Two Out of Three

Welcome to afitnewyou!  Today I would like to give you a few tips that will help to encourage you to reach your fitness goals.  It is one of my core beliefs that even if you have the strongest intentions, and the best written plan to get to where you are going, it will be easily compromised if the plans are too unrealistic to be maintained.  Fad diets only work for so long for this reason; they will help you cut calories initially, but they are too demanding to be maintained over the long haul, and not the way to achieve a healthy lifestyle.  And if you look at your starting point, or simply the place you are now, you want to get somewhere further down the path and you are looking for an edge. So that tells me that what you are currently doing isn’t quite getting you there.  I find that discouragement is often what keeps us from staying on the arduous trail to our fitness goals.  Often the discouragement comes from not meeting your own expectations…for example, people get discouraged when they aren’t getting to the gym as much as they would like, or even miss just one day.  The key to reaching your goals is to not focus on what you haven’t been able to do, but to zero on your successes.  Instead of being discouraged by what you haven’t been able to do, be encouraged by what you have done and can still do.

One of the harsh realities with obtaining fitness goals is that they can only be accomplished with hard work that needs to be done day in and day out.  This is why maintaining your health needs to become a lifestyle and not just something you do for a few weeks of the year.  Fitness achievement only comes after keeping up with a routine, and can only be maintained by sustaining what you have been doing already and most times having to do even more going forward.  We know it isn’t easy, but we also know the results are well worth it.  We can all dream about where we want to be, but we have to constantly work to get there.  The trick is to stay positive and encouraged along that demanding path.

As I started to say in the introduction, one way to stay encouraged along your fitness quest is to commend yourself for your successes and focus on your achievements rather than knocking yourself for succumbing to bumps along the way.  I always go back to the analogy of the dentist.  Every dentist tells you to floss every single day and some say to do it every time you brush your teeth.  While I am sure there are some people out there who actually keep up with that, I am just as sure that they are in the minority of the population.  This is similar to a trainer telling you to get to the gym every single day and to make every single meal clean and healthy.  Again, I am sure there are some people out there who actually keep up with that, I am just as sure that they are in the minority of the population.  What I want you to keep in mind is that just as you wouldn’t stop brushing your teeth because you are not flossing as much as recommended, you shouldn’t stop trying to reach your fitness goals because you can’t get to the gym and/or aren’t eating as healthy as you should.  Anything you do positive for your health is just that…a positive!

A simple way to both get started and keep you going by focusing on your positive steps is to make a list of three daily goals that you want to keep.  Instead of having a long list of everything you should and could be doing better, focus on just a few.  For example, you might have drink more water, be active during a work break, and get to the gym.  It could be any three things that you know would make you healthier.  Having them laid out will help you focus on them.  Then, be happy that you have done any or all of them.  There is a song that goes “Two out of three aint bad” and it applies here as well.  In baseball if someone even goes one for three all of the time they would have a Hall of Fame career.  Yes, you should want to and try to meet all of your goals.  However, if you have done any of them, you have acted with your health in mind.  And let what you have done encourage you to be healthy.

There are enough haters out there to sling stones and try and knock you down.  No one needs any more discouragement, and it certainly shouldn’t be self-imposed.  So don’t get yourself down when you are trying to lift yourself up.  Look at all of the positive things you have done to improve your current level of health and be proud of that.  Let that pride in what you have accomplished be the fuel to encourage you to do even more.  Improving your health one small step at a time, and being happy about it, is the positive way of reaching a fit new you!

Law of Diminishing Returns

Welcome to afitnewyou!  Today I would like to help you push through the point in your fitness quest where you feel that you have “hit the wall.”  No matter what point we are at on our fitness journey, beginners and veterans alike will eventually get to a place where they feel like they have hit their limit.  But what you need to realize is that although you may have come up against a wall, that wall isn’t attached to a ceiling that you cannot over come, rather it is simply the face of the cliff that leads to higher ground.  It can be even more discouraging when hitting that wall comes after a lot of hard work.  There is a Law of Diminishing Returns, which basically states that you eventually get smaller and smaller returns for your continued efforts.  However, in physics, there is also the Law of Conservation of Energy, which says energy cannot be destroyed.  So this is one of those times where you need to remember that you do get out what you put in…and the harder it is to get past that wall, the greater the view will be at the top.

D.J. is a soccer player that I have trained throughout his high school career.  He was a smaller than the average player his age, but that just meant he had to work harder to achieve his goals of making the team.  And when he decided to go to a prestigious private school with very competitive team, he had to work harder than ever to make that team.  As hard as he had to work to make the freshmen team, he had to work even harder to make the Jr. Varsity team.  The same was true for him when he tried out for the varsity team, he knew going in he would have to train even harder than ever.  But, when he made the team, it was his greatest triumph!

No matter what your fitness goals are, you will eventually come up against that proverbial wall; the point where you feel you have reached your limit.  However, the body doesn’t work like that, the body is designed to adapt and evolve to challenge.  As long as you keep putting in the effort, you will eventually reach a higher ground.  A great visual of this is the winners’ podiums at the Olympics.  Notice how the gold, silver, and bronze medal winners are staged on podiums of differing heights with the best being on the tallest podium.  The best effort is the one that has attained the highest ground.  So when it comes to your own training be encouraged, not discouraged, that you have to work harder to see additional results after hitting your plateau. 

The Law of Diminishing Returns can be a bit discouraging if you think that you will get less reward for more effort.  This simply isn’t true though.  The extra effort that you put it will take you to the next level with greater reward.  When it comes to fitness you get out what you put in.  Those higher walls lead to greater heights as is the case with the winner’s podium.

Whatever point you are at along your fitness journey know that you will encounter walls that will have to be overcome.  The further along you get, the harder they may seem to overcome.  But remember that as you move upward, the results attained will be higher and higher.  And if you are only just starting out, be encouraged that those first few walls are the easiest to overcome.  You will reach new heights with your health and state of fitness if you continue to increase your efforts.  Continuing to push for higher ground is the winners’ way to achieve a fit new you!