Hi everybody, I’m Kris Stokes from Custom Fitness: Amarillo’s non-gym option for personal training. Today, we’re talking about five tips to help you achieve and guarantee results. I know that sounds kind of crazy because you are led to believe that there are so many magical cures out there that just fall through and don’t really end up being the answer. But there are some things that we can do to be able to really influence our results and to get some positive results there. If you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188.
Really, working in the fitness industry for 20 years now gives me some great experience looking into the mindset and the thinking patterns of most of the people that I’ve worked with. When it comes to their fitness journeys, a lot of people think the same things. A lot of people make the same mistakes. A lot of people face the same challenges. When I hear about these challenges, I really love to give some simple tips that I know can ensure results for people, but sometimes it’s not quite what they’re thinking.
The five tips that I have for you today, number one is don’t think, just do. If it’s your time, if you have been sitting on the fence and you know that you want to do it and you have been thinking about doing it but you’re not really sure if this is a good time or not, it might be time to jump off that fence. If you are sitting on the fence, you will never get anything done. You have to remember that nobody else can take that step forward except you. If it’s your time, just do it. Make it happen. You may not have all the details planned out of exactly how it’s going to go or what you’re going to do, but really it’s just important to get it done, to start moving forward. Otherwise, you just stand still and really, honestly, you really can’t stand still. You more step backwards is what ends up happening because you kind of sink backwards or slide backwards. Standing still just isn’t really much of an option in the way that things happen.
The next part is to appreciate your body for what it can do. I have so many times that I will ask people a question, my kids come to mind here, that I’ll ask them hey, how was your day? What did you do that was great? Sometimes I get back the response well, I didn’t do this, or this didn’t work, or this was bad. I didn’t ask them what was bad about their day, I asked them what was good.
Banishing negativity is a huge thing. In workout, in fitness, and nutrition, too often I hear about what people either can’t do, in their minds, or what someone else is doing that they don’t feel capable of. Really, it’s time to take pleasure in movement, in progress. Take pride in what you can do. Take the time to really focus in on who you are and what you can do rather than focusing on what maybe your lesser skills are. This deep appreciation for your physical health is really what allows you to maintain your fitness over time, because you take pride in who you are and your body and how it moves.
In order to do that, we have to let go of the propaganda that we’ve been taught, I don’t know, almost brainwashed I guess is a good word for it. Too often, you hear lose 30 pounds in a week. Lose 20 inches in three weeks. Whatever it may be. It just is getting in our heads to where we feel like we expect these results that maybe are not realistic for our body, for ourselves. They might not even be healthy for us, but it’s something that we’ve been led to believe that that’s what we need to do. Instead, we need to really discover what our body can do and then enjoy it. Use that discovery, use that pride in your own self ability to move the needle forward to be able to create progress going forward.
The next part is to imagine your future self. Too often, people don’t think about that. They think about where they’re at now, and we really dwell on that, and we think about the goals we have, but do you really picture your future self? Can you figure out what you’re going to feel like? What you’re going to look like? What kind of experiences are you going to have that are going to be changed by these goals that you set?
It’s really not about what you see in the mirror as much as it is what you feel on the inside. We all have specific motivation for wanting to lose fat, get fit, build muscle, whatever it may be, and that’s important because that makes us unique. Whether it’s getting strong enough to play sports with your kids or looking great on your wedding day, or just feeling like you wake up not 111 years old every day and your joints feel better and you can move and do the things that you want to do.
The whole time that people have these images of themselves in their heads, especially weddings is a good example there, they have this image of what they want to look like, so the whole time that they have that image in their head, they really have this motivation to move forward and they understand at the moment that it’s not about what they look like right now, it’s about what they want to be. That works out great until the wedding comes and then they let that go, and then we fall off doing that. Really, it’s so important. It’s just as important as setting goals and creating new habits. It’s learning to live in the body that you want to have.
Where we tend to see people who are fit and in shape maybe walking down the street or at the pool in the summer or whatever and we look at them, we almost have this sense of anger inside, this sense of frustration. There’s a comic that I have seen that basically has a very fit person and a person who has been struggling with fitness and the person struggling is saying oh, she was born that way. That’s just who she is. She must have a high metabolism. But, the comic goes on to show the background of that person, that they exercise every day and they’re eating well and they’re getting their sleep and they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.
They’ve worked hard for that body and other people just kind of feel like oh, they’ve just been given that. You don’t just get given that. You have to work for it, and in order to work for it you have to start envisioning that ahead of time because you have to know where you’re going.
Number four is to enjoy your food. We have got to quit this cycle of dieting and crash dieting and eating food because somebody said that that was the only thing we could have and we’re depriving ourselves of all these other things. At the same time, we have to quit eating all this crap that doesn’t fuel our body and we’re not even tasting it anymore. There are so many studies out there showing, proving, that companies over and over again who make, say sweet treats, every few years they have to change their recipe and increase the amount of sugars within those treats because we become latent to being able to feel it. We can’t feel it anymore. We can’t feel the sugar rush. We don’t taste the sweetness because we become too used to it.
Over time we build up this ability to adapt. Our bodies are adaptable beings, that’s what they do, so we adapt to the levels of sugar. They have to go and add more, but we don’t actually taste any of it anymore. We don’t even really taste the sweetness of fruit. We don’t taste the deliciousness of what we’re having that we’ve taken so long to fix, and we don’t take that time to enjoy our food. We really pack in a lot more calories and we don’t even enjoy it the way that we should.
When we take the time to really enjoy it, to savor that food and to take time eating, it usually makes us slow down. It also makes us more conscious of the choices that we’re making. We tend to choose better foods for our bodies. Over and over again, I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve had clients come in, they tell me that they fell off the wagon over a weekend, over a holiday, over a vacation, whatever it may be. They fell off. They did terrible. They just don’t know how to get started again. They were embarrassed to come talk to me. We sit down, we discuss it, and we find out that they’ve made better habits than they would have six months ago. They didn’t fall off the way that they think they did, they just weren’t perfect, and that’s okay because none of us are. But, they were able to maintain because they were making better choices. They were doing 1% better than what they could have before, which is our whole motto. Be 1% better. That’s a huge thing. If you can be conscious of those choices, you’re going to make better decisions, and that comes from taking time to enjoy food and making sure that you’re eating things that are fueling your body and nourishing your body instead of just eating what’s on a piece of paper because they said that it had less calories.
All right, the last one that I’ve got for you is to pay attention to your surroundings. It may sound kind of silly, but when clients recognize how their surroundings might be creating unhealthy habits, they usually have that aha moment. Now, that could be their surroundings of people, that could be their environment at home, that could be their work. There’s certain things that we don’t have control of, and then there’s other things that we have a lot of control of. Whether we want to admit it or not is a different story. When people start to recognize that, they start seeing the relationship between what’s around them and who they think they are and this helps them to change their self stories and start seeing real results.
Just start thinking of things like what do I really care about? What gives me joy? How can I get more of that? Furthermore, we start to look at what could we remove from our environment to make our choices better or our support better, and what could we add to our environment to create a healthier life for ourselves? We have these options here that maybe we haven’t even paid attention to that we have the option of, changing our surroundings, changing our environment. Again, there’s certain things that we can’t change, but there’s other things that we can. If we change the part that we can, a lot of times we make a huge dent in being able to get those results and having them last.
What I want you to know is that this type of change, this type of mindset is what we help to teach our clients. This is how we help our clients to become better, is by teaching them small tips and habits that they can use daily that don’t completely flip their life upside down but help them to move the needle forward, help them to find progress in the future by taking those steps one by one. If you would like some more help living your best and getting your results, then I’d love to invite you to join our Clean and Lean Program. We’ve actually got one starting up on May 6th and we have another one starting up on June 3rd. We wanted to make sure that people were not too busy to join in on one or the other. Your choice on when you join, but we’d love to help you out with that.
It’s helping you learn how to eat real foods, follow real basic, simplistic habits that can be used from this point forward to carry you into the future to your results. It’s filled with efficient and effective exercise that last 30 minutes or less. You don’t have to spend all day doing this stuff, and it doesn’t have to take up all of your mental capacity.
You have time and room to enjoy life at the same time and we’d love to be able to help you out with that. Feel free to give us a call, 806-322-3188. We’re Custom Fitness. YOUR Amarillo personal trainer.