The one ingredient in all successful health and fitness stories I have seen is consistency. For various reasons it is the one area that most people fall down. It can be as a result of anything from, pushing too hard too soon, to just being impatient and giving up too soon, not giving their program a chance.
If you want to excel in something and get results, not matter what it is, you need to be consistent and practice it regularly, exercise is the same.
Even with the best exercise plan or the best nutrition plan, if consistency is missing, you wont get where you want to. Despite what a lot of the internet noise says, you should view your health and fitness as a marathon, not a sprint. Some people will get great results in 10 or 12 weeks, but for others it just may not happen at that rate, but if you keep working it will happen and more importantly it will become a regular pattern.
The yo yo diet/exercise approach or boom to bust strategy is the biggest pitfall for so many people. The plan needs to suit you, if it doesn’t, it wont last and back to stage one you go. Locking down consistency is going to be different for everyone as it should be personalised to your lifestyle, your habits and your goals. When all that is worked out, you figure out how you can consistently hit targets that bring you to your goal.
There are a few tips though that will work.
- Stop starting or restarting on Mondays. Start today and if you have a bad day, you just keep going, you don’t reset.
- Striving for perfection. It doesn’t exist in anything so stop chasing it. You will have ups and downs in training and nutrition….. Acknowledge them, adjust for them and move on.
- Don’t be too rigid. Planned a certain meal or sessions and now it can’t happen ?? Deal with it …. Do some other exercise, eat another healthy meal, don’t just give up.
- Find accountability. You need accountability to the program in order to stay successful. That can take any form, training partner, coach/PT etc. You also need to be accountable to sort of plan/program, don’t just bob along aimlessly with out solid tracking and progression.
- Take time off . Give yourself SMALL windows off every so often – this is only really relevant to people busting it pretty hard 5 or 6 days a week.
- Have small goals along the way that you have to hit. If your goal is 6 months away, you will get loose and consistency will suffer, but if you have a small goal in a few weeks…. Well thats a focus to keep going.
Consistency will bring results.