As evidenced by the 3 month lag in blog posts about my so-called fitness plan, I became part of my own study in what does and does not help with committing to things that are good for us (sample size: 1, plus some research and my own assumptions/projections onto the general population).
I began my summer of "Finding Fitness Finesse" by inquiring about and signing up for various 1-class or several-day gym trials. Most of these required my signing up online, setting up an in person meeting, or even paying a small fee. Once this portion of my summer of exercise was over and my gym trials were spanning longer amounts of time, required no sign up, required no in person contact, or required no fee, I saw a sharp drop in my attendance and in my motivation (the chicken or the egg, huh?). I guess you could say I lost my Fitness Finesse.
I made my fair share of excuses ranging from: "I've had an increase in other activities, therefore, I don't have time", "I'm too crabby", and "I'm too tired", to "fill in the blank is more important right now".
All of those were really just lies I told myself because I lost accountability and motivation. This happens to a lot of people in various activities, I assume, especially when other life excuses do come up. Sadly, we lie to ourselves and think our excuses are about self-care, but we end up losing in the long-run when we don't challenge ourselves to find balance and keep discipline. I realized in the last month or two just how much crummier I actually felt when I was exercising less consistently, which was the ultimate motivator for me to figure out what I needed to do to "reboot" my booty kicking. I noticed feeling worse physically, mentally AND emotionally, which didn't do me any good even if I was getting more sleep or more fill in the blank. I was lacking an outlet that was pretty important for me in a busy week. I felt uncomfortable, and even though my physical changes may not have been noticeable enough to a bystander, I could feel and see a difference. I also felt pretty down on myself everyday that I told myself I'd go to the gym and didn't... yet, I KEPT doing that. And why?? Well, I was lacking these important steps:
1) Create accountability
The year I had a gym right down the road from work and three of my good friends (two were coworkers) all had memberships there, was the year I was in the best shape I have ever been in. Why? Because I was being held accountable without even realizing it. Being checked in with, I knew I had someone else that wanted to know if I was doing what I was saying, if I was making progress, if I was true to my word; both because they were interested in my well-being and because they wanted a gym buddy just as much as I did. We challenged and encouraged each other and had fun while doing it. Accountability creates external and internal responsibility. Peer pressure, perhaps, but in a good way.
What helps with adding accountability? Make your goal public. Tell a coworker, post on Instagram, or better yet, write a blog about it. I was certainly on top of things when I first started the blog and I knew I had a few friends and family members reading. (To be honest, that was a large reason for why I started the blog, to hold myself accountable). The longer I went without a blog post, the easier it became to feel as if no one was paying attention and the easier it became to skimp on my workouts.
Tell a friend. If I tell my friend I am writing a blog and she asks about it, I feel pretty unsuccessful when she asks and I have no results to talk about or show. If I make plans with a friend to go to the gym every Thursday morning, and I do not show up, I feel like I not only failed myself, but my friend. That feels pretty cruddy, so I am much more likely to follow up on this plan if I make it with someone else. The big KEY here is is TELLING someone who we know will hold us to it. We don't like letting friends down, and having friends in on our goals can also be incredibly encouraging!
If you don't find accountability in friends, try THERAPY! I have learned this both as therapist, and in going to see a therapist for myself. If I set a goal in therapy, I am much more likely to engage in efforts to reach this goal.
Here is a person that I am literally PAYING to hold me accountable, and if I find nothing else in therapy, this part of it alone is worth it at times. (I do find more value in therapy, though, btw). I have also noticed this with MOST clients that I work with. When they mention something they are struggling with or trying out, and I begin to challenge them or bring it up regularly, they start to recognize that I'm going to continue to bring this up and that their answer is either going to be a resounding "YES I did this!" or some excuse or disappointed no. Those that don't seem to be following up on things we talk about outside of therapy, may need a clearer or more attainable goal, or I find that the things we are talking about are not truly the things they are wanting to change. This takes time to identify, obviously. It also may be that I am not the right fit as a therapist for this person. If you are seeing a therapist and don't feel motivated by their check-ins, it may be time to find a therapist who you do feel accountable with!
SCHEDULES hold us accountable. If I tell myself I will go to the gym this weekend, I usually find every excuse under the sun to postpone this action. "I will go after I finish this episode. I better eat first so I have enough energy. Oh, my husband just got home, we should spend time together, I will go tomorrow... etc. etc." If put it in my schedule "I'm going to the 4:30 Body sculpt class" or better yet, schedule time with the gym, or a trainer who expects me to be there, you bet your booty, I will be there. This is especially true if i get into a regular routine. If I know that every Tuesday at 4:30 I have a gym class, I will be more likely to keep this time sacred and less likely to make excuses or let things get in the way of me making this class. "Sorry, friend, I cannot get drinks after work, I have a gym class, but I could meet you afterwards!" vs. my typical response when I don't have it scheduled or it's not routine, "Sure, let's meet for drinks, I can go to the gym tomorrow."
Money, as sad as it sounds, also holds us accountable. I will go as far as saying investments hold us accountable. If I invest money into a class, I am way more likely to make it, as I discovered this summer. My free trials, were much easier for me to reschedule and I will be honest and admit that I not even once missed or rescheduled a trial or class I payed for, but I did miss a number of days and classes that were free. I worked hard for that money, no way am I letting it go to waste. I would say investing time and energy also hold us accountable. If I set an alarm to wake up early, or moved my schedule around to allow for a class, I was much less likely to let that time go to waste. There are also accountability apps out there like this one that help create social accountability and go so far as to set up financial penalties for not following through. Yikes!
2) Set up reminders or cues
This sounds simple, but truly is a magical part of making changes and committing. If I write things into my calendar or into a checklist, I am much more interested in and likely to accomplish them than the things I don't document. This is both because I have a terrible memory and because there is a gratifying feeling that comes with checking something off a list or pressing the "Completed" button on my phone. Alarms are also helpful. Alarms are not just for waking up, people! Don't be afraid to set an alarm to remind you to switch tasks, to minimize time you spend on social media, to remind you to call a loved one, to pray during the day, to take your medication, to switch your laundry, to take some deep meditative breathes...oh, I could go on, but you get the picture. Setting out my gym clothes the night before has been helpful when I want to go to a morning class because I can't help but see it when I wake up and it cuts out my excuse that I don't have time to find clothes and get ready. I've heard people talk about going to bed in their gym clothes so they wake up ready to go. What better cue than that! We as humans need cues, especially with the distracting world we live in. Don't be afraid to set them!
3) Evaluate your motivation
Does your goal have positive or negative motivation? Negative motivation looks like: I don't want to lose my job/ income, so that's why I go to work everyday. I want to avoid public judgement in my swimsuit, so I'm going to workout. Positive motivation looks like: I want to be the best employee I can be and support my family, so that's why I go to work everyday. I want to take a minute off of my mile, so I'm going to run 5 days a week. Do you see the difference? While negative motivation may work in the short-term, and in some cases the long-term, it does not feel great and will likely lead to more disappointment, guilt, and shame. When you start going to work only to avoid being fired, it might be time to find a new job or a motivation re-frame. Can you find a positive motivator for what you do?
4) Make it a habit
That whole "it takes 21 days to form a habit" is apparently balogna, which is news to me. A study in 2009 found that it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days for participants to form a habit, and they concluded that on average it took at least 66 days. So, unless you are in the lucky few that it only takes 18 days, we need to push ourselves to do that thing that is good for us for that much longer, before it becomes second nature and truly built into our schedule. I don't know about you, but most habits I try to form usually last less than a few weeks before I slowly find myself slinking into less healthy habits without even recognizing it, UNLESS I have some external accountability OR if I have truly have a visible, reachable, appealing goal that I feel I am working toward and the outcome of that goal feels WORTH the 66 days of work it is taking me to make it routine. Which brings me to the next need...
5) Evaluate your goal
After getting engaged and wanting to look and feel great in my wedding dress at the end of last year, I began the year with a 12 week workout program called BBG, thanks to the very motivating Kayla Itsiness. I was very motivated in the beginning, and I started to see RESULTS early on which added to the motivation. I also signed up for a half marathon with my very motivated and encouraging hubby-to-be, which probably kept me going on this program as well. I kept up with 3-4 workouts per week for all 12 weeks! When the program ended, I picked up running routines that my now-hubby would lay out and MOSTLY stuck to them ;). The half marathon was very rewarding, and I did better than I ever dreamed for my first time having run further than a 5k. This was a GREAT feeling! I had reached a goal
that was set and honestly, I think I felt as good as I wanted to at this point. When it was over, I told myself I would keep this up until the wedding and just be in the greatest shape ever, however, I still had 6 months until our wedding. Not having a truly reachable, measurable, or desirable goal, definitely led to less follow-through on my end. My workouts were half-a**ed, and further in between. I had lingering worries that my dress might fit a bit tighter, but a few fittings in between eased these worries, and I continued to make excuses not to spend time in the gym. My goal at this time was: how can I plan the wedding of my dreams, make progress and feel good at work, and also not be a stress monster. So my workouts fell in between and merely became stress reducing sessions here and there.
Lesson here: GOALS we set should be SMART (most 5th graders and health care professionals know this one). Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely! But also they should be motivating or rewarding in some way. They need to align with our values and interests in some way. We need to WANT the outcome or to NEED the outcome, I guess. I can set a super attainable and measurable goal to go to the gym 3x a week, but if I'm not feeling interested in achieving better fitness, I, as evidenced by the weeks before my wedding, will not achieve this goal. So maybe they should be SMARTI goals (patent pending). What is this goal INSPIRED by/What is my Interest? Is this part of my own interests or plans, or is it society’s? Is this something I want to attain, or something I think I should attain?
Reviewing the rest of SMART(I) goals for those of you who don't know. The goal should be specific and measurable. Meaning, when I set a goal to "workout more" and then wind up surprised that I let the week pass by without doing this, well, duh! (I fall into this bad habit sometimes). My goal needs to answer the question of what do I want to do? who with? when and why? and how will I measure this? e.g. I am going to workout 4 times this week including either 30 minutes of cardio or a 1 hour class at my gym instead of my usual 2 or 3 times at the gym, and I will do this for 3 months. It will probably help me even more to designate what days and times of the week I will do this on (see my scheduling blurb above).
Is my goal attainable and realistic? There have been many times that I get overly excited when I'm setting goals, especially around the new year, and I set goals that are just plain unrealistic. Sure it sounds great to say, "This year, I'm going to workout everyday!" But if I was only working out 2 times a week or less before, this is probably a lofty goal. Knowing myself and my need for and stress about including other forms of self-care, I know that I would be unable to keep up a goal like working out everyday going. It's nice to dream, but
break down your dream a bit first so you don't lose sight of where you're going or set yourself up for disappointment. If I really want to work towards daily workouts, maybe I start with 4 times a week and see if I can incorporate what I need into those days for a stretch of time before I add a 5th or 6th day. No one goes from doggy-paddle to Michael Phelps in a week. Slow and steady, people!
A relevant goal is a goal that fits into your life, another thing that gets easily dropped when people set New Year's resolutions. If you're setting the goal for the sake of setting a goal, you may not start out on great feet. Why is this goal important to you, because social media said to set a goal, or because you want to make a change? Does this goal make sense for the life you have or is it contradictory with other goals you have?
Lastly, another dig at New Year's resolutions. Your goal must be timely, meaning it must have an effective target date or expiration, or if it is a long term goal, it might help to break it down into shorter periods of time. I've set many broken New Years resolutions, how about you? What usually leads to this? Saying I have one whole year to do this thing! If anyone else is a procrastinator and remembers in school days doing better with shorter
deadlines, because they had less time to waste and forget an assignment, then this will make sense for you. Long deadlines are the nemesis! No good paper gets written at at the 11th hour. Make a plan that adds up to the year if you want to see it through long-term. "I will read 1 book per month this year" will keep you more honest, than "I will read 12 books this year". "I will try 1 new gym per week" probably would've kept me more honest than "I will try a new gym each time I feel like it this summer".
So, Tic Toc, people. What adjustments do you need to make to get off your booty on the reg?
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