First up, if you haven’t already, please come and join my new Facebook Group – it’s full of practical advice and ideas to think about when working on your health and fitness.
We often hold ourselves to very high standards when it comes to our diet and exercise routines.
If we’re not seeing what we want to see – or if we’re not seeing it as quickly as we would like – we often throw in the towel and quit.
We end up with a bit of an ‘all or nothing’ approach, which can look a bit like yo-yo dieting or just simply inconsistency in following your plans while your interest rises and falls depending on where you feel in comparison to your goals.
A good strategy to help maintain your consistency is to look at your consistent minimum.
This is a phrase I first heard used in relation to weightlifting, and it means that while you might not always be reaching new highs, the lowest performance you are consistently able to produce is improving.
I think we can take this idea of the consistent minimum and use it to help stay on course when progress is feeling hard and slow. Here are some examples:
Let’s say your ultimate goal is to be in a regular exercise routine. To you, that means 3 workouts a week. Your starting point was zero. Now, you’re getting 2 workouts most weeks and 3 sometimes…. That is not failing – that is great progress!
How about if your goal is to get 10,000 steps a day. Your starting point was 2,000 and now you’re getting about 6,000….. Again, that is not failing. You’re consistently able to do more than you could at the start. You are making progress!
Let’s say your nutrition goal is to cook three meals a day from scratch. Your starting point was cooking one meal a day yourself, and now you manage to cook two meals a day several times a week. Of course, there’s more work to do – but throwing the towel in and going back to your old habits is not going to help. Your consistent minimum has improved, so keep on making progress!
So, when the going gets tough, remember to take a look back at how far you’ve come – really allow yourself to notice the changes.
Be proud of yourself, even if you’re not where you’d like to be yet, and make sure to find positives in how far you have come so far.
Remember, if you haven’t already, please come and join my new Facebook group.