People keep checking their weight, body fat percentage, etc. during the edge building process but until you fill in the sides, you can’t get to the center.
There are ultimately 2 ways to put a puzzle together-
- From the inside out
- From the outside in
Most people I know choose to start with #2.
When you start from the outside and move in, you can find the edge and corner pieces to build a “frame” and then work your way in.
Now, if it’s a 24 piece floor puzzle, it might not matter which way you go because each piece is so very large. But if it’s 1000+ piece puzzle, you’re going to want to strategize or it’s going to take you an eternity to finish the thing.
Right about now, you may be wondering if I’ve just run out of things to teach you and have begun a crazy string of babbling. Well, crazy as I may be at times ;o) there is a point, as always.
Let’s take the idea of your health and fitness goals and consider that it takes thousands of tiny steps to get from point A to point B. It’s not about the leaps that you take, because those typically lead to you falling and rolling back to point A again, but rather the small daily steps you take to move in a new direction.
Those steps, your daily habits and actions, they’re the outside edges. The corners are the foundational pillars of health:
- Exercise
- Nutrition
- Lifestyle/Mindset
- Recovery/Relaxation/Sleep
When you put the corners in place and begin taking 1 step each day (finding one piece of the puzzle) towards your goals, you will eventually spiral yourself toward victory.
One piece found leads to another and another. Sometimes you have to take a break from the intensity of the moment to find the next piece but when you come back, the puzzle wasn’t taken back to point A again, it was just left to maintain. And when you come back to the moments of intensity, you’ll find more progress.
Let’s consider the opposite path for a moment, starting from the inside – out. This sadly is the path most people take when working towards their health and fitness goals.
This path looks like jumping into action assuring yourself that this time, the money or motivation or reasoning is enough to make this happen for you (remember, nothing can happen for you in this realm that you don’t initiate).
Only within a short time, you begin feeling frustrated from your daily weight checks or that you aren’t able to get in a single pull up yet. You’re trying to find the last piece before the first.
It’s like dumping a box of puzzle pieces into the middle of a table and spending the next many months, maybe years searching for the center piece. And subsequently feeling frustrated every time you pick up a piece that isn’t it.
There’s an easier way. There’s a better way. But too often we allow our environment to determine what and how we do what we do.
We allow our desperation to lead us down the wrong path, repeatedly.
Take a moment today to look at your health and fitness goals and also at the path you’ve chosen to reach them.
Does that path look victorious in the end? Is it sustainable? Will you have built the necessary habits along the way to make it last rather than to allow it to evaporate soon after achieving your goals?
If it looks questionable or you’re just not certain of whether it’s the right path or not, look to see does it have the foundational pieces:
- Regular exercise 4-6 days per week of at least 30 minutes per day
- A simple but well balanced nutrition plan that gives your body all of the nutrition it needs
- Lifestyle/Mindset habits that are centered around health and vitality
- Recovery/Rest/Sleep habits that are consistent and provide you with the rest your body physically craves
If your path is missing any one of these, you might want to do some adjusting to find a path that will lead you more toward victory than frustration because even if it’s working at the moment, without those 4 pillars, it won’t last. Give us a call at 806-322-3188