Blog # 19 Taking Ownership

"90 Days of H.E.a.T"

In the last few years since we first started our journey to better health and now to helping others reach their own health, fitness, and nutrition goals, I have really learned a lot. Sometimes I have to learn the same thing multiple times. One thing we always tell our clients and today I’m reminding myself about, is that this is your journey. You are the one who decides that your health is important enough to you to fight for it. You make a conscious decision every day to take care of yourself until it happens naturally and you don’t have to make the decision consciously anymore.

But you know what? Once you get yourself to that point the battle is not over. You may go 6 months, a year, 10 years, and suddenly you find yourself looking for a new reason to continue to fight for your health.

Yesterday I found myself feeling frustrated with my own weight loss as I continue to work to get my baby weight off and get into the kind of shape that the face of a health and fitness company should be in. I was remembering how hard I worked a few years ago and feeling disappointed with myself. I felt like I needed renewed motivation. I hear the same thing from H.E.a.T clients. How do I stay motivated? What happens when the 90 days are over and I don’t have you guys here to hold my hand anymore? Well what I tell my clients and what I told myself yesterday is that the first 90 days are about gaining the tools to help you deal with the inevitable ups and downs. We can’t be there with you at every meal or at every workout to make sure you follow through. 

This is where the psychology part of the program comes in and it’s the most difficult to master. Even the most disciplined of us breaks down and has an occasional slice of pie. But what does that person do the next day? They continue on with business as usual. They don’t waste time beating themselves up or allow it to throw them off their game. They accept it, process it, and they move on. They are self-motivated. Maybe that’s how you master the psychological part of any good health and nutrition program. Not by never falling off the wagon, but by being able to brush off the dirt and hop back on the next day with renewed energy and focus.

So how do we become one of these self-motivated, self-directed people? There are a lot of things we can do but the first thing is to TAKE OWNERSHIP. Recognize that this is your journey. The H.E.a.T program or any program you might try is only as successful as your commitment to it (repeat that a few times). I can walk you through a new workout routine but you have to prioritize and make time to do it on your own. I can tell what you can eat and how much. I can even walk through the grocery store with you and help you make good shopping choices. But you’re the one who has to think ahead to plan your meals so you don’t get stuck with nothing to eat but whatever is in the vending machine at work. At H.E.a.T we try to help our clients prepare for the inevitable poor choice, lapse in judgment, lack of preparation, or just all around bad day. We show them how to:

  
·       Create quantifiable goals: In life it helps to create short and long-term goals. It allows to you stay focused and motivated as you reach milestones toward your ultimate goal. If your goals are vague they are difficult to measure and therefore impossible to determine how close you are to meeting them. Give your goals some girth by assigning timelines, dates, and other metrics.

   ·       Prepare yourself: If you’re starting a cleanse or finishing one, remember to do it gradually. Going from one extreme to the other is not healthy and not sustainable. The attitude of “let me binge out on pizza since this is my last day of eating” is going to come back and bite you in the ass. Think about what lies ahead and how best you can prepare. Create a menu in advance, try to cook for several days at once, shop based on your menu or juicing recipes, set up an alarm to remind when it’s time to work out, prepare your workout routine in advance so you don’t go to the gym without a plan

  
 ·       Get support: You will find these days that everyone is doing something to get healthier and finding support for what you’re doing is not that difficult. Sometimes the hardest part is telling people what you are doing and asking for their support and encouragement. Tell your coworkers so they stop bringing you cookies or inviting you to lunch. Ask your family to check up on you and keep you honest. Don’t have supportive people around you? Find a blog, or a book, or a website that you like that is about people who are doing what you are doing or what you want to be doing.

·       Write it down: Keep a food journal and log your workouts. I know this sounds time consuming and tedious but this is how you become more disciplined. No one says you have to count every calorie or measure every step, but at least write down what you ate and at what time and what kind of work out you did, for how long, and at what intensity level. If you want to get more specific about it and you’re a little tech savvy use an app like MyFitnessPal or Runkeeper. Also don’t forget to write down your emotional, spiritual, and psychological state throughout the day and around your eating and exercise.

Everyone’s journey is different. Some people hate the juice and feel tired during a cleanse rather than fresh and rejuvenated. Some people’s first experiments with a new menu turn out great! Others, not so much. Just because you are allowed to eat black beans and spaghetti squash doesn’t mean you should eat them together! Some people love burpees…wait no one loves burpees, nevermind that. And yes ladies, your husband will pretty much always lose weight faster than you do. This is why it’s important to set goals that are measurable, attainable, and realistic given your time constraints and other commitments. This way you can measure success based on your own progress and not compared to someone else.  Your progress is the only thing you have any control over so don’t waste your energy on what everyone else is doing.