Committing to Change

Change is hard. There, I said what everyone is thinking right now. Changing your socks is easy, but changing habits and ways of thinking definitely are not. We humans love our routines. They're comfortable and reliable, and when we're forced out of them it's a bit traumatic. When we try to make ourselves move out of our routines, no matter how positive the result will be, we still resist the change because we just innately don't like it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm just as bad as anyone else.

New Year's is that time of year when a lot of people make an effort to change their lifestyle to be more healthy – usually just focusing on diet and/or exercise. The majority of people fail to make the change permanent.

Personally, I think it's because we don't truly understand why we're making the change in the first place. We may well be having post-holiday guilt over all the food we enjoyed that was primarily responsible for packing on several extra pounds, or we may be looking at ourselves naked in a mirror and thinking about summer and how short a time 6 months really is to turn ourselves around and look good in bathing suits. What we don't consider are the mental and emotional impacts of our diet/exercise changes, and ultimately I think that's why so many fail to stick with it. So here are a few questions to ponder before you take the plunge into a new set of healthy routines.

1. Is your diet/exercise change something temporary, or do you intend for it to be permanent? (Permanent changes are generally more successful.)
2. How much research have you done into the changes you're doing? Are there positive/negative side effects you haven't thought of?
3. Are you ready to put your changes into place tomorrow? If not, why?
4. Are you doing it to be healthy?
5. Are you doing it for the sake of vanity? (Which is also OK)
6. Are you doing it out of guilt, because you think you should or someone else has told you that you should?
7. Are you going into this dreading it before you start? (That's the quickest way to self-sabotage.)
8. Are you being 100% responsible for your plan, or are you relying on others to keep you on track?
9. In what way are you planning to measure success? At what interval?
10. Have you made both short-term and long-term goals, and mapped out when they should be met?

Here's the truth as I see it. Planned permanent changes usually have a higher success rate. Planned temporary changes are far too easy to give up on, because you don't have a lot of energy invested in them. If you haven't done any research into what you're planning to start doing on 1/1, you have already set yourself up to fail because you don't know what you're doing. If you're not ready aside from a last-minute trip to the store tomorrow, you're really not ready to start on 1/1. If you're doing it out of guilt, you're going to resent doing it so fast you'll probably be eating doughnuts before 1/31.

If you're planning a diet/exercise change for your health, or vanity, those are some pretty good reasons to do it and you'll have a better chance of sticking with it. If you've made yourself accountable to other people about your changes, you have a 50/50 chance of sticking with it or coming up with excuses about why you're not able to. If you're already bemoaning the lack of pizza in your future, you need to either re-think your attitude or re-think your plan. Unless you're dealing with an allergy or another health issue, most modern diet/exercise plans have a “cheat day” built into them just so you don't feel deprived.

None of this is designed to have you quit or give up on your plans for recreating yourself. Hopefully the questions I'm posing are making you think about your plans and giving you some analytical tips to make them more solid and increase your success rate.

As for me? Well, for both health and vanity, I'm pretty willing to give up pizza. I'll be eating smarter, planning my meals in advance, and exercising daily for at least 20 minutes. Part of my problem is that I sit down and read too much instead of getting up and being active, so that's my biggest hurdle to overcome. If I'm still exercising at least 20 minutes a day by the end of March, I'll be pretty happy with myself. If I'm still doing that minimum by the end of September, I probably won't even think about it because it'll just be part of my day. But honestly, that's the long-term goal I really want to achieve. My weight or my waist size are really kind of inconsequential to that.

The last time I really put a major effort into moving to a healthier lifestyle, I did great for about 8 weeks. I dropped about 10% of my body fat in those 8 weeks, I felt fantastic, and I started getting all sorts of positive attention in both my personal and professional life.

And that last part, oddly enough, was the problem.

I didn't know how to handle feeling SO great. I sort of missed being tired and taking a nap.  I was upset that people at work were taking me more seriously than when I was a couch potato, because I was the same person inside, wasn't I? And in my personal life, people who wouldn't look at me twice were definitely expressing interest. It felt so shallow, and I felt like who I was inside didn't seem to matter to anyone except me. The exercise tapered off, the junk food started to creep back in, and I just gave up and put the weight back on.

But I'm older now, my sense of self has increased, and I really don't give two figs about whether people treat me differently because I'm going to take my body on the trip from flab to fabulous. If I run into physical limitations that slow me down, then I'll adapt instead of giving up. If I don't achieve my daily goals on Tuesday, I'll try harder to achieve them on Wednesday. I think the only part of the journey I'm not sure how to plan for is the “exercise fatigue” that tends to set in when you get bored with what you're doing. Who knows, maybe I'll save my tax return until the end of March, and if I'm still exercising daily I might just buy myself a bicycle so I can go for rides on the weekends.

With whatever you choose to do, change or not change, small or large, I wish you more than luck. I wish you clarity, determination, and a positive attitude. You do have the willpower to resist all temptation, and to achieve your goals.

Blessings,

Alan

It's that time of year

I marvel at the human capacity for stubbornness, sometimes.  Every year, starting around Thanksgiving we Americans start promising ourselves we won't overeat during the holidays, or that we'll restrain ourselves.

Then, we do what we really want to - eat.  And when the inclement weather hits, we start sitting around more and getting less exercise.  The pressures of holiday shopping kick in, the parties, and then the anguish when we finally put batteries in the scale again and see just how much we've gained.

Then there always seems to be this mad dash between Christmas and New Year's to eat absolutely every bit of "junk" food in the house to get it out of the way before our annual New Year's resolution to take better care of ourselves kicks in for a few weeks.  It's as though for some odd reason we think that the last piece of pie in the house must be disposed of through the toilet instead of going into the trash can without being digested.

We party hearty, with loud promises to ourselves and everyone around us to "be better" starting 1/1 as we nurse hangovers (the real reason we all have the day off from work), and many people really do make positive changes for a while.  We go to support group meetings (that we pay for), we nervously yet determinedly enter the gym and proceed to reacquaint ourselves with muscles that have lain dormant for the last 10 months, and we feel good about ourselves.

About 2-3 weeks of this on average, and we catch a cold.  Or we're too tired, or the weather's bad, or our personal trainer couldn't make it... and we lose our stride.  Before you know it, you're gearing up for Valentine's Day and all the ads for chocolate and diamonds are everywhere.  So we buy chocolate because it's on sale (for a lot less than a diamond) and by the time 2/14 rolls around most people have given up on their diet/exercise plan and very quietly don't mention it to anyone, hoping no one will notice.

If you're one of the fit minority, or you don't see yourself in this cycle of insanity, congratulations!  Just know that a LOT of people follow the crazy emotional cycle listed above, and try not to laugh at us.

So what's really the secret?  It's not a new gadget, it's not a pill, and it's not some temporary change to your eating habits.  It's really just math.  Eat fewer calories than you burn, and your weight will decrease.  At the heart of all of the crazy science and gadgets out there, that's really it.

There is no pill that will make you lose weight in a healthy way.
There is no diet that will have the pounds melt off as you sleep.
There is no exercise gadget that has the magical ability to make you lean and strong if you don't use it.

If there was a single "magic bullet" that worked with no effort, we'd have a nation full of lean and healthy people.  Go to the shopping mall and look around, and you decide for yourself if most people you see are healthy or not.

Free weights, Bowflex, and other home gyms do help you get leaner but only if you use them regularly.

That's it.  Sweat equity works.  If you did nothing but a bunch of jumping jacks and push-ups for 30 minutes every day, you'd probably be in a lot better shape in 2 months than if you just sat on the couch and watched television.

So my friends, don't buy the hype.  Don't buy the pills.  Don't buy the gadgets.  In the upcoming Fitness Crazy season, flip the channel away from the infomercials.  Buy a good pair of shoes and a jump rope,  or a yoga mat and a DVD.  Pick one thing, and stick with it for 3 months and then decide if it's working the way you want it to.  Save all of the money you would have spent on wacky pills, plans, or advice and think about buying a bicycle with it when the weather gets nicer so you can get out and see the world and get some exercise at the same time.

You can only break the cycle by making permanent changes to your habits.  Do the research, and start with something simple and stick with it.  I would wish you luck, but you don't need it, you just need to make good choices.

Pick your goal, and stay focused!

Best wishes,
Alan.