The 1 Thing You Can Do Today To Achieve Your Health and Fitness Goals

 

Do you ever get that feeling where you decide you’re going to be really efficient, get loads of stuff done, then end up massively overestimating what you can achieve in a given period of time

 

Welcome to health and fitness goals 101.

When we decide it’s time to get busy with our health and fitness goals, we invariably pile way too much into the to do list

We decide we’re going to change our sleep, water intake, cut all the carbs, banish sugar and booze nooooo sirreee that’s out the window too!

Next, we assign ourselves a super restrictive diet, and start off on 6 sessions of hiit every week

What could go wrong?!

When we make the decision to address our health and fitness goals, it’s usually because:

A – the doctor has told us to change things up or something bad is going to happen

B – we don’t like what we see in the mirror

C – we can’t touch our toes

D – all of the above

When we find ourselves in this position, we have lots of enthusiasm, but we’re also vulnerable.

We’re vulnerable to picking the cheapest, or the most radical, option available to us.

The problem is:

• Cheap doesn’t offer you any real support to stick to your goals
• Radical means you’re not going to stick to it for anywhere long enough to see real change

If we deem ourselves to have failed during this period, we’re vulnerable to giving in, to saying making a change is too hard, and to reverting back to our old habits.

 

I know, I’ve made everyone of these mistakes

I know, I’ve done this multiple times over the past couple of decades.

Imagine the following scenario, and then see if it sounds similar to something you’ve experienced…

You’ve decided to put your nutrition first, you’ve bought the latest ‘diet’ online and set up your calories and macronutrients on MyFitnessPal.

A day or two later, you notice you went over your daily allotment by 140 calories and 15 grams of fat. 

You panic! 

Everything is ruined!

This is too hard!

I can’t stick to this!

Then it’s Wellington on a Plate, and your insta feed is chocka full of the best looking burgers.

You get to the end of the first month exhausted from the stress of it all.

 

This scenario is more common than you would expect.

Full of enthusiasm, your plan is initially easy to stick to. You eat pre-planned meals, drink water, and log your food.

Then, after an exhausting day of work, putting the kids to bed, and cleaning up, something happens. 

You have an extra snack or two thinking it will not make a big impact, and you don’t log it.

Then, you do it again.

It is important to avoid getting caught up in the small details of your nutritional intake, especially when you are starting out.

Trying to maintain exact numbers of calories and macronutrients is overwhelming, especially if you have tougher habits to break such as night time eating, eating processed foods, drinking sugary drinks, etc.

 

Focus on the big picture

Instead of focusing on the small details, focus on the bigger picture of changing habits.

You should focus on building a solid foundation of eating quality foods, properly hydrating, relaxing and getting plenty of sleep (to find out more about the right way to work on your nutrition goals, click here).

Give yourself one change at a time. 

Here are a couple of ways you can add habit change to your day:

If you go to bed way too late, start there. Put an alarm on your phone an hour before your bedtime. Use this hour to wind down, turn off the tv, journal a little about your day and so on.

If you eat all the chippies, write a shopping list of what you do need. Have a light snack before you go to the store and stay out of the chippie aisle

If you don’t drink a lot of water, get a large glass in you as soon as you wake up. Have a glass every time you eat something and you’ll be golden

Then, once you have a solid long-term foundation with those behaviours, you can dial in the details with the macronutrients.

 

The goal of a healthy lifestyle is not calorie counting.

The goal is to focus on 1-2 positive behaviour changes at a time.

This will make your new healthy lifestyle infinitely more manageable in the long run.

 

Change doesn’t have to be hard.

To find out how we can help you, click here to schedule a Free Intro