How I Developed Persistence

My last post talked about my progress after one year on my fat loss & fitness plan. One year is a long time, especially for me. I started gaining weight in my early twenties and I have been overweight for around 12 years. I don't know how many times I tried to lose some weight but it was many. I tried for a while, lost a few pounds, gave up, put a few pounds back on; the same old cycle repeated by a great many people I'm sure.

My progress over this last year wasn't as good as I would have liked but it was persistent, week after week and month after month. I never once "fell of the bandwagon", though I did jump off it a few times but with every intention to jump back on it once I was done doing whatever it was. A good example is my recent holiday. I ate a heck of a lot of food and I didn't do any exercise at all. I drank wine or beer with almost every meal, loaded up on french bread, pate, chocolate, cheese, everything and anything that was on offer! Yet never once did I think "oh well I've blown it now, may as well give up". I knew I would gain weight, and I did - five pounds, but when I got back holiday I just got straight back on plan. In fact the morning of my last day on holiday was spent doing my food plan for the following week.

So what was different this time? I've thought long and hard about it in the hope that I can figure out the key elements that led to this persistence so that I may apply it to other areas of my life, and maybe even help you do the same.

1) I Wanted it BAAAAAADDDDD!

What is really behind persistence of any kind? Motivation. And where does motivation come from? From wanting something. If you want something bad enough, you'll do whatever it takes to get it. Before starting Uni I lost some weight (I talk about that a little further down) and I dropped a clothes size, bought myself some new clothes and felt quite good about myself. As soon as I started feeling good about myself the desire to lose more fat dwindled so it gradually piled back on.

I figured that if I was going to keep this up I was going to have to want it badly so I put a lot of mental effort into making myself really want to lose that fat and get fit. I wrote down all the reasons why I wanted to get slimmer and thinner, I thought about all the things I would do if I felt better about myself and so on. I thought about this day in, day out. Sometimes I wanted it so badly that it hurt.

2) I Used Visualisations

Partly a spin-off from number one... As a tool to help kindle that burning desire I used visualisations to help me.

I developed scenarios, fantasies really, about situations in my future and saw myself as I wanted to be. For example, one of them was a day out at the beach with my family and some friends. I saw exactly how my body looked, exactly what I was wearing and so on. I had about five of these scenarios and I'd make a point of running through them in my mind over and over.

I don't really use them now as I simply don't need to - the habits have been formed now.

3) I Dumped the Excuses

For as long as I can remember I've had no shortage of excuses for my weight, my food habits, and my lack of exercise. When I started on my plan I dumped the lot of them. I made the decision that I would no longer tolerate excuses. And as it turns out, they were just excuses because over the year many of the circumstances that I used as excuses cropped up and I dealt with them this time. Here's a few examples:

"My schedule is too erratic, so there's no point trying to begin an exercise routine"

I'm a routine-aholic (yes, I just made that up!) I like routine because it allows me to plan the routine and planning allows me to tweak my plan to perfection. While I was at Uni my schedule would indeed change every few weeks so this became my biggest excuse. It was crap of course because I had exercise facilities available to me both at home and on campus.

"I don't have the time"

What a classic that one is! I've always used that one. The funny thing is, once I started work (which is when I started my plan) I found that I had a lot less time than before and I immediately regretted not spending my time more wisely while I had it. Yet despite this illusion of lack of time (everybody has exactly the same amount of time as anyone else - we make the time for something or we don't) I now exercise daily as well as spending many hours in the kitchen every week preparing food.

Those were my two biggest excuses. What are yours? Who are you trying to kid?

4) I Wanted to Start My Job Right

The beginning of my plan coincided with the start of my new job. When you go into a new job the people there know nothing about you so your behaviour in the first few days can make a lasting impression. I decided right away that from day one I would make it clear that I went to the gym every day at lunchtimes and I brought food into work. I felt very awkward at first because everybody else had a ritual of going together to the sandwich shop for lunch and they either stayed in the office or all went down the pub. I on the other hand brought in several meals and ate them at weird times. However, I did indeed establish this as a habit and now everybody knows me and I get people all the time at work coming to me for diet and exercise advice.

Now if I'm having a bad day and I'm seen eating a cake or chocolate or something they'll all pick up on it straight away. That's much better than feeling peer pressure from your work colleagues to eat unhealthily because they do. I don't get that.

5) I Believed I Could Lose the Fat Because I Had Lost Some Before

About 5 years ago I joined a slimming club and lost nearly two stones. In actual fact my lowest weight was the weight I am this week! However, that was done with diet alone. I did no exercise, I was still unfit and very flabby. I look better now than I did then. Still, I did lose the bulk of the fat and I became a consultant for the club, and ran my own class for a few months before going to Uni.

I figured if I could lose fat with no exercise and with a crappy diet (which it was), then I could certainly lose it with a proper exercise and nutrition plan.

6) I Began to See Fat Loss as a Numbers Game

Calories in v calories out. Yes of course it's not that simple but that's the essence of it. Calculating the numbers is the easy bit, eating and exercising the right amount of numbers is the hard bit. However, once I re-read my Burn the Fat book (I really must write a review of that soon!) I started to realise that it all boiled down to three habits:

• Eating the right food
• Cardiovascular exercise
• Weight training

If I could get myself to form the habit of incorporating these three things into my life then I could tweak the numbers as I go and eventually I'd get it right. I've been tweaking all year and I think I always will. Many people start out and get the numbers wrong so they give up.

Conclusion

First and foremost, you have to want it. Whatever it is you need to be persistent with starts in the mind. You also have to believe in yourself - another mind game. Ask yourself the question "why can I do this?" and you'll come up with answers. If you are negative and start thinking about your past failures you'll just get more of the same. Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.

All this thinking is great but after that it's action that counts. Dreams and goals don't mean squat if they stay locked up in your mind and are never acted upon. Figure out what you have to do, boil it down to the essentials and in particular, look for habits. Speaker and author Jim Rohn says that "Failure is a few small errors in judgment, repeated every day. Success is a few small disciplines repeated every day." Find those disciplines and make them into habits.

When the going gets tough go back to the mind games. Re-evaluate why you want it and what it's going to give you. Make sure you feel the emotions and let them penetrate into your soul. If what you are doing isn't working for you, look at the numbers. Are you exercising enough? Eating too much? Tom Venuto who wrote the Burn the Fat book says that usually when it's not working you just have to work that bit harder. That isn't always the case but many times it is!

Think.
Act.
Repeat.

To Plan Or Go With the Flow?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a tendency to plan things in great detail. I do this with all things related to my fat loss goal such as planning of all of my food and my exercise routines. The main reason I do this is because it gives me a sense of certainty. For example, if I know that I need 2000 calories a day and I plan my food to exactly 1500 calories a day then I can be fairly sure that I'll lose 1lb of fat in a week as there are 3500 calories in 1lb of fat.

Planning Problems

However, there are problems when it comes to planning, especially when that plan relies on a certain amount of progress being made. Here's an example: when I first started running I had a goal in mind. I wanted to run 5k on the 22nd July for the Race for Life event. I also knew what my starting circumstances were so I took a logical approach and drew up a plan of how I could go from where I was to where I wanted to be (in running terms) in the time that I had available.

The plan went something like this... I started out running something like 10 minutes in blocks of two minutes at a time and walking for a minute in between. Each week I would increase the overall duration of the run and over time I would increase the length of each block. The aim was to get me to a point where I would be able to run for 40 minutes non-stop. I did this on a spreadsheet in a very linear fashion and it all looked fine but there was a fatal flaw in the plan - it did not take into account my physical and emotional states and capabilities.

Plans Have to be Executed by People

When I first started out I made progress quite quickly and looking back I think the reason for that is that my fitness has increased quite a bit from my other exercise so I started out being able to do more than I realised. However I soon hit a wall and then workouts became serious effort and this is where the problems started. I find running hard, really hard. And painful. There were times when my legs were screaming and I can't put myself through that kind of pain unless I'm in a certain emotional state. I have to be feeling highly motivated and fired up, and physically feeling fresh and strong. But of course I simply don't feel like that every day.

Many days I would drag myself down the gym early in the morning, I'd be yawning away not looking forward to another day in the office and just feeling generally low. On days like that I just didn't want any more pain. Yes I'd think about my goals and visualise the results I wanted but on some days I simply didn't care! I was happy to do a workout as long as I didn't have to push too hard and for me, running was always hard.

Plans Must be Able to Accommodate Change

I found myself getting stressed because the routine was not going according to the plans I had laid out. In my first plan I was trying to increase my overall duration by three minutes per week and at the time I ran three times per week so that equated to a minute more on every run. Once I began to hit that wall I couldn't find that extra minute in me and then of course the next day I'd need to run an extra two minutes if I wanted to stay on plan and that's the problem with a plan that relies on a linear progression - one slip and the whole plan falls apart.

Another problem is that if I push myself really hard it tends to have repercussions later on. Sometimes they are physical - I'll get such cramps in my legs that I wont want to run for a few days or they are emotional - I keep thinking about how much the last run hurt and I end up skipping gym sessions in the following few days. This is counter productive - two average workouts would be better than one great one and one skipped one!

Ditching the Plan

I've already decided to pull out of the race so I feel like the pressure has been lifted but I would still like to persevere with running simply because it's such a convenient form of exercise. I don't need a gym and I can run anywhere. A week off work doesn't have to mean a week of missed exercise.

After a holiday in France I wanted to get back into it but I didn't want to dive in and push too hard and just put myself off again so I started off very gently. I went right back to basics. I had plotted out a 3k route and my only objective was simply to complete that route on foot, be it walking, jogging or some mixture. I started out just walking and I didn't look at my watch at all. Of course after a while I was warmed up and I felt fine so I moved into a jog. When I got tired I just stopped and walked again. I didn't check my watch, I didn't try to 'reach the next milestone' - I simply did as much as I felt like without pushing too hard.

Of course it was not a fantastic workout. I would have burned more calories by doing a workout on one of the elliptical machines at the gym but that's not the point. What I am trying to do here is reintroduce myself to the idea of running as a form of regular exercise. I can supplement my routine with gym sessions to ensure I do enough real fitness but as far as running goes I just want to try and get comfortable with it.

Progress Still Needs to be Measurable

The question is, will I get any better? If I just go with the flow in this way and don't try to set myself any goals or time myself in any way then how will I know if I am getting any better? And if I don't get any better then what is the point? What I think I can do here is use a couple of methods of measurement that are much less formal than the plans I used to draw up.

Firstly, I can plot new routes that are longer. My 3k route took me 30 minutes and I walked most of it. Ideally I'd like to be doing a 30 minute workout that is mostly running but as I physically can't do that yet I'll settle for longer routes that I walk large chunks of. If I make the route longer then I know I am doing more without having to explicitly measure anything.

Secondly, I can time the overall route. Where as before I would have a strict schedule such as run 8 minutes, walk 2 minutes, and repeat three times, now I can just do a run/walk mixture as I feel able and time it on a regular basis to see if I am getting any faster. Plus, I can use my intuition. How do I know I walked most of the route if I didn't do any timings? Well I just know! I can use that same sense to give me an idea of whether or not I am running more than before. Every week or so I can time the run so I have a better idea. If after a few weeks the same route is taking me the same time to cover then I know I am not making any improvement. Perhaps then I could try and use more formal methods to step up the effort a little.

For now, I'm going to just go with the flow and see how that works out.
(01/07/2007 13:40 | delete)

Why do Plans Change so Quickly?

Just over a month ago I posted that I was going to start Slacking Off Before my Deadline. In that post I had decided that I was exercising far too much and I decided to trim it down to just one session per day. At that time my exercise consisted of cardio at the gym, weight training and karate. I had pretty much stopped running.

Then just a couple of weeks later I had another go at running after discovering that I had previously been Running Too Fast. After this post I decided to re-incorporate running into my regime so my routine changed again.

Then about a week ago, just two weeks after planning to start running again, I stopped all over again and pulled out of the Race I had signed up for! At the same time I decided to cut back my exercise further to give me more time for other areas of my life.

Now, just a week later I feel myself wanting to change once again! I've just got back from a holiday in the South of France. It was lovely out there but I did absolutely no exercise and I ate truckloads of food. I've come back 6 lbs heavier! I knew this would happen but that doesn't stop me feeling bad about it. My gut reaction is to get down that gym twice a day like I was before to try to shift the excess again as fast as possible and just sod everything else!

So why so many changes in such a short time? Am I the only one who goes through this? I think that one of the issues that I personally face is that I like to plan. I like to have a set routine that I follow - I don't like to just 'wing it' when it comes to exercise or food. I plan things in great detail and when anything changes in my circumstances I go and re-work my plans. So I guess that I notice these changes more than others.

Looking at the reasons behind the changes I see nothing out of the ordinary. I was getting a bit obsessive over exercise so I cut back a bit, I introduced running after trying something new, a week of illness and a holiday threw my plans out of whack. I'm sure these are things that happen to us all a lot of the time.

The same thing can be said of food. How many times have I planned food only to have those plans compromised because of a stay with family, a day out, a meal out, somebody's birthday etc etc etc. This happens all the time. Why?

Because LIFE happens!

This is just life isn't it? Stuff happens. Life happens, that's just the way things are. Things change, things get in the way, people get in the way. In my case I change my plans every time something changes and this gets very annoying when I spend a lot of time planing and have to keep changing it but at least I'm adapting. I fear it would be much worse to just ignore those changes and not deal with them.

I'm learning to accept it now. I find this problem cropping up in all areas of my life - not just my fat loss goals. Things always change and we need to be able to adapt if we want to keep up with the times and keep moving forward with our goals.

I Lost 2 Stones Today ... In My Head

I have a long drive to and from work. The traffic lights are not working at one of the roundabouts at the moment and it took me over an hour to get in this morning, ugh! Tonight it took 45 minutes to get home. On these long drives I quite often find myself drifting along on auto-pilot. I'll suddenly come to my senses and find that I haven't heard any of my music for the last half an hour or so.

This happened to me tonight on the way home. Last week I dropped to my lowest weight in years and I am really starting to see and feel the difference. I've had really good workouts all week long and my goals are starting to feel more real and achievable every day. I'm always visualising about the future and these days 95% of the time I'm day dreaming about either fat loss goals or karate.

Tonight I actually took it one step further than usual. I was driving along and suddenly I caught myself planning out my blog entry announcing my weight loss of 2 stones! I haven't lost 28lbs yet, only 22 so I'm a way off yet but in my mind I had already done it. I didn't even realise I was doing this and when I caught myself I actually felt a bit embarassed because it seemed rather silly but when I thought about it and realised that it's not silly; it's incredibly powerful.

Everything that is manifested in the real world starts of as a thought in the creative faculty of the mind. What the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve (Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich.) Not only do I believe that I can reach my goals but I can visualise them so clearly that I can experience the feelings as if they were really happening right now. I can see every detail of how I look, the clothes I'm wearing, the way I've changed my hair, the things other people say to me, and of course how all of this makes me feel. I can feel it with such intensity that I'm able to put it into words as a blog entry. I could write it right now!

The reason I believe this is such a powerful thing is that the mind does not distinguish between thoughts that are in the past, present or future, and the mind does not distinguish between thoughts that are real and those that are not. What you think about the most you move towards. The predominant thoughts in your mind will manifest themselves in the physical world. And no, I don't mean by magic!

We have literally billions of thoughts and inputs entering our lives every day. All the things we see, hear, feel etc as well as all of the thoughts that go on in our mind enter our brains daily. Our brains are neural networks - networks of neurons. All the billions of neurons are linked together to billions of others. When all these inputs, senses and thoughts come in some of those neurons will be fired along pathways to other neurons. When this happens the pathway is physically strengthened. This makes it easier to fire off those same neurons again in the future. Similarly if particular neurons cease to be fired, pathways from them will eventually weaken.

Enough of the AI lesson... The point is that the thoughts you think about the most will strengthen in your mind and will become more predominant in your mind in the future. If you continually focus on what a big fat failure you are, you'll strengthen all neurons and pathways relating to that making it much easier to feel that way in the future. Do the opposite and feed your mind positive thoughts and good things happen. The other important thing to understand is that thoughts that have high emotional intensity will fire much more strongly in the brain and this is where my blog entry story comes in...

You see I am able to visualise with such clarity that I can experience all those emotions and feelings right now. Aside from making me feel good and motivating me, its strengthening those neurons baby! Every time I do this I bring myself closer and closer to manifesting it in the real world. In a few weeks time I will be back here making that blog entry for real :)

How do I know this for sure? Well I must have graduated from Uni with a First Class Honors degree about a thousand times in my mind before it happened for real. I focused on that goal so intently for three years that it would have been impossible for me to fail. The best student award was just icing on the cake. I wonder what my icing will be for my fat loss goals?

Exciting stuff. Visualise. Have complete Faith. Achieve anything you want.

Goal Setting

The first chapter of the fat loss book I'm reading talks about goal setting. I'm good at goal setting, I do it all the time. I have a list of 114 goals for all areas of my life written down which I reviewed on the 1st of this month and I have my current ones, 26 of them taped to my bathroom wall next to my mirror.

Still, despite having read this all before, I always manage to pick out something new every time I read it. I've had the same fat loss goal since I originally set it back on the 7th July 2006 - to reach 25% bodyfat without losing any LBM (96lbs at the time). So far I've lost 20lbs but my bodyfat is 32%, still way off. In the book, the author says to set both your long term and short term goals, and also to set BIG goals.

My deadline is 7th July this year, just 11 weeks away so long term and short term are now the same thing. But thats taught me a lesson the hard way. I never set myself 3-month goals along the way - I just did the yearly one and now I've got less than 3 months to go.

So lets have some fun with that... 25% body fat, pah, thats crap really isn't it? That was only supposed to be an interim goal. 20% should be a maximum really. At 25% I'd still just be average. Average is better than fat but who wants to be average? I'm working too damn hard just to be average! No, I've changed it so now my new goal is 20% body fat which is interesting because in order to reach that wilst maintaining 96lbs lbm, I'd need to lose a further 22 lbs - in 11 weeks - when I've never lost more than 1lb a week!

Well if the theory is correct then by aiming for 2lbs a week I may actually manage 1 which would just about get me to my original goal. I figure I can endure a lot more for just 11 weeks. After that I can relax a bit and take things slowly again. Ideally I'd like to lose a bunch of fat and then switch to a mucle building cycle to get a few more lbs of muscle to help my metabolism and then try to lose some more fat after that but the problem is that I want my first goal - NOW, this summer.

There are no more summers! For ten years I have said "NEXT summer I will look good in a bikini". No no no no no! No more summers!!! I have to do it this summer! I'm gettting all emotional now which is probably a good thing but I'll shut up and start on chapter 2 :)

Those Barriers Keep Coming Down

After stepping off the treadmill in a bit of a daze last Thursday following my 20 minute run, I believed I could do just about anything. My first thoughts were "If I can do that, what else can I do?" Another physical goal that has been eluding me for months is to do 50 crunches. Crunches are part of my regular ab workout and I simply do three sets of as many as I can do. The aim was to get to 50 and then I'd move onto a more challenging exercise with a ball.

I wrote out that goal on December 4th when I'd managed to hit 40. That's two months ago! I have not been able to squeeze out 10 more reps in two whole months. This has been my pattern:

Dec 4th: 40
Dec 11th: 42
Dec 29th: 40
Jan 8th: 44
Jan 16: 46
Today: 54!

As you can see I was just creeping up by a couple of reps. I had a bit of a setback just after Christmas (all my training suffered slightly that week!) and then I made a little more progress. Now it is possible of course that since my last workout I miraculously developed enough strength to do 8 more reps than before. However, I think its far more likely that I could have done it weeks ago if I had simply believed I could. It's annoying really, because that was a goal I really wanted to hit by Christmas.

So there you have it, yet more reasons to let go of those limiting beliefs!