Partner Support – “Make Your List and Check It Twice”
December 17th, 2008
·
by Angie Tousignant · Filed Under: Fat Loss Mindset
When it comes to dieting and exercise, the key is to always take consistent action. Even better – planned, focused, and committed consistent action. Once you begin to live your life with your health as a top priority, nothing can get in your way. Yes, I said NOTHING. That’s right, not even the fast approaching holidays.
When I think of the word holiday, I think of family, friends, and lots of yummy foods. The majority of people think, “Oh, I’ll eat my heart out over the next few weeks, and then I’ll start eating well in the New Year.” I always think, “Why wait? Why not start right now?”
Having partner support will only skyrocket your fat loss success. With your partner onboard with you, you will have the added benefit of someone that understands what you are going through. You can share your goals with each other. You can be that source of inspiration when one of you needs the extra boost to stay focused. You will share that many more like-minded activities that can only bring you closer together.
Over the holidays Scott and I plan to help each other stay focused on our fitness goals in several ways that I want to share with you:
1. Before bed, we will go over our ‘action steps’ for the following day. These are the 2 or 3 things that you want to accomplish the next day. For example, do cardio in the A.M., eat two meals with carbs, lift weights in the evening. You want to be as specific as you can with these action steps.
2. We will plan to do our cardio component in the A.M. before the kids wake up.
3. The day of our holiday meal, we will ask each other what we will choose to eat and not eat.
4. We will remind each other NOT to go up for seconds.
5. Remind each other to choose 1 – 2 of our favorite desserts.
6. We will go for a walk after our meal.
7. Have a contest. The person who loses a pound or maintains their weight over the holidays is the winner and is rewarded by the other partner.
There is absolutely no rhyme or reason why you should have the attitude of eating your heart out over the holidays and then going all hard core in January. People that do this usually only last for MAYBE two weeks and their enthusiasm drops right off. It’s like they get so revved up because of all the hype of it being a ‘New Year’ yet they really have no plan to keep their enthusiasm sustained.
Why not choose the attitude to take the small steps that you can RIGHT NOW to live a healthy lifestyle and keep on taking those steps each and every day. Just because it’s almost 2009 and the beginning of a New Year, does not mean that you will suddenly have more motivation, or that sticking to an exercise program will be any easier. Your motivation is based on YOU, and your beliefs regarding your role in your fat loss journey. What can you do to keep your motivation and enthusiasm strong? Start that journey today and keep jabbing at it each and every day.
Will you choose to be UNSTOPPABLE TODAY?
Cheers to health,
Angie
ISSA – C.P.T., B.Ed.
Dear Tousignants,
I have been following your Fit Chick program and am really enjoying every aspect if it, and am finding it much easier to stick to that any other program i have tried and failed to follow in the past. I was given to wondering why your approach was so much more succesful, and I believe it’s the mental motivation that makes the difference. I had some additional thoughts about this with regards to how I and many of my friends approach many aspects of our lives (i.e. with an “all or nothing” aproach) and while that is a very useful attitude in many repects, I believe it’s a disaster when it comes to health and fitness. So I thought I’d share with you some of my musings on this subject to see if you think there’s anything helful here, and whether it’s somthing tha would be worth sharing with others, so here we go…
The effect of “All or Nothing” mentality on goal setting in fitness.
I have a tendency to have what I think of as an “All or nothing” mentality. It goes something like this – whenever I decide to make a change in my life, I throw myself into the new regime with total commitment giving it all I’ve got. I dedicate so much time and energy to the new project that soon it just becomes too much, either because it requires an unrealistic amount of my time to try and maintain this frenzied pace or that I am not able to achieve the goals I have set myself and feel like I’m failing. The inevitable result of this is the onset of the “nothing” phase, when I completely give up all my good intentions and wallow in my failure – having no doubt come up with some justification for that failure.
In terms of health or fitness, this tendency usually manifests itself in the following way.
I start a new fitness plan, e.g. Going to the gym 6 times a week
I have been told the importance of goal-setting, so set my gym attendance as my goal
I stick to it religiously, feeling a great sense of achievement after every visit to the gym
This seems to be going well, however, the problem with this is that I have set myself the wrong goal. By making the attendance my goal, not only am I not focusing on what I am really trying to achieve from going to the gym (e.g. Losing weight) but by setting the PROCESS as the goal, I a dooming myself to failure. If I miss a session at the gym, and only go 5 instead of 6 times, I have failed in my process-orientated goal, however, this will probably make a negligible difference to my true weight-loss goal. In addition to that, I will perceive this slip as a failure, and this will hasten the onset of the “nothing” phase.
Lessons I have learned from this realization.
In general, it is important to recognize your natural tendencies, and work with or around them, not to try and ignore or change them. To attempt to change both your fitness habits and your personality all at once is just too much and will end in failure. By recognizing the “all or nothing” trait, you can make the following adjustments that greatly increase the likelihood of success.
1. Eliminate the “all” and you can avoid the “nothing”.
The”all” and the “nothing” phases are linked, so if you can avoid the trap of the “all”, you will avoid the inevitable “nothing” phase that follows. This is done by “normalizing” the process, in this case the exercise, and making it routine. If you reward yourself after every workout and feel a great sense of achievement, this becomes an exception, a special thing that you do which is out of the ordinary. You don’t reward yourself for going to work everyday, it’s just routine. If you make your workouts feel the same, it’s much more likely that this behavior will be sustainable. The best way to do this is to plan in advance. Have all your workouts for a month, or even 6 months or a year worked out before hand. This way you don’t have to think about what you want to achieve in the gym every day, thus tapping into a “goal attaining” mentality, you simply do a list of pre-determined tasks. Having a feeling of “going through the motions” will eliminate the emotive aspect of what you’re doing therefore eliminate the “all” phase.
2. Set goals related to what you truly want to achieve, not related to the process by which you will achieve them.
The importance of goal setting in successfully making changes in your life is very well understood. The most important aspect of this process, especially for an “all or nothing” personality, is setting the correct goal. Goal setting and attainment is, by necessity, an emotional process. It is the emotion and desire to reach the goal that makes this such a powerful tool. As the “all” phase is also a similarly emotional process, the application of a misplaced goal exacerbates this tendency, and will probably lead to failure. An important trap to avoid is setting process-related goals. The “process” by which you achieve your goals has to be an emotion-free, routine activity so as not to activate the “all” tendency. The goal must therefore be distanced from the process e.g. If the goal is weight-loss, the process is going to the gym 6 times a week- going to the gym is a routine everyday occurrence that has little sense of achievement, however, the related weight-loss goal is a very emotional process and cause for celebration. The two things are distanced by the rate at which they happen – gym attendance is daily, weight-loss goal setting monthly or weekly.
3. Beware the trap of “exceptions”
Another pitfall is the lure of “exceptions”. This is how the “all or nothing” mentality begins to justify failure, and that starts the “nothing” stage. Exceptions to the routine need to be planned and just that – exceptional. It is all too easy to find some exception for every day of the week and then, sure enough, here comes the “nothing” again. It’s important after a day off, or an accepted “cheat” in the routine to return straight away to the plan, and not let this be the beginning of the end. It’s ok to cheat provided the cheat is immediately followed by a return to the routine.
4. Tomorrow never comes!
How many times have you decided to start the “big change” tomorrow? Why not today? Right now? I believe this is part of the “all or nothing” mindset also. As part of the “all”, the change you are about to start becomes a huge thing, and exception, something to REALLY get revved up before beginning, and therefore justifies wallowing in the “nothing” just that one more day/week/month. By normalizing the process you are about to embark upon, you can start it right now, there need not be any ceremony as it is not a special occasion. This way you avoid another of the little ways you trick yourself into non action.
In conclusion, I have recently identified my “all or nothing” tendencies as one of the major pitfalls to change, and I think I have noticed that some solutions and approaches that work for others, don’t work for me. I believe that my tendency towards “all or nothing” thinking is the main reason for this failure. The most important aspect of all of this is to recognize and accept your tendencies, then to work with that instead of setting goals that require you to change. I believe that someone who has “all or nothing” tendencies has to adopt a slightly different approach in order to achieve their goals, and be aware of additional pitfalls.