Losing weight, getting stronger, and improving your health can seem like a struggle if you don’t have these tools and mindsets.
(But as a blog reader of this Nashville personal trainer website, you DO get these tools and mindsets, woot!)
Here are the four biggest hurdles to fitness and health that most people have — and what you can do about them:
Fitness and Health Hacks
Fitness and Health Hack #1: Self-sabotage via your environment.
If there’s junk food in the pantry, eventually you are going to eat it.
If there’s no healthy food in the fridge ready to go when you get home, you’ll probably grab less-healthy convenience food.
If your environment is set up to make healthy decisions hard, you probably won’t be able to sustain any improvements for long.
Set up your surroundings to make healthy choices EASY and FAST!
Fitness and Health Hack #2: Temporary mindset.
If your mindset around healthier food choices or improved workout regimen is temporary (like “going on a diet” or jumping into a 30-day detox), regardless of the results you get THEY WILL NOT LAST.
Healthy behaviors should not have an end date.
Set yourself up for success by getting into the mental framework of “playing the long game.”
Ongoing improvements, little by little.
Upgrade what you’re doing for exercise, then make that a habit that becomes just part of your normal schedule.
Tackle one nutrition improvement, and work on that until you don’t have to think about it anymore. Then improve something else.
If you play the long game, a year from now you’ll have a whole different body AND IT ISN’T DIFFICULT because you won’t feel like you’re doing much different than “normal.”
Fitness and Health Hack #3: All-Or-Nothing Thinking.
This is the destroyer of more healthy motivations than anything else!
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably fallen victim to this type of thinking:
“I promised myself I wouldn’t eat any junk food, but I ate a cookie — so I might as well eat the rest of these cookies. I’ll start my diet all over again tomorrow.”
“I want to quit smoking, but I caved and had a cigarette. Maybe I’ll try to quit some other time.”
“I don’t have time to go to the gym every day, so I can’t start an exercise program right now.”
This kind of all-or-nothing thinking will destroy your health and kill your motivation to lose weight, get in shape, or become healthier. The all-or-nothing mentality basically says that if you can’t be perfect, then you can’t make ANY improvements or smart decisions.
Clearly, this is nonsense. You will not eat perfectly 100% of the time. Even if you could, who would want to? Sometimes you will miss a workout. Some weeks, you may miss all of them. This does not mean that you can never exercise.
Every aspect of your life – your health, your attitude, your career, your relationships – is the result of the sum of the decisions that you make on an ongoing basis. Whatever you do most of the time, that’s what you get. Improving yourself – whether it’s losing weight, living healthier, exercising more, managing your stress levels, or whatever is important to you – requires making smart decisions most of the time. When you do things you wish you hadn’t, let it go and focus on your next decision.
Fitness and Health Hack #4: Unsustainable list of changes i.e. Biting off more than you can chew.
We see this all the time with New Years Resolutions:
“Starting Monday, I’m going to give up desserts, and quit drinking, and eat Paleo, and give up bread and pasta, and start jogging every morning, and go to the gym 3 days per week, and go to bed at 9 pm every night, and get up an hour early every day to meditate.”
Sure you are.
While intentions to better ourselves are great, WE HAVE TO AIM FOR SOMETHING REASONABLE.
No one can sustain a dozen changes all at once.
Instead pick ONE THING that will move the needle for you, and focus on that.
(If you want some help picking your one thing, and getting some strategies for making it happen, just hit Reply and we’ll talk about it)
THOSE FOUR FITNESS AND HEALTH HACKS, my friends, will get you where you want to go.
Fitness and Health Help
Let’s do this!
If you could use help working on these fitness and health hacks, our personal trainers and nutrition coaches are standing by. Drop us a note and we’ll talk about what will work best for you.