“Every time I try to start taking better care of myself, I feel motivated and like this time will be different, but it never lasts. I hit a wall mentally or life happens and I just give up. It feels so defeating and each next attempt followed by each next failure makes me feel like I can never be successful.”
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- It’s likely not a *you* thing, it’s likely simply too difficult of an approach!
- Very common for us to want “x thing” so badly that we want to take the quickest, shortest, most extreme route there, with no thought paid toward sustainability or longevity. We choose to leap over the early fundamental work at the start only for that choice to bite us later on.
- A better approach is a slow gradual game plan, that involves layering in things over time as proficiency is developed, and what were once sometimes-things in our life are now put in place and practiced long enough to become constants.
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Here are some examples of progressions that may illustrate ways to progress that lend themselves to maximum sustainability with as little possible of overwhelm/burnout as possible:
- Learning basics of food groups -> tracking calories -> tracking macros -> leveraging meal timing -> cycling macros for training vs non training days
- Walking -> walking with jogging intervals -> jogging -> running
- Going to the gym 2x weekly -> going to the gym 3x weekly -> going to the gym 4-5x weekly at a set time
- Bodyweight movements -> movements with very light weights added -> movements with medium weights once movement planes are feeling natural -> continuing to increase weights and adding more new movements
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Looking back at those progressions, most of us will hop right to trying to do one of the last couple steps in each, 99% of the time coming from doing none of the items listed will not end well if we don’t build the foundation with the earlier steps.
Going slower may not be exciting or sexy, but slow is sustainable.
Developing the knowledge and skills and proficiency via learned practice usually creates a strong force of momentum and what may feel ‘slow’ to start, has a really nice way of picking up speed as we feel better on all fronts and become the very person we SO badly longed to be.
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Give yourself the chance to become who you know you can be.
Good chance slowing down, at least at the start, is your ticket to getting there
