If you have a fitness goal in mind than the number one factor in achieving your desired result is consistency. Now contrary to what you may have been hearing in this crazy world of ours, I full heartedly believe that you are the product of the choices you have made that have led to this present moment. Day in and day out, hour after hour, week after week, month after month, and year after year.
The people that I have seen struggle the most with their fitness goals are those who need everything to be perfect. We have all seen people who have one amazing week of working out and eating perfectly, then the next week when they miss a day they fall completely off the wagon. That one slip up causes them to say to themselves “Well this week is ruined,” and then they go off on a binge eating spree of epic proportions and swear off everything and everyone with any relation to fitness.
I fully understand these individuals, cause I used to be one of them. I thought that only if I had the perfect training program, perfect diet, perfect gym, perfect training partner, and perfect gym clothing only then would I get the results I wanted. After months of struggling to get all these ducks perfectly in a row, did I come to the realization that most times in this life things are not going to be perfect and I needed to find another way.
The truth is that there are always going to be roadblocks to try to get in the way of your pursuit of perfection. Your job, remember the age old saying "Mo Money, Mo Problems" will continue to add stress the more you move up the ladder. Next aspects of your personal life will make their way in to try to derail your fitness goals. Your partner dumped you or a relative passed so now you are stress eating. Your friends want to go bar hopping every weekend. The list goes on and on. The situations may change, but these are parts of all of our lives that we must come to terms with and have a plan for when they come knocking on our door.
The answer is to change your mindset. Don’t worry about making things perfect, instead shift your focus to a routine of healthy habits that you can keep up with consistently. If you miss a day of training, damn, that sucks, make sure you go tomorrow. Your family or friends wants to go out to a nice Italian restaurant tonight, go and have fun just make sure you substitute some calories during lunch today or during one of your meals tomorrow.
There is nothing you can do to get that missed workout back, simply continue to follow your nutrition plan and set your inTENSION on what you can do for the rest of today that will keep you aligned with your fitness goals, rather than what you may now not be able to do. Focusing on what you have missed will only cause more angst and doubt. Focusing on what you can do will allow you to continue to see and track progress.
I tell my client's that, it doesn’t matter if you have two great weeks then one terrible one, and that cycle repeats: The one terrible week of bad choices; not working out, eating poorly, etc. will always set you back, and cause a cycle of frustration and discontent with your fitness journey. I would always rather see people exercise 2-3x a week for a year, rather than every day for 3 weeks then stop. If you consistently let the wrong choices spiral out of control this will only lead to more and wrong choices, and you will continue to be upset with your lack of results.
For me setting my inTENSION on consistency over perfection is when I finally started to see the results I desired. I started out by slowly implementing habits into my daily life that I could maintain for the long haul. Getting to bed earlier, doing some sort of physical activity everyday, meal prepping, etc. This has helped me make the most progress in my journey and was honestly the salvation that helped me drop that never ending pursuit of perfection.
Moral of the story. If you fall off the wagon one day, don't sweat it just get back up, dust yourself off and focus on what you can do to keep moving forward on your personal health & fitness progress. I will leave you with my favorite quote from any movie ever, which also happens to be perfect ending for this rant on your personal choice of staying consistent or not.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” - Rocky Balboa
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