When you embarked on this fitness journey, you never thought it would be this hard. Right?
You didn't know there is so many components that have to be worked to make it all come together. Training, nutrition, rest, stress, sleep, supplementation, repeat. All of these areas should be addressed before you can begin to finally make the sustainable changes you're after.
Those who are only searching for a quick fix often overlook one or several of these areas and never achieve total success. There is always something missing from their success.
For example, they will lose some weight, feel great, yet sleep really poorly. Or they will be really regular with training, but never fully grasp the nutrition side of it all, and not get the desired results from their training.
Without putting emphasis on each individual area, you will always have that little something missing from the process. Resulting in a lower result than expected.
So, when it comes to the process as a whole, it is important to make sure every area is covered, starting from the most important. When you are embarking on a new journey, especially one that may be so far from the norm, it is important to set your nutrition up first, so once you do start training more, the results will begin to show. With proper nutrition, you will achieve results so much faster than training more, but with poor nutrition.
When someone gets fed up or tries to speed the process up, they often miss an important step, resulting in a yo-yo effect of results. They lose some weight, gain it back, lose some more, keep most off, lose some more, put it all back on. Why this happens is simple, they never addressed each area to make sure it could and would remain sustainable long term for lasting results.
What happens when the weight begins to creep on is the vicious cycle of weight loss.
- They jump on the scales, weight hasn't changed.
- They add an extra gym session or class for a few weeks.
- Weight still hasn't changed, or it's gone up slightly.
- They stress more, leading to poor sleep, mood swings, weight gain.
- This stresses them out further and they begin to look for a quick fix. Diet shakes, supplements/pills, starvation. This still doesn't work.
- Then it hits overwhelm and they totally fall off the wagon. - Having a personal health coach/trainer is very important in this stage, as they will be one of the very few people that will be able to help you get out of this rut.
Can you see how easily someone can begin doing "too much", then hit their breaking point and start to creep into the negative with their results? I see it ALL the time!
The most important thing to do right now, if you've hit this stage, is to take about 10 steps back, and start to analyse all the areas from the start that we spoke about.
By now, you'll be quite stressed, sleeping poorly, eating poorly, tired and in a very depleted state with nutrition. A quick few steps to action quickly;
- Go back to basics with nutrition. Make sure you're eating 3-4 meals a day, made up of all the good foods (protein, fats, good carbs, water).
- Meditation - is a great way to help improve sleep, as well as relax the mind to help with mood, clarity in your thinking and daily processing, and go back to your "Why". Why you want to lose weight, get healthier, be stronger etc. Knowing this will go a long way to helping you achieve your goals.
- You time - Take a break, holiday, time away from the gym etc. Step back and remember how good your life actually is and focus on that for a while. Forget about the meal prep, the calorie tracking, the training regime, and just concentrate on all the positives in your life right now.
These steps will go a long way to helping you slow down, to then be able to ramp it back up and achieve some awesome results, faster than ever before... and sustainable ones too!
When you feel the need to do MORE, slow down and think if you could do some things BETTER first. If you can, then do those first. If that doesn't work, make something else BETTER. Keep repeating it until things start improving and results begin to happen naturally.
Once you see these results happen, you'll then know that those few things you changed are what helped cause the positive reaction.
So, most of the time, MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER...BETTER IS BETTER.
Focus on being better than yesterday and you'll improve every single day!