The #1 Rule for Losing Weight

Most Americans are dealing with the same health and fitness concern—losing weight. While there are 101 gimmicks claiming to help us do just this, it seems that all the exercise programs, supplements, equipment, and surgery has not lead to any improvement in our satisfaction with our looks and health. Why is it, then, that we always try to approach this issue from the same angle?

Most people don’t even realize the cycle they are caught in when it comes to weight loss. One year they try a new supplement. One year they try to start running. Once year they join a gym. One year they try a diet. Or more likely, every year, they do some combination of all of these. Whatever it is, there is one commonality in the way Americans approach any goal: speed trumps all.

When it comes to losing weight, we want to do it as fast as possible and then figure out how to maintain. We want to take on a gym membership, a new diet, and a new running program all at once. Whatever it takes. The only problem: it never works. We jump in head first, and one of two things happens:

1)      We don’t get results fast enough.
2)      We get results but quickly realize that the 143 new habits we just took on are not so easy to maintain.

Either way, things start slowing down, and the wheels start coming off. Soon we are back into our old routine, discouraged and no closer to our goals than when we started. 

A New Way of Thinking

If we want to make a lasting change, we have to start approaching this whole weight loss issue from a different perspective. So here’s the question: would you rather be 10 lbs lighter in 2 weeks, but back to your current weight in 6 weeks, OR 10 lbs lighter in 6 months, and 10+ lbs lighter for the next 10 years? Hopefully you would agree that losing weight slowly and keeping it off (and potentially losing more) is preferable. Why then do we take these all-or-nothing mindsets?

If you have ever achieved something great, I hope you took one thing away from your experience: persistence is paramount. Nothing is more important than persistence and in similar fashion, consistency. If you are consistent in your efforts to achieve a goal, and you stay consistent through good and bad times, you will undoubtedly reach that goal. This does not mean that you need to take any giant leaps or take on more than you can handle. It just means that you must keep working toward your goal and keep doing things every day that help get you closer. It’s about your routine. It’s about clarity of purpose. It’s about knowing where you want to be and having faith that you will get there.

So this year, if weight loss is your goal, how are you going to approach it so that you come out on top this time? You already know what you need to do to get there, but what if this time, instead of doing them all at once, you just start with one thing that you KNOW you can handle. Could you easily drink more water each day or have an extra serving of veggies at dinner? Whatever it is you think will help, pick one small item and start working on it. Take it slowly, learn from your experience, and when drinking more water is like brushing your teeth, add on the next habit. Do this and I guarantee you will lose more weight by the end of the year, while actually learning how to maintain your new weight. So what is the #1 rule for weight loss? Consistent persistence, and that’s all there is to it.

Are Your Expectations Holding You Back?

Why is it that so consistently, a huge number of people “commit” themselves to getting healthy for the New Year, but 80% of them fail to get past the first 2-3 weeks? What is it that has them motivated in that first week and discouraged only a short time later? It would be one thing if it was a select few people that encountered this experience, but this is not the case. Every year, millions of people make conscious efforts to change their health, yet only a small percentage can see this effort to its end. While there are certainly a number of reasons why this could be, I would like to suggest that one idea is often overlooked: expectations.

If you EXPECT to lose 10 pounds in the first 2 weeks, what happens when you only lose 5, or worse, don’t lose any? Discouragement and disappointment. Now we may not all expect 10 pounds, but in general, we like seeing results. Whatever we are expecting of our new health and fitness venture, we want tangible, measurable results as quickly as possible. When this doesn’t happen, we feel shameful and discouraged. This is especially true when we feel that we are doing “all the right things”. The more we try to take on to achieve a goal, the faster we want results.

The problem is, as with most ambitious goals, health and fitness are not something to be won; they are something to be lived. It is about a journey, full of ups and downs, and side to sides. It’s about finding what works for you and experimenting with different philosophies. It’s about hoping for the best, but expecting only your best effort. As soon as your expectations hinge on extrinsic variables, you are set up for disappointment and most likely failure. We want to be able to “control” our weight or body fat % or pant size, but it doesn’t work like that. There are only two things that we can control: our behaviors and our environment (to a certain extent). If you eat a gallon of ice cream every night and you stop, you have made a behavioral change that will probably influence your health and appearance. If there are street lights outside of your bedroom that keep you up at night and you put up blackout curtains, you have made an environmental change that will probably influence your sleep (therefore health).

Neither of these actions is guaranteed to do anything for your health, but there is good reason to believe that it will do something. This is where setting the right kind of expectations is key. If you do these two things and expect that you will now lose that 10 pounds, you have set yourself up for discouragement for two reasons. First, there may be 5 other things that you do that are keeping the weight on. This is where the journey comes in. If you start feeling better, that’s a great start, but you may not see the weight come off until you adjust some other areas of your life. Second, who says that your body will start shedding pounds right away? What if those were the only two things you changed, but it took a year to lose the 10 pounds?

So it comes back to our goals and expectations. Yes losing weight is good, but your weight will always reflect your lifestyle. If you want your weight to change, start living the life of someone that is 10, 20, 50 pounds lighter. If you want your health to change, start living the life of someone that is in great health. It’s not a race and there is no trophy; it’s a journey. If all you expect of yourself is to do your best, and KEEP TRYING, you will find greater health, looks, and fitness than you ever thought possible.

Guarantee Success in 2012!

Welcome to 2012! The holidays were fun, no doubt, but it’s time to get back on track. In our last post, we focused on reflecting on our success from 2011 to help set us up for 2012. Now let’s see what we can do in 2012 to make this the best year ever. It all starts with a plan, so use the following process to make this year’s resolutions as fail-proof as possible.

1) Write down what you want to achieve and how you plan to achieve it. This is always the first step to achieving a goal and until you start writing down your goals, you will have a hard time making much progress. In the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, author Mark McCormack relays a study conducted on the students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In this study, students were asked the questions: "Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?" Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.

Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. And this did not even include writing down an action plan. Given that you cannot always know exactly how to achieve a goal, just by writing down some ideas on how you might achieve that goal is a huge start, which brings us to our next point.

2) Figure out what you want to change; then list those items in order from easiest to hardest.  If you know you want to lose weight, you can probably think of at least 5 things you are doing right now that would need to change if you hope to achieve that goal. This could be going to the gym, cutting out sugar, going to bed earlier, and so on. Once you have listed all of those things that you know will help you reach your goal, there is a second step that few people take. By listing these items form easiest to hardest, you have established a plan for success. Just start with the first task and work on it until it is part of your daily routine. This could be as small as drinking a glass of water every morning, or taking a 5-minute walk at lunch every day. Whatever it is, establish that habit first, then move on to the next. One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they have 15 different things they know they need to change, and they try to do it all at once. If you slow down, and focus on building habits you will find that in 6 months, you could have as many as 20 new habits and have made significant progress toward your goal, if it hasn’t been achieved already.

3) Win the play. Now that you have your actions laid out, it is time to get to work. But even a small behavioral change can be difficult, so break this action down even further. “Win the play” is a sports reference meaning that if you win every play, the game will take care of itself. This makes sense in sports, but we rarely take this attitude toward our lives or goals. If your goal is to walk 5 minutes a day, but you focus on the fact that you have to get that walk in for the next 365 days, it could not only be overwhelming, but you could easily get off track if you happen to miss one day. It’s not about the end, it’s about the journey. Focus on what you need to do this day, this hour, this minute. Are you doing what you need to do right now to achieve one of your goals? This doesn’t have to be a fitness goal necessarily, but maybe you want to spend more time with your children, or increase your income. Whatever it is, win the play and the outcome will take care of itself.

If you can follow these three steps you will have a great foundation to jump start your 2012 achievements. Change is all about small positive actions repeated again and again. When you build habits that move you toward your goal, it’s no longer about will power or time management, but rather a lifestyle that naturally helps you to reach your goals. So write down those goals, write down your actions, and then win the play every hour of every day!