Slow and steady

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/10/2020 (1826 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You may feel like you took a step back over Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe you gained a few pounds. Or you’re down about how things might not be going fast enough this year, as a whole.

So trust me when I say you must trust the process, and never give up on what’s important. Because success is mostly just a matter of not giving up.

One meal, one workout, one walk at a time. That’s how change happens. So cut yourself some slack and get back on the horse.

And I’ve got a message that’s tied into gratitude today, being that Thanksgiving just came and went. Yes, it will help you lose weight if that’s your goal.

But let me come clean with you first. It’s never enough. You think you’ll be happy when you reach a certain weight and look a certain way, but believe me you’ll want more once you get there.

We’re wired to always consider what’s next before stopping to think about how far we’ve come or how we can make the best of our current situation.

Your happiness should be tied to how grateful you feel on the daily, because happiness is an inside job.

Yes, I know, you’ve heard that before. But I’m going to share a simple exercise to help you implement gratitude in your life.

To flex your gratitude muscle, use this quick morning routine I picked up from Bedros Keuilian, the founder and CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp:

Think of three people you’re grateful for. Send a text saying you’re grateful for them. That’s it. It’ll take you a minute and nothing more.

When you do that you will enjoy the life you have now, and you’ll appreciate the bounty coming your way in better health and wealth because you’ll manifest success through your positive attitude and actions.

How to stop eating your feelings

I had a client say, “Help me separate eating from feeling. I can be rolling along and then something triggers me and my first reaction is to eat my feelings.”

It’s so entrenched it’s automatic. You’re not alone if you struggle with this. First, you sense an external cue; say, your boss stresses you out at work.

Next comes the routine, meaning the activity you’re used to performing when faced with this particular cue. You march into the lunchroom and inhale a doughnut.

Finally, you get a reward: a feeling of accomplishment, in this case, a rush of dopamine from the sugary delight. Your overall brain activity increases again as your brain registers the successful completion of the habit and reinforces the link between the cue and routine.

In a perfect world, instead of suppressing the desire for the doughnut, you’d go for a five-minute walk outside instead.

As you know, choosing the doughnut too often over time, coupled with too little exercise and other lifestyle factors, leads to weight gain.

After gaining weight, you decide you need to do something and look for a solution.

Unfortunately, after either not seeing results fast enough or falling off the wagon and gaining the weight back, you feel another strong negative emotion such as frustration or hopelessness and start the cycle over again.

To summarize this negative feedback loop:

• You feel a negative emotional trigger.

• You eat junk food in response.

• You (eventually) gain weight, to the point you try to undo the damage with a diet or program of some sort.

• You fail to stick to the program, or after dropping some weight, you don’t stick with it and eventually gain the weight back.

From these past failures, you might come up with a script like:

“I tried Weight Watchers, but it was missing the exercise component. Instead, I need something that helps me ‘tone and tighten’ and not have me rely solely on calorie counting.”

Or, “I tried CrossFit, but I couldn’t fit the workouts into my schedule and I was wiped out after every class. I got so hungry I overate and made little progress.

Or, “I tried a multi-level marketing plan and those little packaged meals and repetitive shakes aren’t going to work for me. I need to eat real food and have flexibility to choose.”

Right or wrong, user error aside, they didn’t work for you. But you’re resilient for continuing to make the effort, so give yourself credit for that.

But the truth is you need to get out of the mentality of trying to lose the weight as fast as possible so you can go back to the way you lived before. That’s not how it works. It must be a sustainable. You know the cliché — make it a lifestyle change.

The truth is, if you want to maintain the progress you’ve made during a diet, you have to keep doing the same things that led you to make progress, albeit with a bit more flexibility (maintenance is a different ball game than the initial weight-loss phase).

You can’t build good habits for a few months, lose some weight and then throw all of that stuff away.

This is the big, dirty secret to fitness success — there is no going back to eating the way you did when the weight came on or the weight will come back on.

Regularly exercising today means it becomes second nature tomorrow.

Having a prepared lunch instead of snacking all day means it becomes second-nature tomorrow.

None of this is too painful or requires a ton of willpower when it becomes second nature, it’s just part of your lifestyle.

Because the truth is, you can’t be a fit, healthy person with the habits of someone who isn’t.

So, how do you stay in the fight for life? You can’t focus on how long it’s going to take, especially if you have a big hill to climb. Sure, focus on measureable signs of progress that include weight and measurements.

But you must focus on little milestones and non-scale victories to help you stick it out. Try to create a second separate set of goals to focus on, such as: having more energy and confidence; more productivity at work; improving health markers such as blood pressure and blood sugar; seeing mental-health benefits; and so on.

When we feel like our plan is benefiting our life, we do it even when we don’t see measureable progress right away. The alternative is to fixate on your long-term goal and scale weight in isolation, which inevitably will frustrate you at times.

That’s why I position my coaching around some simple rules:

• Less is more: 30-minute workouts for most. That’s plenty.

• Slower, not faster. True fat loss happens gradually. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast (compared to the alternative of rapid loss that leads to crashing and burning, rinse and repeat).

• You don’t have to do it alone. Connection with others is vital. Accountability is a must.

• Nutrition over exercise. But both have a role to play.

• Focus on non-scale victories rather than being a slave to the scale.

• Mindset over diet. The work between the ears is the most critical piece.

When you’ve been collecting the wrong kind of compound interest (weight gain over months and years) for a while, it takes time to undo that damage. You’ll need to work a lot harder and longer than someone who has just a few pounds to lose.

You must accept struggles, setbacks, discomfort, delayed gratification and failure as part of the process. You can’t have success without struggle.

That would be like having kids and not expecting any rough nights of sleep. But kids are worth the struggle, and getting healthy and fit is worth it, too.

You owe it to your future self and those you care about to see it through next time.

Mitch Calvert is a Winnipeg-based fitness coach for men and women like his former self. Heavy set in his 20s, he lost 60 pounds and now helps clients find their spark and lose the weight for life. Need help reaching your fitness goals before the end of the year? Grab a free diet guide at mitchcalvert.com or email him directly at mitch@mitchcalvert.com if interested in losing direct mentorship to lose two pant sizes, boost immunity and increase productivity in his next Drop 2 Sizes challenge.