If you’ve been carrying at least 10 pounds of extra fat, yet “nothing works” to reduce your bodyfat, take an honest look at your daily habits. You’ll find the answer in plain sight.
With so many folks claiming that there is “no time” for training, I figured it was appropriate to address the “elephant” hanging out in the back of the room:
Your habits.
Take a moment to answer these two quick questions.
Question #1: How likely are you to exercise at 6AM if you stay up past midnight eating microwave popcorn and watching Netflix?
Answer: Unlikely
In this example, you’ve prioritized the immediate pleasure and temporary “happy feeling” of eating popcorn and relaxing to Netflix, over the positive feeling you get after completing your morning workout.
You’re also prioritizing unimportant things over getting eight hours of sleep nightly.
My guess is that, if you’ve never experienced positive feelings after consistent training, you need to have a 20-minute chat with me.
The issue could be as simple as getting more consistent with training. Perhaps you could use a mental reboot with a shift in mindset. Maybe you need more quality sleep.
Question #2: True/False. If you’ve been carrying at least 10 pounds of extra bodyfat for the last 12 months, and you MAINTAIN your current habits, you are LIKELY to lose the excess bodyfat.
Answer: False.
Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting new results. Unless you change your bad habits, you will continue to be frustrated and unsuccessful.
As you see, the cure for missed workouts and excess bodyfat may be as simple as updating your habits.
But how do you change your habits, when you’re already working at maximum capacity?
How do you take more time off to get the rejuvenation you need, when you have so much to do?
How do you deal with the increasing distractions and interruptions that are taking your attention away from the high-value work that helps you boost fat burning and muscle building?
How do you systemize your productivity, and create habits that work for you naturally and automatically every day?
How do you identify the activities in your life that will give you the highest possible return on your health investments (training, nutrition, coaching, etc)?
Truth is, you only get a little bit of “willpower” each day, and you “spend” most of it making decisions – using it up before you even know what happened to it.
Big shifts happened for me when I stopped checking email and voice messages first thing, and instead, invested the first hour of my day in quiet time.
During this early-morning time I also look at the three items I plan to accomplish on that particular day… and reflect on the things I’m thankful for.
Next, I began working in focused, uninterrupted blocks of time on my highest value activities.
This shift resulted in a massive increase in productivity.
Steven Covey: Put the “big rocks” into your day first, otherwise they’ll never get in.
Consider opportunity cost first: Is there a better way for me to be investing my time?
What is my highest value activity? How could I do more of it?
Mistake to avoid: Getting into actions without knowing what the VALUE is of the action to you long-term.
In other words, not knowing the difference between an activity that’s only going to give you a little result (late-night Netflix = temporary pleasure), or an activity that’s going to increase the quality of your life and pay you dividends for the long-term (four weekly 45-minute morning workouts).
For most folks, you haven’t gotten crystal clear on the handful of activities that bring you the highest fat-burning and age-slowing returns.
Learn the activities that profit you the most.
And then organize your days, weeks and life around making sure those things get done FIRST.
Take a minute, right now, to identify those activities that generate the highest value for you in the short and long-term.
Do this exercise regularly to refine and clarify what your highest-value activities are, so you can do them every day…
…first thing.
If you’ve been carrying at least 10 pounds of extra bodyfat, yet “nothing works” to reduce your bodyfat, may I suggest that you take an honest look at your daily habits.
You’ll find the answer in plain sight. It’s the “elephant” in the room.
