Goals and Habits…

Hey guys,

Hope you have all had a great week and made some real progress towards your goals.

Well done this week...

Well done to Geoffrey – now down to an awesome 11.5% body-fat. So far he has dropped 5.2% body-fat and gained just under 2kg of lean muscle mass in 5 weeks.
Well done to Ben – down 4% in 5 weeks!

Both are doing well due to being consistent with their diet.

Goal Setting…

This week I wanted to follow on from my brief points about nutrition tips, giving you all a chance to re-set your goals for the year ahead.

I’ve attached a goal setting form to this post. Take some time to fill it out.

Think about your long -term goals (over the next year) and also your shorter term goals (1-2 months)

Make sure you also take time to really think why you want to achieve your goals. Will it improve the quality of your life? Are you concerned about your long-term health? Maybe you just want to look even better in the mirror. Whatever the reason, make sure you write down what motivates you.

Getting behind the reasons why will help keep you motivated long-term; motivated to maintain the changes and habits you need to introduce to get you on track.

Habits…

Once you know the what and the why, you can focus on the how.

You need to think about the new habits you need to introduce to get results and also the bad habits that could be holding you back.

I’ll give you three examples of common goals and problems I see regularly:

  • I want to lose weight, but I find it hard to eat the right things.
  • I have a sore back and bad posture and it holds me back from the hard training I want to do.
  • I really want to get results but my work is too busy.

We’ll go through them one at a time and look at ways to work around them.

 

1. I want to lose weight, but I find it hard to eat the right things.

Chances are that you are too reactive with your eating and not pro-active enough.

What do I mean? Think about it, most pre-packaged and pre-cooked convenience food is horrendous for fat loss. That is just the way the world is. So if you leave your food to chance, grabbing whatever is available when you are hungry, more often than not you will eat foods that will severely hamper your weight loss goals.

So how do you overcome this problem? Simple, think ahead and prepare the right foods in advance. If you make it easy to make the right choices, you usually will.

With your evening meal, just double up your portions and take the extra with you to work the next day. What could be simpler than open the lid, fork in and eat? Even if you are busy all day and don’t have time to sit and eat properly, you can still pick at it all day.

The new habit: Prepare food in advance and make it easy for myself to eat the right foods.

 

2. I have a sore back and bad posture and it holds me back from the hard training I want to do.

99% of the time, joint soreness and muscular pain is due to muscular imbalance around a joint.

With the case of a lower back pain it is usually the muscles that cross of the front of the hip (Psoas and Rectus Femoris) being tight due to extended periods of sitting or even sleeping with your hips in a shortened position.

The law of repetitive motion states that a muscle will adapt to small repetitive movements, or being stuck in shortened position for a long time, by becoming tight.

So the simple way to fix it it is too stretch, gradually improving the range of motion. This will in turn reduce the tightness at the front of the hip, allowing your pelvis to tilt back to where it should be and reduce the pressure on your lower back.

I found the most success with stretching comes from using 5-6 sets of 15-30 seconds per day. So you could do it all in one go, or stretch in the morning and then again at night.

If you stick to this, you will surprised how much more flexible your hips will become in even just one week.

The new habit: Spend 10 mins a day stretching the front of my hips.

 

3. I really want to get results but my work is too busy.

Admittedly the odd training session can suffer due to one-off work commitments, but long-term you need make sure you prioritise your health.

How much work will you get done if you get seriously ill?

As an example, last year I coached a female client back to normal day life after being almost bed ridden for 2 years due to severe adrenal fatigue – which was brought about by a high flying London lifestyle.

I like to compare your relationship with your health to a marriage. If you take it for granted, eventually it will divorce you and it will be very expensive when it does.

Schedule in your exercise time like a work appointment and commit to it, if you consistently get your training and diet right you will get great results and enjoy great long-term health.

Make sure you also understand the difference between effectiveness vs. efficiency and how to make sure your time your time in the most effective ways.

Two books I can highly recommend are:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
First Things First

Both are by Stephen Covey.

A big point Covey makes is about sharpening your saw so you are at your most effective, rather then just going through the motions day-to-day. You’ll find you you will get a lot more done and create more free time for yourself.

Looking after you health will come into this.

If you have great health and energy, all aspects of your life will improve.

Brian.