When people talk about wanting to be healthier, fitter so they can play with their children or just see how good a condition they can get themselves into, few realise that who and where they are at that moment on their lives needs to change.
Change frightens people as it means loss and loss equals mourning… In this Blog I want to briefly touch on what main things happen with our clients that helps them achieve the goals they set out for themselves when they consult with us.
1. Change of Mind-set
Mind-set is one of the key stones for success when setting out to achieve anything. If you don’t believe that you can achieve something, or having failed before have a skeptical approach the odds of your success are limited.
Building your confidence and setting yourself actions and goals that you can achieve will create a gradual landslide of momentum that will take you exactly where you intend to go. Small victories each day will not only make you feel better, but dramatically improve your mind-set.
You will slowly change from a “I don’t have time for food prep because I am far too busy and it is too obsessive” to “I know from experience that if I do not make time to do my food prep the day before then I will end up eating food that will slow my progress down and I will feel crap.”
Go after your dreams with purpose and believe it!
2. Change of Social Habits
I always encourage clients to remain social and avoid becoming hermits, as most of them are very social and they end up becoming “time bombs” if they go from one extreme to the other.
This usually results in a huge blow out with alcohol and/or poor food choices.
Obviously if clients go out 2-3 times a week and eat out/ drink alcohol and sacrifice good sleep then these habits need to go. I have previously set out social plans for people where they do things with close friends (who are supportive of my clients’ efforts to change), such as healthy cooking classes, group gym classes or going out and sticking to water with an earlier return home than normal. It can be done, but it is not for everyone.
On the flip side, the beauty of programs that last 6/ 12 weeks is that people have a time limit in which they need to clean up their behavior. It is much like studying for an exam and staying in to study.
If you have a group of friends who go out drinking all the time, eat bad food or do not prioritize their health, then you will need to avoid these friends for a while as they will try to sabotage your efforts. It is not that they want the worst for you, but it is because your investment in your change makes them feel uncomfortable and worse about themselves.
Accept the fact that you will be more reserved socially than normal, going to bed earlier, spending time prepping meals, reading , hanging out with more gym oriented people and the journey to the results you want will be much smoother.
You can have anything you want, but you can’t have it all. Choose wisely…
3. Change of Eating Habits
80% of people’s success in changing their body shape comes from good consistent nutrition. Whether you like it or not the mantra “you cannot out train a bad diet” rings true here.
Educating yourself on what is good and bad for you can be daunting due to the overload of information available. Hire a coach, and go on information fast, keep it simple, trust your coach and follow what they say to the letter.
You are going to mess up from time to time and that is ok. A good coach will factor that in, but minimize slowing down your progress by making mistakes from tips you read on the internet that do not fit in with your coaches plan.
The trick with nutrition is to be boringly consistent, measure your progress, tweak the plan if necessary then rinse and repeat. It is as simple as that. It is not easy, but it is simple. Things will get more complicated as you get leaner.
4. Training properly
Most people despite "going to the gym" do not know how to train properly. By that I mean, having a properly programmed plan, knowing basics such as exercise order, rep ranges, tempo, rest periods and the tricks to get more out of reps that good coaching and hard earned experience teach you.
I have been fortunate enough to get educated by many world class coaches and learned many tips and tricks from them that you can't learn in books. One of my favorites was Milos Sarcev, a very famous body builder in the 90's who now coaches many world class physique athletes. He talks about "finding the pain and staying in the pain".
The results his style of training achieves is astounding and it takes that extra motivation from a good coach to mentally condition you to that sort of intensity. The rewards are well worth it and it's incredible how quickly the human body adapts.
Once you get conditioned to training properly and learn how to push yourself, the process of getting your results goes far more smoothly.
5. Using Habits to build the foundation of your success
One thing that our clients learn very quickly is that will power, is like a muscle. Every change you make and things you mentally resist will all drain energy from your will power reserves. Will power eventually runs out and when people have an emotional food or social "blow out". Obviously going for the hard core “all or nothing” approach is unsustainable for most and is the cycle many people go through when trying to lose weight. Choosing a select few things to work on will and making changes more gradually tends to fare better in the long term. It can’t be too slow as people get bored, but must be just the right balance between really going for it and making changes that last for life.
One if my favorite books on productivity is called "The One Thing" by Gary Keller. His takeaway question from that book is "What's the one thing, such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"
It's a great question. Research tells us that it takes 66 days to form a habit. A habit being something we do on auto pilot and consumes zero will power.
Every new habit requires some will power to sustain, but will require less the more we repeat the habit.
Leo Babauta the author of "the power of less" (another great read) says that in his experience when he tried to adopt one new habit he had an 85% success rate. More than one habit and that dropped to 35%. This is a substantial huge gap.
Choose the three most important habits for you and attack them one at a time. The most common health related goals we focus on first are, the basics of nutrition, training at the right intensity and how to rest and recover properly.