Raise your hand if learning a new language comes naturally for you or if it was one of your favorite things to study in school.
Now, I want you to raise your hand if you’ve mastered this whole eating healthy and exercising everyday thing.
Of course, you can’t see me and I can’t see you. And my guess is that even if you should have raised your hand, you probably didn’t because we’re not face-to-face and it would be weird to raise your hand out of nowhere.
Well, to give you a heads up, I didn’t raise my hand for either statement. While I loved learning Spanish in school, I definitely didn’t excel at it. I also don’t practice it regularly and can barely get by in a complex conversation. And, as for the whole healthy eating/exercising thing, I haven’t mastered that yet either.
But, after some research, I have figured out why this happens to most of us and how to change things. If you’ll stick with me, I’ll be explaining all of this in today’s article.
What does learning a language have to do with this anyway?
Let’s face it. Learning a language is hard, maybe even impossible for some.
And if you don’t have a chance to practice everyday, you’re bound to forget all of your hard work from college or high school. Sure, you’ll probably remember just enough to get by in a foreign country of your choosing, but, my guess is, that’s about where things end.
Well, I want you to look at healthy eating and exercising in the same light as learning a new language. To put it bluntly, this sh!t is hard. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You have to put in some consistent work every single day if you want any kind of decent results.
But, I think the biggest struggle when it comes to eating healthy and exercising regularly is committing to do so. And I mean like really committing.
If you’re anything like me, you get your momentum going for a few days and then something comes up and your whole plan is derailed. And once it’s off track, wow is it hard to get back on board.
This common situation led me to learn more about what exactly is going on here.
Why is it so hard to commit?
Thanks to this awesome book by fellow freelance writer Linda Formichelli (who also happens to have a nice Italian last name), I understand what the dilemma is.
We have a problem with commitment.
When most of us think about commitment issues, we automatically imagine things like a guy unwilling to commit to moving forward in a relationship. Maybe that’s moving towards marriage or even dating in the first place.
But the reality is that most of us struggle with commitment on a daily basis, especially if it only involves making a promise to ourselves (i.e losing weight, eating healthy).
Why do you think that is?
According to Formichelli, there are a few reasons for this:
- Committing involves change and change makes most of us uncomfortable
- Committing is also scary. What if I fail? What if I put all of this hard work in and I don’t actually lose the weight like I want?
- Committing conjures up self-doubt feelings even if we don’t realize it. Thoughts like “I’ll never be able to lose the extra weight. My body was not made to be skinny.”
- We commit to the wrong things and inevitably fail. And when this happens, we feel even worse about ourselves.
Committing is hard if I haven’t made that clear yet.
Now, I don’t want to scare you off. Just because all of these reasons (or maybe excuses) exist doesn’t mean you’ll never achieve your goals.
Instead, you just have to change a few things in order to get those goals of yours in gear.
Re-evaluate Your Goals
If your goal is to lose ten pounds or carve out some abs by summer then your goal is more aligned with learning a new language: you’ve got a long road ahead.
On this path, you’d need to commit to working out 6 times a week for at least 45 minutes or longer, prep 6 clean meals a day every week, hit at least 10,000 steps each day, clock in 7-8 hours of sleep each night and find supplements that will help your body balance all of this. And treat meals, you only get one of those a week on this plan.
Did I mention that you’ll need to do this whole routine for at least twelve weeks or more?
That’s what real commitment looks like.
Imagine for a second what it takes to train for a marathon or a bodybuilding/bikini contest. Every day is spent preparing clean meals of chicken and broccoli and 5:30 am workouts are a must so you can be in bed by 9 pm to log in enough sleep. Your weekends are also training days and you may only see one rest day off a week. This is the kind of dedication it takes to lose weight and carve out those abs that you see on the cover of magazines.
To be honest, most of us don’t have this in us. I’d argue that most of us really don’t have the time for all of this either.
Yet, we all seem to start with these ridiculous goals when it comes to eating healthy and exercising. We start with the goal of learning a language instead of something more realistic like showing up to our first class.
Commit to Things Within Your Control
As I mentioned in this article, you have to throw away the whole lose 10lbs goal. To get to that point, you need to do more than just exercising and eating healthy. You’d have to cut out wine after work, desserts after dinner, those carb-heavy meals because you had a crappy day, and happy hours each week with your coworkers to name a few.
Plus, even if you did change all of this, you may still find that your body is holding onto those last few pounds thanks to imbalances in hormones and things like that which means losing those last ten pounds may not even be within your control given the twelve week time frame I suggested.
Instead, you need to shift your focus to committing to things that are within your control. Goals like these include:
- Working out for 30-45 minutes for 5-6 days/week
- Making a healthy breakfast each morning
- Preparing an afternoon snack ahead of time so you don’t hit that 3-4pm energy slump
- Making a smoothie a day
- Walking at least 10,000 steps or more
- Preparing lunch or dinner yourself for at least 4-5 days/week
- Powering off all electronics an hour before bed so you can get a good night’s rest
- No caffeine after 2pm
Since these goals are much more attainable and within your control, you’ll feel on top of the world each time you reach your goal.
You probably noticed that these goals are more like action steps instead of end goals like lose ten pounds. Yet, these tiny steps are what’s going to get you the results that you want.
Now, so you don’t complicate things, choose one attainable goal per month and focus on making this a habit (i.e. keep repeating this goal each day until it becomes second nature). Then, once you’ve transformed this goal into a routine that you don’t have to think twice about, add another attainable goal to your arsenal and keep repeating the process.
As these tiny goals start to add up, the weight will soon fall off and you’ll start living healthier in no time.
If creating a habit in the first place is where you’re struggling, don’t fret. I had this problem too and am in the process of finishing another helpful book that I can’t wait to share with you. Be on the lookout for another article coming soon with tips on how to tackle this aspect too.
Speaking of which, Linda’s book on committing is phenomenal and I encourage you to check out a sample if you’d like to learn more about holding true to your commitments. She does a much better job of explaining this concept than I could ever do.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s article! If you know someone who could use these tips, please feel free to share this post with them. And, if you want to stay in the loop and be notified whenever a new post is live, sign up for my free newsletter and you’ll never miss a beat!