In my 20 plus years of fitness training, I have helped countless people maximize their overall health, performance, and body composition faster than ever before.
Nobody knows better how to get in shape than bodybuilders. I spent 13 years as a competitive bodybuilder and currently work with some of the top professional fitness and figure competitors in the world.
At the professional level, it’s a business. If you are not in shape, you don’t make money.
If you don’t make money, then you better go find something else to do.
Getting in shape is no different for them than it is for the rest of us.One of the biggest areas in which people misstep and don’t reach their fitness goals is due to their lack of setting a concrete goal.
Put bluntly, I know how to help people lose ugly, unwanted body fat faster than most people can fathom.
I have done the countless hours of research and trial and error and I have had hundreds of people as real world case studies to prove that our system flat out works.
But, today I am going to share something more powerful; something that must be set in place before you can even start to think about following a fitness program.
So what is it?
What do you think the real secret behind my client success is? Well, if your answer was my aforementioned training system, then your answer is wrong. Yep, it’s an incredible program, but unfortunately it’s useless if someone is unwilling to start it AND stick to it, right?
So, it appears that the most important component of changing your body is finding the motivation to achieve your goals, and that’s the main focus of this article today.
Before I get into this goal setting process, I just need to get something off of my chest.
I know a lot of people think goal setting is just a cheesy, useless thing. Unfortunately, these people just don’t get it and frankly if you are one of those people, please do us both a favor and stop reading this article and go buy another useless weight loss book or pill because I simply cannot do anything for you.
I can only help people who want to learn. I simply cannot help people who already think they know it all and think they are too good to take some time to figure out what the heck it is that they actually want to accomplish.
The bottom line is that the most successful people out there, and I mean not just weight loss success, I am talking business, lifestyle, etc., are shamelessly goal driven. They know exactly why they want to do something and harness that super motivation to figure out what and by when they want to go about accomplishing that. Furthermore, they plan and prepare for every possible roadblock they will encounter in their path to success. This is what I want to discuss today, so let’s get to it!
Step One- The Why: Why do you want to do this?
This is where it’s time to get real. In almost every initial telephone consult I do, when I ask why they have contacted me today, here is the typical blanket response that I first hear:
“Well, I just want to get healthy and lose weight I guess.”
Nope, I don’t buy it.Sure, I know they want to lose weight and be healthy, I mean who doesn’t, but really WHY do they want to do this? I mean, what is it that’s going to get them up at 5 am to get their morning workouts in or take a couple of hours on Sunday to plan and prepare their meals for the upcoming week? It sure isn’t “being healthy” because for some reason this just isn’t a very powerful motivator for most people (though it should be).
Let’s face it: everybody, including YOU, wants to look better in his or her bathing suit.
Stop giggling, you know it’s true and frankly that’s okay because the desire to improve one’s appearance is probably the most powerful motivator that there is.So, after a little digging, I find out the real reason why they want to do this; I find their past or pain and then establish their current and future ambitions. Some people want to be able to mow the lawn in the summer with their shirt off and not feel self-conscious.
Others want to get back into their favorite pair of pants that they haven’t been able to get one leg into for the last five years. Then there are those who want to look and feel more attractive to ignite some passion back into their relationships and/or put forth their best image at work. And of course, my personal favorite is preparing for big events that have built in deadlines.
Wanting to get as lean and tight as possible to rock that dream bathing suit in Argentina, or get off the plane in Texas when visiting family you haven’t seen in two years to blow them away with your new body, or being a classic beauty in your wedding dress on the big day, it all works!
This is the stuff that gets people jacked up and ready to commit to making some real changes. How do I know? Well, I just shared with you verbatim the exact “WHY’S” of some of my own clients.
So, the first thing you have to figure out is your personal WHY. To make this even simpler for you, just answer this question: what are your physical dreams? Once you establish this, everything else is easy.
Step Two- The What and When: What do you want to accomplish and when?So we already figured out the obvious: you want to look better (and feel better)! So, now we need to establish what objective goal(s) need to be accomplished in order to realize this subjective dream.
Well, from a logistics standpoint and keeping things as cost effective as possible, there are three major ways I track “look better” progress with my clients, in order of least important to most important:
1.) Using The Scale: This is by far the least important goal, but it gives a number that’s worth tracking. Though body fat percentage would be a much better method of tracking progress, it is simply too inaccurate on a small scale and too costly on a large scale.
The key is to taking your initial weight before you start and then not weighing more than every 2 weeks. I have found most people to do better with tracking their weight every month. There are simply too many variables for controlling your body weight and the natural fluctuations based on diet (and for women, their menstrual cycle), means the less frequently you do this the better.
If the scale is just too de-motivating for you in general, then just skip this one altogether if you must, because the next two markers are far more important.
2.) Dress/Pant Size: This is probably the most simple and effective unused method of tracking whether or not you look better. I think it’s safe to say that if you are dropping dress and/or pant sizes that you will be looking better, right?
Your best bet is to also select one dress or one pair of pants that you really want to get into since that is the true end goal in mind. For those of you would want to argue that every outfitter has different sizes, well that’s a mute point if you use the same pant or dress size to track.
There’s nothing more powerful than being able to literally feel yourself comfortably get into clothes that use almost rip when you put on.
3.) Digital Pictures: Pictures don’t lie, that’s the bottom line. If you want to look better, what better way is there to assess this than pictures? I cannot begin to tell you how important this is. Taking a before picture is essentially you telling the whole world that you are ready to change and that you are ready to do whatever it takes to make those changes.
The key is to take pictures wearing exactly what you want to look your best in. Ouch! Maybe it’s taking pictures of you in the dress or pair of pants that you are using to track your dress or pant size. Or maybe it’s a sleeveless shirt and tank top that you want to wear during the summer.
And if you want to see your abs, then you best believe that you need to take pictures of your abs to track how much more definition you get. Take a front, side, and rear view picture and be sure to note the exact conditions in which the picture was taken (lighting, distance from camera, time of day/week, etc.) to be as accurate as possible in your assessment. The clients whom I’ve transformed that failed to take before pictures in the past have nothing but regret about it.
Your before pictures will become your trophy and they are an absolute must if you really are serious about getting results that count.
Step Three- Planning and Preparing for Roadblocks: What are the big obstacles that will prevent you from having the success you desire? What’s contributed most to past failures?
Now that we know what you want to accomplish, it’s time to plan and prepare for any obstacles that might get in your way of getting the job done based on your own personal schedule.
In general, the number one thing I hear is that people are too busy and tired and don’t have enough time to get their workouts in or make their meals. Well, I don’t care how busy you think you are, there is always hidden time throughout the day and week that can be freed up if your re-prioritize.
Again, think back to why you wanted to do this in the first place and then examine what’s most important to you. Make your workouts and your meal times just like work appointments. Either you make the appointment or you don’t. And if you want to keep your job (or get your dream body) then you better make that appointment.
Another big obstacle is alcohol. People like to drink and unfortunately alcohol is about as detrimental to burning fat as it gets. Again, what’s more important to you, looking sexy or getting hammered. The choice is yours. Remember, once you achieve your goal(s), alcohol can be added back in with moderation. But know this, lean people just don’t get wasted unless they are genetic freaks.
Low to zero alcohol consumption is needed if you want to look your best year round and that’s a fact.
Lastly, many people deal with boredom by doing what is called emotional eating. Boredom eating means just that, eating to fill up dead time when you have nothing better to do. The best way to deal with this is, you guessed it, to do something! Find an active hobby to keep your mind off of eating when boredom strikes and you can beat this trend.
Emotional eating describes the use of food to cope with stress or to reward for accomplishment. Food is not unlike drugs or alcohol in this regard, it can be very addictive. There is no quick fix for emotional eating other than avoiding trigger situations (bars, parties, etc.) and trigger foods (starches, sugars, fast food, etc.) in the short term to break bad habits.
At the end of the day, whether your roadblocks are very individual or if they fall in line with the general roadblocks our clients encounter on a regular basis, the key is to be honest about them and to plan and prepare for them. And that’s where social support and accountability come into play.
The clients who have had the most success with us have undergone their transformation with the support of other friends or family members. This is so critical, especially since most of the poor food and drinking choices that sabotage one’s progress occur on the weekend, when most people hang out with their friend and family. If they are committed with you and your goal to get fit and look better, you can put yourself in a much better position to realize the success your desire and deserve.
The last thing anybody needs is sabotage or peer pressure from those closest to you, so get them on board and get them on board early.
