As I suspected, over the last few days I have seen it all. Adverts proclaiming, “Lose a stone in the next month”, “Weight loss secrets” or “How to get the body of your dreams before summer”.
The New Year is naturally a time when we start to look at how to achieve new goals, and for so many women this amounts to weight loss.
It can be hard not to fall for these apparent quick-fix solutions, and indeed the big name diet clubs and on-line plans would be out of business if people didn’t go for it in their tens of thousands.
Yet surely, if their methods worked, then subscriber numbers would fall and not continue to rise?
Why weight loss plans rarely work
How many people do you know who have gone around and around in circles with weight loss, and maybe even you have been here before?
Personally I am not a big believer in the New Year resolution hype.
I completely understand the desire to lose weight and finally get in shape, but for the type of women I specialise in working with at Merlin Fitness (40+ ladies with between one and five stone to lose) many of the superficial goals which supposed fitness experts proclaim are neither realistic nor indeed achievable.
We are all drawn towards the ideal. When we look at photographs in magazines of models with their tight tummies and pert backsides, it is easy to forget that usually these are women who make a living out of looking that way (and that is if you believe they have not been airbrushed).
For the majority of us, we have busy lives. What may have been possible in our 20s or even early 30s often isn’t achievable any more, and by thinking that we are chasing that goal we are setting ourselves up for failure and heartache.
Am I saying that it can’t be done? No. It can, but for the majority of us the sacrifice which it would take to make it a reality simply isn’t worth it.
The chances are high that we have many more obligations in life than those perfect models. Families, children, ageing parents, full-time work, a social life…..I could go on.
With those things our current reality, there has to come a time that we accept that we probably will not regain the body shape we had all those years ago.
I am definitely not saying that we should not set ourselves goals and strive to be better than we are now, but that we also need to make allowances for what is possible within the bounds of our current lifestyle.
Perhaps we could all have that incredible six-pack tummy or the most amazingly toned and cellulite free hips, but only if we were prepared to spend several hours every day in the gym, living on a highly disciplined nutritional plan (no more nights out or sneaky chocolate bars), and leading a stress-free existence with at least eight hours of sleep every night.
Is that honestly achievable by you?
If it is, and it is your goal, then I say go for it. For the rest of us, we need to slightly moderate our expectations of ourselves and learn to be kind. Beating ourselves up because we can’t achieve that ideal should not be the aim.
What does your self-talk say about you?
Spend some time today listening to the self-talk in your head, and noting how much of it is positive or negative. It’s hardly surprising that so few women truly feel good about themselves or their body shape if you listen to what goes on in your head.
Already today I have thrown a pair of jeans back in the wardrobe because having tried them on I rationalised that they made my saddlebags look even bigger, I stared at my complexion in the bathroom mirror and admonished myself for not keeping up with a skin care regime, and having poked at my bigger than normal belly, felt frustrated at myself for missing so many workouts over the festive season, when in reality I really haven’t been well.
How much healthier it would have been had I to accept this is the body I am living in and it serves me well. Yes, it isn’t perfect and honestly many aspects could be improved, but it has carried me safely through 43 years of life, with its experiences, challenges, happiness, sadness, ups and downs.
So my hope for you today is that you stop chasing those superficial goals, and to accept once and for all you probably will never have that perfect body which you see in the magazines. All of those quick fix detoxes and short term diets are extremely unlikely to leave you anything other than lighter in the pocket and feeling more dissatisfied with what you see in the mirror.
Love yourself, or at least accept yourself, for the amazing individual that you are!
Use this New Year to take an honest evaluation of the lifestyle changes which you think you can make, and more importantly sustain, but understand that your current body is very much a reflection of your life so far, and as such is probably not going to be perfect.
So here is my advice, for what it’s worth…..which I hope is quite a lot 😉
1. Don’t fall for any of the short term fads – on-line ‘detox’ diets, 21-day weight loss plans, or get ripped in x-weeks sales hype. Instead, find yourself a reputable trainer who can sit down with you to work out where you are now and how you safely get where you want to be, taking into account your current lifestyle, exercise history, pre-existing injuries or weaknesses etc.
2. Don’t expect that you will fix everything overnight. The majority of resolutions fail because people set themselves a completely unachievable set of do’s and don’ts, which no sane person could ever expect to stick to. Research shows that if you change one big thing about your current eating or exercise habits, then you have an 80% chance of sticking with it. Change two things simultaneously and your success rate will fall to about 30%, and change three or more things and you are pretty much guaranteed failure. Yet all too many people begin with the idea that they are going to join a gym, go to classes 5 times per week, stop eating chocolate and junk food, swap their alcohol intake for water, start juicing, blah, blah, blah. Is it really any surprise that within a few weeks most people have given up? If it has taken you several years to gain excess weight, then it stands to reason that it could take you the same number of years to reverse the process!
3. Don’t try to go it alone. Even if you can’t justify the cost of a personal trainer, at least find yourself some form of friendly support. The lanes around my house are currently filled with runners, all sporting their super new shoes and outfits. At my nearest big box gym, the treadmills and cross trainers are filled every morning and evening by eager new recruits, all expecting an instant transformation. What most of us really need is an accountability buddy, be that a friend or a trainer, someone who is going to do their best to keep us on track. Left to our own devices, the chances are that we will soon get bored, and ultimately find ourselves back sitting on the couch stuffing biscuits rather than sticking to our goals.
4. Don’t go for a ‘one size fits all’ plan. You are an individual, and as such need to devise your own plan (following successful principals of course) which is tailored to your nutritional likes and dislikes, not something from a magazine which dictates exactly what to eat and when. The only person who should ever give you a detailed nutritional plan is a certified dietitian with a degree and advanced qualifications. I am saddened by how many people I see calling themselves nutrition ‘experts’, when all they have done is a weekend course or taken a qualification from the internet. This is particularly true of some of the diet supplement promoters and boot camp trainers I hear about. Experienced personal trainers can definitely be a guide and have incredible knowledge about eating for fat-loss, muscle gain and body shape change, but they should never give you a prescription for exactly what to eat and when to eat it – it is outside of their professional boundaries!
5. Don’t expect to ‘transform’ yourself, at least within the short term. Realistically, you won’t see any significant changes in your body shape or fitness levels for at least a few months. Why do you think that so many people lose heart when they don’t quickly see the changes which they have been looking for? It may be an extreme example, but think about an Olympic track athlete, who expects to spend many years looking for just a few seconds improvement in their sprint time. They understand that change take takes patience and commitment, and that the process can’t be hurried. They are constantly striving to put together blocks of training, and at times even accepting that they will go backwards in order to eventually reach their goal.
6. Don’t expect that it will be an easy road. Change is hard, often very hard. Our bodies and minds are very well programmed to keep up exactly where we are now. Our values and beliefs define everything about how we act, and that in turn sets the parameters for what we can achieve. Try to move away from those, and very often we find ourselves being pulled back into old habits (otherwise known as self-sabotage). For a change to be sustained, we have to associate more ‘pain’ to our current situation than the ‘pleasure’ we derive from our current behaviour. Believe me, I find the idea of eating chocolate bars, pizza and crisps incredibly attractive, but I have rationalised that if I eat exactly what I want every time I see it, then before long I will be unhealthy and overweight. Similarly, I get up at 5:45am several mornings each week, just so I can get in a workout before work, when honestly I would like to lie in bed for another few hours. It is just that for me the pain of being so unfit that I can’t enjoy my current quality of life is enough for me to make that sacrifice. Spend some time truly evaluating why you want to reach your goals, so that when the going gets tough you have some deep and meaningful answers to hold on to.
Hopefully you got some useful nuggets of motivation from that. Remember that fitness is a journey and not a destination. We are not either fit or unfit, but somewhere in that continuum for all of our life. No matter where you are today or where you have been, strive simply to keep moving forwards.
