How many times have you started trying to get fit / lose weight / get your mojo back…?
There’s a good chance that the answer is the same as the amount of times you’ve stopped, and right now you’re trying to figure out how the hell to start again!
To make matters worse, the longer you wait, the scarier the first step seems to take!
This isn’t your fault. I blame social media.
Slowly but surely over the last few years from first worrying about how to make your body look better, up to today, you’ve been exposed to more and more messages telling you what your body should look like and what it should be able to do.
Whilst this is nothing new (over-the-top magazine articles and edited photos have been around for ever) the volume of exposure to these things has increased exponentially.
This is important because we can ignore things when we’re exposed now and then but when it’s ALL we see, it becomes a new and accepted reality.
This has made the mountain you THINK you have to climb from ‘fat to fit’ bigger and bigger and bigger.
Combine that with having less and less time to deal with your health and fitness and we have a recipe for doing absolutely nothing and so the cycle continues.
The way out of this is simple and straightforward and I’m going to give you checklist to work through over the next 12 weeks.
Print it out. Tick it off.
These things will start to return your perspective to normality and make the mountain seem like a little hop, skip or jump on to a small pavement each day.
- Go to your phone Settings, scroll to Screen Time and set your social media time for one hour or less per day. You can reduce this further later. DO NOT allow yourself more.
- Go on your social media feeds and unfollow EVERYONE that doesn’t fall into the category of Real Life Friend or “I regularly learn something actionable off this person”. Be ruthless.
- Look at the people you spend time with every week. If any of them are full of negativity and leave you feeling worse, plan how to spend minimal time around them. Again this might take pissing someone off. That’s the way it is sometimes.
- For 21 days, set your goal as ‘Showing Up’ without any pressure or expectation about what result will follow. Don’t overthink any of the following just do it and get the small wins on the board
- Show up to any kind of exercise at least 3 times per week for at least 30 minutes (write the times in your diary). If you show up to your fitness classes you’ve already won and what you do in that session compared to what you used to do or what others can do is IRRELEVANT.
- Show up to a healthy meal that you prepared from natural ingredients at least twice per day
- Show up to drink 1.5 litres of water or more every day
- Show up to bed by 10.30pm or earlier (unless you have weird shift patterns)
- Show up to the outdoors at least 3 times for at least 30 minutes.
You can DEFINITELY do all of these because there are no expectations about how good they are, what they are, where you need to be etc.
You might think that these won’t lead to the body that you ultimately want and you may well be right but this is exactly why you keep failing.
You’re setting goals based on ‘professionals’ on social media but with a very novice set up in terms of time availability, energy levels, knowledge, habits and so on.
Yes we would ideally love you to be on a quality training program, hit the gym 3-4 times per week, have a great diet, do some breathwork and so on but you’re just not ready and that’s totally fine!
We can work on the details once you have the framework in place.
We need to get you in the arena for long enough to start changing how your brain sees your progress.
Self-confidence ONLY comes from achievement and personal wins but we need to play the right game at the right time or you’re going to constantly feel like you’re losing.
Nobody likes losing and we all walk away from games that we keep losing at!
The simple solution is to think big but play small each day or week.
When you do this and cement some new habits, each subsequent phase isn’t any harder, it’s just new, but the foundation is much, much better.
You’ll also find that by taking the longer approach, you’ll go so high that even when you genuinely have a time in life where you simply can’t devote enough time or effort to the gym or your running program, you’ll still operate at a level that keeps you in the game, rather than falling off the wagon completely.
We want to make your good days into great days and your bad days into okay days!
You will NEVER think yourself ready.
You will NEVER find a perfect time to start or at least it won’t stay that way for very long.
Whilst I blame social media for how most people feel about health and fitness these days, the buck stops with you in terms of what you’re going to do from this moment forward.
You may well have obstacles to being and doing what you want to be and do, but we both know that these obstacles are not going to vanish one day. If they do, they will more than likely just be replaced by some other demand for your time and energy – that’s life!
It’s on you to decide to change and to implement the best changes you can at every stage or progression.
If you want a full 12 week progressive program to follow just grab a copy of The Secrets of Showing Up on Amazon and I will walk you through every single step of nutrition, training and mindset over easy-to-implement phases just like this!
