you can start out slow and gradually work your way up. The most important thing is that you see this as a lifestyle and not just a temporary fix.

As important as exercise is to healthy living, your diet is equally if not more vital to your health. Eating foods rich in vitamins and low in sugar, sodium, saturated fat and cholesterol will help you to lose weight and maintain it.

For more tips, recipes and easy to follow exercises, join Fitness4Her and get all the tools you need to get fit for the rest of your life. You can become a member for free, just sign up now and join in on all the fun.

If you’re struggling to get through your women’s fitness workouts, it might interest you to know that exercise will become easier. So much easier, that as you become accustomed to the moves, you’ll actually begin to enjoy exercising. It’s true, exercise can become easy and lots of fun even for someone who has been sedentary for a while.

Once you make exercise a habit you’ll become hooked. But first you have to get started. Yep, you have to get up and get moving. You can’t just sit around thinking about how you need to exercise; worrying over it doesn’t qualify as a cardio workout. However, thinking about exercising does have its place when it comes to motivation. You’ve got to think it and believe in order to achieve it.

Once you make up your mind to exercise—give it a place of priority in your life. Create time each day to dedicate to fitness. Organize your time so that the 30 to 60 minutes that you’ll want to set aside for exercise will be easy to arrange. Remember, you are setting yourself up for a lifestyle of fitness.

If you are just starting your fitness program and have trouble exercising for even 30 minutes, you might need to increase your endurance. The easy way to do this is to start walking. It’s a great but simple aerobic workout that will burn calories and help to ease you into a life of fitness.

Start by stretching your muscles, then walk in one direction for 15 minutes. Be sure to wear a pedometer or watch so you can keep track of your time. Turn around and walk back to your starting point. Voila! You have accomplished walking for 30 minutes. Do this regularly, integrating it with strength training exercises like the ones found on my site. Of course, you must be a member to get access to the exercise routines.

As your endurance builds, you can mix up your activities with other aerobics that you like to do. Dancing, jogging, skating, swimming, or playing sports are all great examples of aerobic activities that will give you a cardio workout.

For the best women’s fitness program, I recommend exercising 6 days per week, alternating aerobics with strength training exercises. Both workouts complement each other by building strength, endurance and flexibility to minimize injuries and fatigue.

Like most things in life, the more you exercise the better you get at it and the easier it will become. If you’re ready to join in on all the fun of a healthy lifestyle, join Fitness4Her…now!

If you are truly searching for a way to get motivated to lose weight and get in shape, you need to look no further than Fitness4Her.com. An online diet, exercise program and women’s fitness blog, fully dedicated to women, I provide daily inspirational messages to help you stay motivated for fitness.

Everyone talks about finding and harnessing the motivation to make changes in their lives. However, it can be argued that motivation itself is simply mind over matter. Motivation is the psychological trigger that causes us to spring into action. Therefore it begins in the mind and becomes so important and vital to us that it causes us to do something dramatic to bring this idea into fruition.

Motivation acts as a driving force. It takes over our thought process and becomes an overwhelming desire that requires attention. When this takes place, we feel inclined to take advantage of this compelling energy and work to make positive changes in our lives.

For example, when you want to lose weight through either diet and or exercise, motivation can be the underlying factor that determines whether or not you succeed with your efforts. If you can’t stay motivated to stick to a diet and exercise program, then chances are your results will be less than desired.

Motivation can be harnessed and you can control it to work for you. If your desire for women’s fitness is something that you are ready to achieve, then all it takes is a commitment on your part that you will not stop until you have reached your goal. No matter if you reach a plateau, you must continue to work towards a fit physique.

If you are looking for support from like-minded women who believe in a healthy lifestyle, I urge you to join Fitness4Her. As a member you get special access to recipes, step-by-step exercise routines and hundreds of articles on fitness and health.

Best of all, membership to Fitness4Her is free. All you have to do is sign up to join. Come be part of the fun and excitement, with challenges, contests and prizes. It’s a great way to lose weight and get in shape right in the comfort of your own home. Get a jump on swimsuit season by starting your fitness program today.

Motivation is the psychological trigger that arouses us to take action in order to reach a desired goal.

Many women are looking for motivation in order to move towards a specific goal, such as fitness. We all possess the ability to inspire motivational thoughts, but many times we use these to help others and fail to draw on that same wealth of inspiration when it comes to our own lives.

While it’s commendable to help others, and in the long run, helping others enriches our own lives, it is important that we live by what we preach. Whatever methods we use to motivate others, must work on us as well. If we talk about exercising every day, or eating healthy, we must live by example in order to really help someone else.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what motivates another. I know when it comes to women’s fitness; motivation is one of the hardest things to harness.

One of my friends was telling me about a motivational seminar where she worked. The company was looking for ways to motivate workers because production levels had fallen off and morale was low. The corporate officers had a meeting and some of the executives thought that an across the board raise and an employee break area outside would really excite the employees and make them want to work more effectively. They clearly believed that an increase in salary would be the answer to employee morale.

Before making any final decision, they decided to actually ask the employees to fill out questionnaires about what motivated them and gave them satisfaction in their jobs. What they found out surprised them.

Instead of a salary increase, the majority of the workers said they preferred interesting work to better wages, in level of importance. More importantly, they wanted to feel that what they contributed to the workplace was appreciated and provided value to the organization.

It got me to thinking that many times when it comes to getting motivated to lose weight or get in shape, its not the thinking of how we will look that really provides the motivation. Rather, it is how we will feel on the inside because we are able to improve our health and physique.

But whether you need motivation for weight loss, exercise, or work, consider the benefits of how you will feel when you embrace motivation and allow it to trigger you into action.

1. Don’t be a victim of your own past or proposed destiny. Don’t just assume that bad things always happen to you. When people get fixated on all of their problems, they neglect to notice all of the wonderful things that they have to be thankful for. You do have the power to change your life. That is the wonderful thing about circumstances that occur, although you rarely have a choice on what challenges come your way, you can make a difference in how they affect your life.

2. Stop condemning yourself and use all of that energy to solve problems. Finding solutions helps to set us free from our current condition. When we are unable to change a condition it can lead to desperation. If there is a problem to which there is not a viable solution at the time, move on to something that you can change. If you are feeling self-conscious about your weight before a big event and know logically you can’t magically transform into a slim svelte figure, focus on what you can change. Try a new hairstyle, a pretty dress, some knock out sexy shoes, or a fabulous bag. Sparkling jewelry is always a hit and can make you feel wonderful.

3. Choose your priorities and stick with them. Don’t let others dictate your life to you. If you don’t like the way your life is heading, then step up to the plate and make a stand. Abolish an unhealthy lifestyle, whether it’s your diet, your exercise, your financial, emotional or spiritual situation, make the changes necessary to ensure your life is healthy and happy.

4. Change anything about yourself, by changing the thoughts that go on in your mind. I’m not talking about just walking around in a cloud, believing you’ll lose weight while still sitting on the couch eating cookies and chips. I’m talking about making up your mind to make permanent, lifelong changes in your physical and mental condition. It won’t come without some hard work on your part, but you are capable of making major changes in your own life. When you take control, you free yourself from the bondage of uncertainty and hopelessness.

5. Begin saying affirmations aloud to yourself and change the negative self-talk that may have been going on for ages. Many people grow up in an environment of negativity. Sometimes this can be very hard to overcome, but it is possible to undo these messages of self-defeat. For 30 days straight, repeat these affirmations each morning. Below are a few samples depending on your circumstance.

• If you are dissatisfied with your job: I love my job because I have a paycheck that I can count on.

• When you harbor anger against your husband: I love my husband because he is always on my side.

• When you feel stressed about your children: My children are precious to me and I love them with all of my heart.

• When you feel as though all you have are problems: I am thankful for my ability to think things through and for all of the people who support me in my decisions.

• When you are dissatisfied with your body: I am thankful that I have my health both physically and mentally.