New Years Failures

4 Reasons you Fail

1)  You use Motivation

Motivation is fleeting. It's an emotion. Sure you might want to hit the gym after after seeing Rocky. You might think you could start your own Meth Lab after watching Breaking Bad, but step back a minute and think about this.


 Where's that motivation going to be a week from now at 5 am when it's cold, wet, dark and you've got 5 hours of sleep and need to drive to the gym before work?

Where's that motivation going to be after you've had a long day haven't eaten in eight hours, and you're surrounded by a pizza party at your house.?



Well guess what, The Rocky Theme isn't going to start playing all the sudden to pump you up. You're not motivated right now, that was last week, right now you're stressed, tired, and maybe even depressed. And motivation will almost always lose to RATIONALIZATION.

2)  You Fail

Yeah, I know this sounds dumb but keep reading.

When you're teaching yourself a new behavior, you want  positive experiences.

You'll be more MOTIVATED from succeeding than failing multiple battles. When training dogs, you always want to end on a positive note and not stress out your dogs and have them discouraged.



Same with people. If you're losing 1-2 lbs a week you'll feel motivated.

If you're not losing weight, not gaining strength or muscle, if you're injuring yourself on top of the work you're putting in you'll most likely give up.

Like the old saying goes "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

So, plan. Learn from an experienced personal trainer, a well reviewed fitness book, or whatever source, but make sure you're doing things correctly or you'll fail and give up.

3)  Too much, too soon

Fad diets and fasting diets where you starve yourself for 2 weeks then give back in to old habits or worse.



You only have so much willpower, and you will drain it out quickly if you go too hard and be back to your old self.

Using that much willpower to starve yourself will destroy you in other areas of your life where you won't have the willpower to sustain yourself as well, like not telling your boss off, staying out of opium dens, etc.



Workout too much too soon and burn yourself out or injure yourself. All this will do is discourage you further.

Just the idea of putting too much pressure on yourself and getting overwhelmed can defeat you. It happens all the time. That whole "Go Big, or Go Home" crap ruins so many people from succeeding.

Do things properly and have patience.

4) You rely off others

Blind leading the blind.

There's a quote from some guy named Jesus "They are blind guides, if a blind man leads a blind man, both will both fall in a pit"



I see this all the time. 2 people join the gym together to motivate and train each other.

First of all they give each other bad advice because neither knows what they're doing, at best they're taking the long route to get there.

And almost every time one quits, and the other eventually does too.

"Well, she quit so I can't feel too bad about quitting"

You want to get better, follow one who's already there.

4 Ways to succeed

1)  Create mini habits

It's not about motivation, inspiration, because that just creates procrastination...that's pretty good, I should copyright that.

Seriously though, it's about habits.

Making your bed is a habit, constantly checking your phone is a habit. Good or bad that's what habits are, just things you do.

Same with this. Just do it small. Really small if it's really intimidating

If you just work out for 10 minutes or a few pushups, that's more than before.

You might feel it wasn't enough and be MOTIVATED to do more.

But do something. the more you fear it or have waited to do it the more you know you need to do it and the more you should think of a mini-habit.

Hour work out could be half hour, 5 days a week workout could be 3 days, diet could be just cutting out soda, not eating chips, etc.

Start small then step it up, soon or later you'll have overcome your fear and not be afraid anymore.



Unless you're the type that like to do it big, but if you are make sure to-

2)  Be around people that are already doing it

Talk to people at the gym, people want to give advice and help, they love it.

It's not like those stupid commercials where FIT PEOPLE are keeping secrets on how to get in shape. Fit people are not the Illuminati, they want to talk and give advice.



In fact, it's often harder to get them to shut up, but that's another issue all together.

The main takeaway is you'll have constant support, with people who are into the same goals and share your desired outlook. You'll feel like that corny CHEERS show where everyone knows your name.

But never forget, you can only rely off yourself. Let others inspire and help, but it's ultimately up to you.

3) Be Prepared to Fail

It's a new habit, you're most likely going to have points where you give into temptations, where you get frustrated with a week or 2 of no progress, just feel lazy and don't work out. It happens.

Don't let that stop you COMPLETELY. You only fail when you just give up. So you messed up, it makes you even better. Anybody can just keep doing something when it's easy, those that push past the hard parts are the ones that succeed.

Think of any biopic you've ever watched, was it just success after success? No! That's boring. Your struggle is it's own story, so think of your disappointments at the exciting parts of the story when you tell it later on in life.

4) Visualize Success

I don't mean just be a dreamer, but do dream. Why do you really want a six pack? Why do you really want to fit into those jeans again? Why do you really want to be stronger?

Just to be healthy, just to feel good about yourself? Boring!

Maybe you want to shock everyone when you go back home to visit for Christmas. Maybe you want to be able to keep up with your kids. Maybe you want revenge on your ex that stalks you on Facebook. 

Whatever it is, just dig deep and find out why you really want this and then visualize having it. How great would it be?

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hopefully this helped some. Some may sound regurgitated, but if you hit you right way maybe something you've heard a hundred times finally makes sense. I know from tons of experience about setting new habits and going from weak and out of shape into being fit. 

Because when it comes down to it, it's not about RESOLUTIONS, it's about REVOLUTIONS. 

Fundamentals

1) YOYO EFFECT


Yo yo yo, let's talk one more time about the YoYo effect

If you're going on a diet now, then what do you do after it. Is there a diet season. Starve yourself during summer, then what? Get fat again during the winter?

Here's an idea. Stay in shape all the time!

Don't mess up your metabolsim. When you starve yourself, you starve off muscle. So while you will lose fat, you lose just as much or even more muscle.

Then when you get back to doing that getting fat again, you have less muscle so the way you were eating before is going to make you even fatter.

But you'll probably be binging since you starved yourself so long. Even worse. Don't do that

2) DON'T EAT LESS, EAT RIGHT

Out of all the clients I've ever trained, few if any were eating too much.

Typically they eat only a few meals a day, but they're too big, and the calories they put in themselves are trashy, refined, and processed foods.

If you want to try one of those fad diets going on you can, but they're all pretty much the same. LOW CALORIE. In other words, not much to eat.

They all lose weight in the beginning, but not for long. When you drop your calories to such an extreme of course you're going to lose weight. Have you ever noticed after being sick for a few days how much easier it is to spot your rib cage.

Again, it's mostly water an muscle you're losing but if that makes you happy then...you're an idiot, but yeah go for it.

The main point is the diets don't teach you long term skills. You're basically storing fat, starving muscle. Metabolsim slows down, and fat loss is over.

Now you got 2 choices. Go back to getting fat, or starve yourself even further.

3) THE ONLY WAY

How about these 2 choices. Eat the right amount of calories, and exercise more. Sorry if you thought I was going to give you some secret. There's no magic food or time to eat that's going to keep fat off. It's diet and exercise.

But let's look into this further. Lifting weight builds muscle that burns off calories, Cardio burns extra calories, and eating right gives you enough calories to maintain muscle but not so much as to be stored as fat.

The Triple Threat.

4) THE WEIGHT OF DECIEPT

Also, don't live and die by the weight scale. The scale doesn't tell you how much of your weight is bones, water, muscle, fat, etc. What's better 115lbs and 36% Body Fat or 148lbs and 16% Body Fat?

Check your body fat every week. That way you know if something is working or not.

If things aren't working how you want them, adjust it. More cardio, more calories, less calories, etc.

There's nothing that just works for everyone. So follow the outline, and modify along the way.

5) GOOD HABITS LIVE STRONG

Let this become a habit, over time it will become part of you. Like taking a shower(for most of you anyway). Flossing was hard to get in the habit of doing. I made myself do it long enough to where it's something I always do. Same thing for counting my calories. Never thought I'd actually get to that point. But good habits can be made.

6) SEXY ON THE OUTSIDE, SEXY ON THE INSIDE

The other good thing about health is besides all the superficial stuff like being attractive to the opposite sex, it also makes you healthy on the inside. By cutting out all those refined sugars, saturated fats, fried foods, you'll actually maybe get to avoid some hospital bills as well.

Trade all those bad foods for more fibrous foods, lean proteins, natural unprocessed foods, and lots of water.

7) BLAH BLAH BLAH

You don't need to follow what Dr. Oz or any of these other MD's say all the time. Making things too complicated. Follow the fundamentals and watch your world change.

Hey, the work will be hard enough. Keep the info light, and exercise heavy!

You can listen to overweight "Health Experts", or someone who's got themself in shape. When I look for info I tend to follow those who are where I want to be.

There's no difference between someone who knows what to do and doesn't do it, and someone who's clueless and doesn't do it.

Make it happen.


www.atxfitbootcamp.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/stevenafarmer