Lessons learned in leotards
I started working out to exercise VHS tapes when I was 13. I remember copying as best as I could but still didn't get why my leotard didn't fit the same way it did for the instructor. Being 13 probably had something to do with it!
I remember doing these videos every day after school. Meanwhile I was skipping breakfast, eating Skittles and 7-Up from the school vending machines at lunchtime, and then pounding a can of green beans and instant mashed potatoes after school. This was my interpretation of becoming vegetarian.
I used to cry routinely while lifting dumbbells with the eye of the tiger. At least I had willpower on my side! Too bad I couldn't enjoy myself at the same time.
Maybe you feel the same way that I did at 13 comparing myself to others while making ignorant choices about nutrition, sleep, training strategies, and choosing the wrong workout clothes.
Leotards are hard to pull off. Thank goodness for yoga pants!
"Comparisons are odious"
Do you have the right role models, motives, and strategies? If you choose the path of imitation there's going to be some tears and tantrums. Let's shed some light on ideas that will stop you from reaching your fitness goals.
Let's check your fitness pulse
Do you work out every day and still feel exhausted and hungry and tired? Do you copy exercises you see online and on social media but don’t know if you’re getting the most out of them?
When you have a little pain starting to form do you know how to reverse it before it gets worse? It sucks when you follow plans and feel like they don’t work.
It makes you feel like you are the exception and that you’ll never get what you want. Ironically it usually doesn’t have anything to do with the workout. It has everything to do with your inner dialogue.
There are a few things we do in the "mind field" that can blow up in our faces when our mental dialogue collides with the difficult task of training your body.
Here are some surprising reasons your fitness goals won’t come true and what to do about it
You believe you need motivation before you take action
People! You don’t need to be motivated before you do things! Motivation is not magical. It’s that feeling you get when you watch athletic shoe ads. You get pumped up for 30 seconds while it’s on the screen. But then an ad for pizza follows right after, and now you’re motivated for lunch.
Motivation is a traitor. Break up with it.
It's like listening to someone's dating drama. Motivation came. It went. It will come again. Please stop glorifying it with sunsets and calligraphy on your Instagram posts! It’s too short and changeable to do any good long-term. What you really need are habits that you do on an automatic level. You can make new habits fairly quickly with the right methods.
And yes, I don't just preach it. I practice it and made a program to fix it. Check out the new Radiant Program to get guidance.
Confession: Even though I am a teacher and trainer I have a coach to keep me accountable and give workouts that I follow. Just because I CAN make my own workouts doesn't mean it's the best way to stick with my program. I love looking on my phone and seeing the challenging workout requirements. I can whine about how hard it is, but I know that my coach’s response is “Get ‘er done.” Being accountable to someone else is truly liberating.
Most people don’t get truly motivated until about 20 minutes into a work-out.
It requires transition time to get into the workout zone. Don’t derail your fitness goals by waiting until you feel like it. Do it. Then you’ll feel like it. Solution: Decide on a goal and show up, making it easy to become a creature of habit. Dump motivation and it will come crawling back to you when you are in the zone.
I have tons of advice on how to do this step by step if you join the Radiant Program!
Your emotions are running the show
Your thoughts can stop you before you start. As soon as you make the decision to make a healthy change, your mind senses you are deviating from your habits and will do everything to get you back to normal.
Your emotions can derail your exercise. If you waited until you felt perfectly happy you’d never finish a workout. Your mood will shift as things get tough and your brain will try to preserve you from suffering and slow you down.
However, you can learn to use your mind-power to rewire new habits into the normal network. Learn to work with the mind’s preference to be on auto-pilot so your new healthy habits are a given.
For example: when the alarm goes off to get to the gym simply get up without giving thoughts and emotions center stage. Just turn off the spot-light on the drama and argument of why you’re tired and unmotivated and simply show up for class.
Ignoring emotions won’t fix things long-term, but showing up is half the battle.
Want to really retrain your mindset so you don’t have to battle your emotions every day? Check out the Radiant Program for a complete mind-body fitness transformation!
You’re a perfectionist
You’re terrified of messing up. You’re plagued with guilt for missing a week of training to go on an amazing vacation. Or you might try a pull-up and fail and never try again because it shows that you are weak. So you keep doing exercise that you’ve already mastered and get fewer results.
Perfectionism spoils the fun.
It keeps you judgmental and stuck in the same place. Be curious, playful, and forgiving as you figure out new skills. Seriously, no one expects you to do a backbend on your first day in yoga. Well, maybe there’s one person who is, but their thoughts are none of your business anyway! And that’s not how real yogis think, so if they’re judgmental they missed the point. Put them in the same place as motivation.
Mistakes are unavoidable but necessary to get results
We have to mess up or just get halfway there to get anything right. Nerves and muscles have to repeat a task for a while until it becomes muscle memory. It takes a while to lay down nerve and muscle patterns, so keep at it and be happy about it and it will happen faster.
You keep your old name tags from labels you got from others or yourself
“I’m Too Tight.” “I’m The Scrawny Kid” “I Already Tried That Once” “I Must Be Leotard-Worthy” You keep bringing up the past. You remember what happened 10 years ago. You hold yourself hostage to things that are over with. You’ve made unchangeable statements about your present based on some bad experiences in the past.
Labels hold you back
But you can ditch the labels by going into your "mind field" and setting off a few triggers to get that old stuff to blow up. Then you can start to repair the damage and never be bothered by all those time bombs ever again!
The meditation practices in yoga are helpful for learning that the past is over whether you regret it or not. You can reshape the present any way you like. Muscles can be built. Flexibility comes with consistent gentle persistence. What you tried once only improves after practice. And guess what? Leotards got replaced with Lulus! Get with it please! ;)
Want personalized guidance? Join the Radiant program!
Your pet habit
Spoiler alert: I'm heading into your "mind field" now to set off a trigger. So I'll give the explanation first. Gotta put on my helmet when this thing blows.
There are a few basics in fitness that you need to follow. If you can follow the 80/20 rule you will be on target. 80% of the time you are doing high-quality movement and nourishing your body with high-quality food. The rest of the time you can have some slack. Now, here it comes!
that habit is sabotaging you
If you have one habit that you do every day that sends your fitness goals backwards, then identify it and apply the 80/20 rule to it.
“I just have to have dessert at every meal.”
This one is a sure-fire way to sabotage your health. If you eat refined sugar at every meal this means you are out of balance. There really is something else your body is craving, and I promise you it’s not straight sugar.
If you want a small dessert every so often, that’s perfectly fine. There are a few people that can eat a dozen donuts and still have a fitness model body, but that’s not typical. And it’s still not nourishing. I don’t believe in removing dessert entirely. Just change the portions and the focus. Save up for your dessert as a true treat, not a daily food group.
Having trouble identifying your sabotaging habits? Sign up for Radiant to focus on retraining the mind and body together so you never have to fight a bad habit again!