Due to popular demand, I will touch on New Year’s fitness
and health resolutions. The annual reoccurring trend. While I believe anytime
is a good time to start making changes for the better, the time stamp of a new year
is something special. I figured that since we’re a few weeks into the New Year,
and resolutioners are facing the struggles of sticking to the new plan, it
would be beneficial to touch on this topic.
Of course, the hardest part of a new healthy lifestyle plan
is actually following it. Depending on your starting point and what your body
is accustomed to, the amount of change in habits and lifestyle can be
significant. Unfortunately, our bodies do not like rapid change, and become
very uncomfortable when we decide to switch things up on them.
First, habits are hard to change. It takes a significant
amount of time to reset the neural wiring in our brains and change the natural
predisposition we have to going about our days. If you are interested in how
formulating habits works and how to change them, I recommend the book The
Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. A few take home points include that you
need to create a positive feedback loop to help reinforce your good habits, the
adjustment period takes a lot of mental energy to make a change, and once
you’ve developed a new habit, it turns into a default setting for our bodies
that we end up doing automatically.
Diving a little deeper into the adjustment phase and the
discomfort you will feel making the change, you should take into consideration
how much mental and physical strain this will take on your body. This is where
resoultioners fail. Attempting to make a change that is too drastic will send
your body into an almost shock-like response. Remember, our bodies do not like
change because change requires us to use excess energy and mental capacity.
When we try and make too big of a change all at once, our bodies will fight
against us with everything it has.
”Small
changes for big results”
This brings us to the point of making small changes to
achieve big results. You can think about this in the sense of a minimal
effective load, meaning that you need to do just enough to get the result you
want and no more. Traditionally, resoultioners go all out and their bodies go
into high alert mood. Once this happens, it’s game over. This occurs when you
drastically change your diet and exercise routine over the course of one day,
or in an otherwise short period of time. Your body is going to respond
negatively and put an end to the change by making it incredibly difficult,
physically and mentally, to stick to the plan. You’ve, in a sense, triggered a “change
detector” alarm and now it’s on full alert. Try to make a change now; it’s
going to be almost impossible. This is one of the reasons why so many fail.
Taking a “small changes” approach keeps your body’s change
alarm at bay and allows you to sneak things past it. This makes it easier to
stick to changes you are trying to make. The only disappointing thing here is that
the results don’t always show in a day, or a week, or a month. These small
changes will add up over time and become something much larger. Longer term
thinking is huge here. It’s too easy to think in the short term. Take an even
further look down the road and think about where the small changes will get you
in 2, 5, even 10 years. Pace yourself, and the plan, with small increments of
change and you’ll be surprisingly happy with the results.
These small changes are easier to make. Who doesn’t like
things they know they will succeed at? For example, small goals and their
progressions can include:
Going for a 15-minute walk, progressing to 20 minutes, to 25
minutes, to 30 minutes.
Going to the gym and performing 3 sets of 10 repetitions on
3 exercises, progressing to 3 sets of 12 repetitions, to 3 sets of 15
repetitions.
These are not by any means the coolest things, or the most
exciting. However, taking a closer look at what you are accomplishing is very
important. To use the walking example, yes you are getting more activity, but
you are also teaching yourself how to carve out time during your day to promote
a healthier life habit. Yes, walking is fairly easy and may feel like you are
not doing much. One thing at a time, though. Making the time is a mentally
taxing thing. If you throw in a highly demanding activity on top of that, it
will make it much harder to stick to. Keeping with the example of walking, now
that you’ve made time for yourself and are sticking to the 30-minute routine,
you can change one more variable. Remember, small changes for big results. The
next small change could be running for 5 of the 30 minutes. Not the whole 30
minutes, just 5. After sticking to that for a week of two, maybe bump up the
running time to 8-10 minutes out of the 30. Then add a few more minutes running
every week or two and you’ll be running 30 minutes before you know it.
I could go on and on about small changes and progressions,
but I think you can get the idea from the above example. Finding the small,
easily obtainable changes will make things easier on your body without triggering
its change alarm. If you set it off by attempting to do too much at once,
you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. I wish all you New Year’s resoultioners
all the best; keep working hard.
As always, thanks for reading!
Ryan Goodell, CSCS
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