Hi, I’m Kris Stokes with Custom Fitness Personal Training Studio where your health comes first. Today I want to tell you about the first thing to do before you ever begin a new program. There are so many things to get done in that phase, but all we usually think about is, do I have enough shoes, clothes, and equipment to get it done and an idea of where I’m going? Maybe I need a gym membership, maybe I need a nutrition manual, whatever it may be, and we’re set.
The problem is that people go out of the gate too fast. They don’t think it through, and they don’t prepare for these changes. They just jump into a new program. They think “so-and-so said that this place was offering a deal, so I’m going to go do a six week bootcamp with them, and it’s going to be great. And I start on Monday,” and what do we do over the weekend? Well, we just have our last meal, if you will, where you’re eating whatever you want before you go into it. I know about these things because a lot of people come in here and tell me that they did that.
Human psychology is a funny thing, but we need to think about it. There’s something else that needs to be done before you can get started if you are planning on this being a success. Now we don’t ever jump into these things hoping that we fail at them, right? I have yet to meet someone who had done a million exercise programs or diets hoping that they would fail, but typically, 95% of the time, that’s what happens. People jump into these things. They do it for a little while. It works for a little while, and then they stop. They consider themselves a failure. They revert. They go back to where they were, and they start back over.
I can tell you that that is one of my biggest pet peeves is whenever people are given the wrong information, or the wrong education, and they end up starting back over at square one every time. I tell every person who walks in our door that is one of my biggest focuses is to make sure that wherever they start from today, they don’t ever end up back there because we will teach them what they need to know and build in habits to help them ingrain these things so that it becomes a lifestyle change.
What I’m telling you today is coming from advice that I give our clients to make sure that they make the best changes possible and that they step forward each time instead of regressing backwards. The first thing that we have to do is think about what we’re going to do as a whole picture. It’s not just, “I’m going to go join this program, start this diet, do this bootcamp“. It’s that we’re making a change, so whenever we’re going to make a change, we’ve got to think about: what do we already have around us that is going to support that change and what do we have around us that’s not going to support that change?
That first thing to do is clean out your setbacks. Go ahead and clean out the things that are going to cause cravings, the things that are going to cause you to be derailed, the things that are going to cause you to backtrack. We want to get that out of our home, out of lives, out of our head. We’ve got to clean it out. If we can clean out those setbacks before we even get started, we have a much higher chance of succeeding.
I’ve got three main areas that always come up first, and then obviously we go through others. Number one is your kitchen. If you don’t clean out your kitchen and get rid of the foods that are not supporting you, then you will eventually succumb to eating them. Whatever is there will be eaten eventually. A lot of people have issues with this because they think, “Well, I just went to the store, and I bought all of these cookies or chips or whatever it is that I’ve got in here. And I can’t just throw it away. That will be a waste of money.” So go and donate it. Donate it to Snack Pak for kids. Go and donate it to the High Plains Food Bank. Go and donate it to somewhere, some charity. Many churches have food pantries now. They would love to have it, but if you know that it’s not going to help you reach your goals, then having it in the house is only asking for trouble.
Now, if you have a family that is eating these things and you just absolutely can’t get rid of them, there’s no way, then we need to find a different place for your things. We need to have your things at eye level, and their things out of sight. If you can put them in a different cabinet, or if you make a cabinet just for you, the refrigerator shelves, yours is eye level, everybody else’s is somewhere else, things like that, that will help. But honestly, if you can have it out of the house, that’s obviously the best.
Number two to clean out is your workout equipment. If you’re going to be working out at home, don’t keep stuff that makes no sense. If you have a Gazelle from years ago or a TreadClimber that you never use, get rid of them and use equipment that’s actually going to make sense for you. So many of our programs are written with body weight, some bands, maybe some dumbbells at the most. There is a lot that you can do with your body. God has given us the amazing ability to use our body in so many ways, and we can do full body weight workouts. You don’t have to have millions of dollars worth of exercise equipment in your house, and you don’t have to have it cluttering your house.
What that does is, it gives you things to look at every day, especially things like treadmills and ellipticals that aren’t being used. If you’re looking at it every day knowing that you’re not using it, it almost makes you feel guilty, even if you’re doing something else outside of there. If you’re doing a bootcamp somewhere else, if you’re doing a gym program somewhere else, if you’ve got a trainer somewhere else, that’s all great. But then you come home and you look at that, and it brings in that little seed of failure that I didn’t use it. I wasted money on it, and it’s just this little seed. And it starts to grow, and that failure does not stick just to that piece of equipment. It starts to take root in you.
If it’s not something you’re going to use, get rid of it. Make sure that it’s not in there. There’s no reason to clutter up your space. You can have much more functional space and be able to use things the way that you need to. So we want to clear that out.
Number three is we have to clear out our head. We have to get rid of the negative, the focus on pessimism if you will, the focus on the you could fail, and we need to focus, reroute that, onto positive optimism. We need to find quotes that are going to help us, or a picture that’s going to help us, or something that’s going to remind us daily. Tape it on your mirror, in your car, in your kitchen, on the fridge, whatever it is, and remind yourself that you are making this change because you want to and because it’s something that you desire. And if you can find the determination to work through those things and have that mindset, you will find that success will be so much easier. So we’ve got to have that determination.
The last thing that I wanted to bring up is your closet. If you’ve got two or more sizes of clothes in there, you want to go in and clean out the clothes that don’t currently fit. If that is too small, you could probably keep one or two of those outfits in sight, and just hide the rest so that you can work down to those clothes. But if they’re too big, we’re not going to keep them. And this is going to be a work in progress because it’s not just right when you first start a program. It’s as you continue to make this lifestyle change. You don’t have clothes that you’ve undergrown in your closet so that you are ready in case you gain the weight back.
Instead, we want to get rid of those clothes. Donate them to a good cause. Give them to a good friend. Whatever it needs to be, but get them out of your closet because that tells your brain that there is no going back, that you’re not going to allow yourself to step backwards. So that’s one less setback that we will face. As we move forward, we’re constantly moving into our clothes that we desire to fit in, right? I mean, if they’re in your closet, you desired to fit in them at one point, so we’re moving into that. Make sure that it’s a healthy size for you. So if you’re hanging on to clothes that are way too small and really unsafe to be that small again, then get rid of those as well. It’s just cleaning out your closet to be in the moment of where you’re currently at and where you want to be, and then make sure that that’s a work in progress that you continually push towards that.
I hope those tips help you to get the best start because I know a lot of people are getting started for the summer on getting back in shape, getting back on track with themselves and everything. I hope those things help you, and if you feel like you need a little extra support, you need some guidance, you need a plan, feel free to give us a call. 806-322-3188. Our team would love to help you. Remember that we focus on exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle. We put all of it together so this can become a lifelong change for you instead of something to just bounce to and get setback from. I hope you have a great day.
Need more tips for the Summer? Click here for our exclusive Summer Sweets and Drinks Guide