What are the two things that keep us from hitting our fitness, weight loss, or any goals we want to achieve? And what I see regularly are 1) Accountability, and 2) Consistency! I hear it repeatedly, and so many people struggle with this right here. It’s their Achilles heel… the thorn in their side, the pain in their back! And many people make it so challenging when it comes to these two things. They make it hard to hit their goals because they are either overthinking what they need to do or unwilling to give up on something that just isn’t working for them. Does any of this ring a bell? Let’s take a deeper dive into accountability and consistency and I’ll show you how simple it is to incorporate both of those things into your life to help you reach your goals!
Let’s define these, shall we!?
Consistency: These are the things I can do regularly at 80%! I heard someone say, “One of the ways I had to get out of my own way was I had to go for the B-. All of us want to go for the A+ but we have to go for that B-!” When it comes to life, we can’t nail it on the first try and that’s what people are always trying to do! The first place I see people always getting tripped up is being consistent!
Being consistent has all these rules, or so we think, and people always think we MUST do something… But if we take a step back and say why we always have so many stops and starts is because we’re trying to do all the things. But we’re not trying to figure out how we can still be consistent with our health when we have a life! All of us have life, we have jobs, we have families, and we have other obligations that we try to get going. So the thing that keeps us from getting our goals, keeping our goals, keeping the results that we want, is that we don’t have consistency!
So you know what that means right?? We have to stop following the rules!
Stop seeking perfection! We are not going to be perfect! We have to lower our expectations… because we expect way freaking too much!! We need to start coming up with realistic expectations. Realistic expectations on how long it is going to take us to lose weight. Realistic expectations of how we work and how our bodies work. We need to be able to come up with our “non-squishy” goals. Like.. “Get healthy” for example. That’s a big word, it encompasses a lot within it. So… define the word healthy for you. If I say healthy, what am I working towards? Is this getting me to where I want to go? Is this working for me?
We need to find a place that says, “This is what consistency looks like for me.” What is it you can do? Keep it easy and simple. Let’s focus on the things that are going to move the dial! That is going to GIVE YOU your results! Stop running around chasing all these things. It’s just far too much! Because when you are chasing multiple things, it makes it pretty dang hard to see the results. So, we want you to have the least amount of tasks as possible. 1-3 is a great place to start and write it down! “Based on my season…. In the next 90 days, what are 1-3 things I can focus on? This will be my focus for the next 90 days.” This is where we get to that consistency thing ladies!!!
Accountability: Everyone is accountable to someone else… You know you better than anybody else in the world! So here is where you really have to own your stuff! It can’t be everyone else’s fault. We have to start to own why we are not taking the action. Motivation comes from action, the more actions I take the better I feel about it. And the better I feel I am going to be more motivated!
Arthur Ashe said, “Start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can.”
This quote brings me to a great 3 step process here!
Step 1: You have to be aware. This is like a food log for example. This log is so you can be accountable for what you are putting in your mouth. This log is so you can see what it is you are eating and if it will get you toward your goals.
Step 2: Feedback. How can I give you feedback if I don’t know what you are eating… Are we mindlessly eating? What did you eat last week? Take an assessment of what is actually happening. Then say, “Okay, based on where you are, what can I do now?” How can we adjust your foods, adding or taking out? All of these things matter, and we need feedback to be able to adjust.
Step 3: Do what you can. Like the Arthur Ashe quote. Some of us need to slow down and press the pause button. And this is where you want to do this. Slow down… The way I get to my goals is the way I keep my goals! If I get to them slowly and steadily, I am going to keep them!
Be honest with yourself! What trips you up? No matter what you do, what is the one thing that causes you to stumble over your feet? Time? Kids? Aging parents? Work? What always trips you up? This is how working with a coach will help because we can brainstorm ways to help navigate these trip-ups. If, then scenarios – pause and brainstorm what trips you up and how you can use these IF-THEN scenarios to navigate those trip-ups.
And ladies…. Give ourselves GRACE! We will mess up and it’s ok! But we will learn from this! Have the mindset that we have to be open to other things. We need to break free of our rigid mindset and be open to the possibilities of it looking different. You are mortal! You can only do what you can do. So be grateful for all the things your body does and what it has done for you!
As a coach, my goal is to teach you that daily accountability. The weight doesn’t come overnight, it is that our habits were always a few steps behind our body, and we just didn’t notice until we put on a pair of pants and were like, “Woah they don’t fit the way I want them to!” We have all been there! It is ok! But as a coach, my goal is to help you come up with a game plan. And be specific… you can’t say I want to be healthy or I want to lose weight, what does it mean? Break it down! Be specific. What does healthy look like to you so you can develop goals to chip away at your definition of healthy?
My goal is not only to work with you to support you but also to work with you to brainstorm strategies. I see different things and talk to a lot of people, and a lot of the time my clients teach me things! They teach me things about new foods or show me things or a scenario they tried that works! So I do a lot of group coaching calls because I know that there is someone out there that has had the same challenge and maybe tried something different that I didn’t think of and it worked!
As we work together I work with you to understand what is actually tripping you up and moving the ball forward. It could be these little things that you think are big because you are in it, but we need to start using DATA and not DRAMA! You’re emotionally connected to that drama, to that problem, but as a third party, I can come in and take it from another angle and say, “This is what I am seeing and how can we use some of the data around it and not the emotions”
Where is that resistance lying?
Many of us think it’s discipline. But it’s the discipline to learn new tricks. Where are we getting stuck? Am I holding resistance to not switching up what we are doing? Why are we so resistant to change if what we are doing is not getting us what we want?
Finally.. Look at the roadblocks.
By doing this, we can finally get to the point of releasing old stories and old mindsets. Then we can say I want it to be easy! I know this is how much time I have to devote to the gym. I know this is how much mental effort I want to devote to my food. These are the 3 things that I know if I do them every day I am working towards my health! I know that if I get into this type of workout, I feel really good and I don’t resent the workout.
Why am I not getting my results? It’s coming down to 2 things. I am not consistent! I am chasing things that are challenging for me to be consistent. So I am asking you to give yourself 90 days. What are 1-3 things that you can do consistently? And it’s not something you are doing right now. This is what we need to do. Those are the types of things we have to get into. And we are not accountable. We have to be accountable to do these things on a regular basis that will make us feel “healthy”.
Then we build and build and build. And we end up building a foundation for a house that even the big bad wolf can’t blow down!!!!
LINKS
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