My Answer is Consistency
What worked for me?
Again, I repeat: Consistency.
I swear, having a consistency mindset is so important and will prove to be more successful for you than a perfectionism mindset ever could be.
“Are you doing Keto?”, “what’s your diet?”, “what are you doing to lose weight?”.. I hate these questions. It’s not because I’m uncomfortable talking about it..
I am sometimes but that’s not why I hate the questions.
I hate the questions because it’s not an easy answer to give. It wasn’t Keto, it wasn’t veganism, it wasn’t any particular diet or workout routine. Truthfully, I’m not very good at following rules or routines. (I hate rules — always have!)
Saying things like no cake! or no fried food! or no meat! just was never going to work for me. I know me and I’d want chocolate cake just because I said I couldn’t have it more than if I never made this ridiculous rule in the first place. In fact, I only have 3 “rules” for myself and they are quite simple:
- Increase the quality of your food
- Decrease the quantity of your food
- Move more
That’s it? No… because it’s not about the rules…
It’s about the mindset. These “rules” are my guide to help me make better decisions but my drive to obey them comes from my mindset. Our minds are the most powerful muscle we need to train when it comes to meeting our goals — in all things but for now let’s stick to fitness goals. Our mindset influences our appetites, our cravings, how we respond to our cravings, our motivation to workout, how hard we are willing to push ourselves, how long you can sprint, and whether or not you can power through another rep..
Our brains need to buy into what we’re doing and in order to do that we need to feel successful. That feeling comes in 2 ways. Seeing results, of course.. and it also comes from accomplishing our daily goals — it makes us feel good and gives us a drive to do it again. We can move towards our goals with an array of mindsets but when we’re working towards something we really want we usually fall into an all or nothing or perfectionism mindset and try to rush there as quickly as we can as fast as we can. And to that I say take it easy there turbo…
Perfectionism is a prescription to feel like a failure and give up on your goals very quickly. Let’s bring it back to rules like “no cake”.. I like cake, I like chocolate cake and I eat it because I want it. If you say you’re going to eat salads everyday and never ever eat cake that is not going to work very long. You are going to stop wanting salads and you’re going to want the cake and once you give in (which you will) you’re going to feel that sense of failure. You broke the rule. You failed. Even if it’s a little failure it comes with a bad feeling and that bad feeling works against us when we’re trying to stay motivated to make good decisions.. aka to follow my 3 “rules”.
Now let’s look at what happens if you shift your mindset to favor consistency over perfectionism.. and say your goal is “eat more salads and less cake”. You are still working for same result and your methods are the same but your mindset has changed. Now having a slice of cake isn’t failure. Having a sandwich instead of a salad isn’t failure. The failure would be not eating more salads than you used to so you haven’t failed and the drive to go back to eating salads the next day is still there because you can still meet your goal.
Eating a slice of cake isn’t a failure?! No it’s not. As long as it’s not all the time. Here is a visual for visual learners like me:
Once you “fail” you have that feeling working against your good motivations. You already failed so you might as well have all those other cheats you wanted to have before you “start up” again. In the long run this mindset results in more days where our goals are not met.
With the consistency mindset you only truly fail when you let yourself continuously make decisions that go against your goals. If you never fail you don’t have that mental battle to overcome to get back on course because your mindset never told you that you got off course. You’re still feeling good about meeting your goals and you keep going longer which leads to better long term results.
You don’t have to punish yourself for enjoying something in moderation and I mean come on I’m telling you I lost ~60lbs in one year while eating chocolate cake whenever my little heart truly desired it.
These skills are the building blocks to creating a sustainable healthy lifestyle. Say goodbye to your fad diets to squeeze back into your 3rd date dress and start building the life your want. Let’s build together.
