Every Year we all start telling ourselves that this year we are going to make a difference in our lives. This year we are not going to _______ (and you fill in the blanks) and within a short period of time you find yourself doing the one thing you said you were not going to do. Why is that? The answer is simple, because we told our brain that we were not going to do something, now we are concentrated on that one thing we said we were not going to do. Ever tell yourself that you were not going to eat after a certain hour of the day and what happens… at that time of the day don’t you find yourself really craving food? So, this year let’s stop with the “I can’t have” or “I won’t have” because that is the best formula for failure.
This year let’s break that streak and start by planning a goal of what you want to accomplish. You need to be very specific and once understood then the next thing we need to do is figure out how to make it happen. Now please understand that “weight loss” or “feeling better” are NOT goals. They are by-products of you achieving a functional active goal. By making active goals that are attainable you now have a starting point and an ending point and in turn once that ending point is reached, that ending point can then become your starting point. As an example, let’s assume that you don’t think I have a clue about what I am talking about and you go ahead and tell yourself that your goal is to lose weight and nothing more. First off, how will you accomplish that? Well nine times out of ten you will just decrease your food consumption. Now let’s assume you do that and then you lose that weight, now what? How will you maintain it? Your body will get a clue and then your weight will begin to creep back up, so now what, stop eating? No just like most people you will quit your “diet” and convince yourself that you are just made the way you are. Then you’ll go the doctor and find out you have diabetes or high blood pressure or high cholesterol and they will put you on medications and then you’ll convince yourself that you are healthy again. This is so far from the truth, but the reality here is that as farfetched as this sounds, this is why we are the way we are today.
Or let’s now assume that you believe what I am writing about and you create and active goal to shoot at, something like running. Let’s say that you go out and run a mile in 20 minutes. Now for the most part you walked it but now you see what your bottom time will be. Now make the goal that you want to run that mile in 15 minutes. Now set your workouts in such a way that you can achieve that goal. Now once accomplished then set another goal to be able to run it in 10 minutes and structure your workouts in such a fashion that you can achieve that time. Now remember in the beginning you were running 20 minute miles now you are running 10 minute miles, do you think you lost a few pounds? I don’t think a few pounds; I know you lost a whole bunch of weight. Now how can you hold that 10 pound loss? Well if you can consistently run 10 minute miles I am almost sure that you will maintain that loss.
Now what if you gain some of that weight back? Then I can assure you that you stopped running as much but now because you have achieved that goal of your weight loss already, will now know what it will take to get you back there. The real question is, do you want to get back there. When you make your goals visual and attainable then life becomes much simpler. Now it doesn’t necessarily have to be running, it could be walking or swimming or anything else active. However it needs to be active. Notice one other thing, I never spoke about food consumption throughout that last few paragraphs. Why? Because with most Americans the problem is not food consumption as much as it is exercise. Exercise in most cases WILL take care of most of the problems we have going on. Our bodies are wonderfully made; let’s help them by giving them a daily fighting chance. Let’s get active. Our bodies are not meant to sit around, regardless of who we are.
No comments:
Post a Comment