I recently wrote an article on why you should not try and be like me. How you should not try and be like anyone. Unless you know that person is in the exact same situation as you are, you probably will not have success trying to pick it up where they are.
I have been doing following an exercise routine for around 20 years and have been eating relatively healthy during that time as well. If you haven’t been doing those things for as long as I have you probably shouldn’t expect to just pick up where I am.
While I do not want you to copy me, you can follow me. This is where having a coach or mentor makes all the difference. What my goal is to help you define exactly where you want to me and evaluate exactly where you are now. When we have those two pictures drawn, we can start to identify the path to take.
But we have to start at the beginning. So many want to skip over the basics and go right for the advanced exercise and nutrition strategies. This common approach will be short lived and lead to frustration. You will have felt like you have tried everyone and just jump from one fad to the next. Instead you are going to master the fundamentals. You are going to get so good and the essential elements need to for effective fast loss, that you will be kicking yourself for ignoring what has been right in front of your face this entire time.
Over the next few articles I am going to lay out the essentials. I want you to really study these and figure out the best way you can implement it into your life.
And I am not going to tell you a specific diet to follow. There are hundred if not thousands of books on diets out there that you can read and try. But remember, we are not going to diet. We are going to make lifestyle changes that you realistically live with and continue to use.
So if you are ready it is time to follow along. Make a change starting today. You will read each article and figure out how to implement. If I ever wrote a book on this topic (maybe this will be the start of it) I think the title would be “Not Another Diet Book.” I sick of all the new diets that come out. And the funny thing is most of them work. At least at first. If you can’t realistically continue the diet forever, than it is just a temporary solution to your weight problem. If you want to create long lasting results, then continue to read, but more importantly take action on every single thing you can do. And please don’t wait until Monday, or January 1st. Start as soon as you can.
Why Are You Doing This?
Well if we are going to start at the beginning, we have to ask this question. Why do you care about losing weight in the first place? Is that really your goal? The latest research on the topic of weight loss finds that lose will goals like wanting to lose “X” pounds are typically the least likely to succeed.
If your goal is to lose some weight or maybe get back to a weight you were at some point in your life, we need to dig deeper. These superficial goals are just not enough to motivate you to continue on this path, especially when you face challenges (and you will).
There has to be more purpose than this. The next question I have to ask you is, why is losing that weight or hitting that number on the scale so important? What will be different in your life if you do it? Or more importantly what will happen if you don’t? These are the important questions you need to ask. And if the answer isn’t emotional then you haven’t really found the answer yet. We know that emotions drive us way more than rational thoughts, so this will be key for keeping you motivated.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight or hitting a number on the scale. That isn’t the issue. The issue is when this is your main motivation behind starting to exercise and change your nutrition.
Research is now showing us what we have really seen all along. When someone sets a goal of wanting to lose weight, for example, they are significantly less likely to succeed compared to goals of wanting to be healthier, or enjoying more out of life.
Starting On The Right Path
Hopefully you have thought about your true motivation for doing this. Just be honest with yourself here so we can truly begin.
Now that you have found your motivation and purpose you want to push that energy in the right direction. What I want to make sure I leave you with is a smooth path to get started and keep you going. When you hit opposition right out of the gate it is super frustrating and will kill your drive before you even get started.
So here are some things to consider before starting your diet and exercise plan that you choose.
- Create the perfect situation. I know I said earlier not to copy anyone, but there is probably someone out there that you envision as health and fitness role model. Someone that is doing exactly what you want to be able to do. I want you to put together what you think they do. Be as specific as you can. Sure you won’t know exactly what they do, but you can speculate. Do they exercise? How many days? What kind of workouts? What types of foods to they eat? Do they drink alcohol? How much sleep do they get?
These are just a few things to figure out what they do. Now the important question. Can you realistically do all of those things? Probably not. But don’t give up. You can’t not do all of those things right now, but could you at some point? Could you really see yourself living like that? If you can, then we have something to work towards. If not, we are going to need to set our expectations and what are goal should be.
- Accept it will be hard. So many people are turned off when they don’t see immediate results with small amounts of effort. You need to accept the fact that this is going to be incredibly hard. This is why so many won’t reach their goals and just accept where they are. They do not realize how hard this is going to be, that they are going to have to make serious changes, and have to overcome to challenging obstacles. It will not always go the way you planned, but you will deal with it.
So understand it will be hard, it will be slow at times, and you may want to quit. But you won’t because you understand the importance of this process and why you must do it.
- Know your enemy. You will hit obstacles and challenges. I can not stress this enough. So what can we do about it. You probably already know what your biggest challenges are going to be. What is going to slow you down and make you want to quit? List these things out. Once you have an idea of the big issues that will come up, we can now do something about it.
Your next task it to figure out what will you do when you are faced with these challenges. Sometimes you will go around them with good planning and other times you may have the motivation to bust right though. There are different approaches but you will have a plan that you can follow when you hit these challenges.
- Control your environment. Since we are starting a path, we want it to be as smooth as possible. Since we know things are going to get hard, why not start easy. Let’s start our path at the top of a hill, free of any debris that might get in the way. With a clear downhill path, we just need to take the first step and let momentum do its thing. It is not about will power and motivation all the time. Those will come into play sometimes. Instead it is about setting up your environment and developing habits.
For your environment there are many things you can change to make your path easier. You want to set yourself up for success. Part of this is the last point. You know your obstacles, so you have a plan of attack already. Maybe you said that junk food at night while watching tv is your biggest downfall. So change the environment and the habit. Don’t keep junk food in the house. You want to make it as hard as possible to go off plan. If it is right there, then you rely on will power which only works for so long. Then since it is easy to snack mindlessly while watching tv start a different habit. Maybe you can have some tea while watching so you still satisfying the urge of consuming something, but at least it is not junk food now. The bottom line is to make sure cheating is as hard as possible.
- Control your Support. This goes right off our last point. You should not do this alone. Your family need to be 100% behind you on this. When I tell people the junk food idea I usually hear, “well my family still wants it in the house.” Then either you need to explain better why it can’t be in the house and they can find other ways to get their junk food, they can lock it up so you can’t get to it, or they will just be your support to make sure you aren’t eating it. Just make sure you have people on your side helping you. This can be friends, family, coworkers, or a coach. Hopefully it is a combination of these things. If you constantly find your self doing things you shouldn’t when you are around certain people, then something needs to change. You need to control the environment the best you can.
Remember this is about you. You are trying to improve your life and if other people can’t understand or help, then that is their problem. Tell other people what you are doing and that you want them to support you. You may get a few friends to join you which will only help.
I know this is a long post and I haven’t even gotten into what should we actually be eating or doing for exercise yet. We will get there I promise, but first we need to set you up for the most success. So, you have some homework to do if you are ready to do this right.
Here is what I want you to do right now:
- Find your motivation. Why do you want to lose weight in the first place.
- Write out your perfect situation. Can you realistically do this to get your goals?
- Accept the challenge and acknowledge you will struggle.
- Create your action plan for overcome obstacles you face.
- Control your environment how that you know what your challenges tend to be.
- Find your support system.
This is a lot to get started with so I will leave you with this. Coming soon we will have some more specific things you need to start with in terms of habits, exercise, and nutrition.
If you need any more help or have questions please shoot me an email at mike@sandiegopremiertraining.com
Mike Deibler MS, CSCS, SGX
San Diego Premier Training