You don`t have time for you?

Currently I am preparing to open my own practice for Exercise Physiology and allied health. Off course this has taken me a lot of time as I am undertaking a small business course while  working. I am hoping to have a bricks and mortar practice open soon but I also hope to do some online programming. If anyone out there is interested please contact me. Now this brings me to my next point which is health and fitness goals are similar to business goals.

I know a lot of you out there a skeptical but the one thing connecting both business and our health goals is time. Society as a whole is becoming more time poor each and every day. We are all struggling with  work long hours, having families and sometimes it seems hard just to keep our heads above the preverbal water.  Which leads me to my next point, by far the biggest excuse I hear from people is, “I just don`t have the time to exercise”. This is often followed up with,” I don’t have time to eat healthy I just grab whatever”. Sometimes in life this can be true. I am sure you all expected me to get on my high horse but life can get in the way of our goals. What I am truly worried about is do people really know what is taking up their time? 

             Even while being time poor there a many options for those trying to improve health. The first option is as simple as keeping a food dairy. Often when people ask me about food dairies I ask “do you check your bank account?” Almost always  yes is the answer. So off course then I ask why don’t you track your food? This may lead to various excuses many which fall into apathy and lack of knowledge. For me it is simple, if you track your bank account why don`t you track your food. Aren’t both these aspects equally important to you? For well and truly over a year now I have been keeping a food diary. With all the advances in technology it has become a lot easier than most people think. If you have enough time to  watch TV at  night then you have enough time to do this. 

And to those few who say I don’t even have a few minutes each day to keep a food dairy, I say start a time dairy. Built of the same premise as a food dairy a time dairy can help expose the everyday activities that is sucking up your time and stopping you from reaching your goals. TV is just one example of a time thief you may discover if you keep a time diary. I am interested to know what things come up for you. You may even find you have great time usage, or that certain things can be increased. Like in business “if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it”. Our time is precious if we can achieve our goals and dreams by using our time better shouldn’t we? Post in the comments below your biggest time thief.

Flip the switch.

                   Motivation is a very interesting and a unique emotion, in fact I would say that it is almost a phenomenon. Some people seem to be born with it while others only seem to have it for select moments in time. It’s something that’s hard to find and easy to loose and for some it can only be found in groups. It is something that can be tied to emotions, confidence and above all else aspiration and strength.

                  Motivation reminds me of money in some ways. You see motivation can be a real source of pleasure or pain. It can help us achieve great things or sometimes it can make us feel worse than when we started. It is important to be motivated, but the biggest problems occur when it comes to the inspiration of the motivation. If the wrong thing inspires you, it can lead you down the wrong path. For example say you are motivated to get active and the thing that inspires you to do it is to lose weight. That is all well in good for some, but for most people this will lead them down the wrong path.

                  I am sure most of us out there have fallen into this trap of eating well and exercising for a few months while weighing ourselves each week. It starts out great with slight loses in weight but eventually that stops and the very thing that originally inspired us to be motivated starts to bring us down. Off course most people will tell you that there are many changes that happen in your body when you are getting healthier and weight loss is never the biggest or most important change.

                Factors such as muscle gain can affect your weight. You may have still lost weight that week but because muscle weighs more than fat when you get on the scales or you see is negatives. When anyone is in that frame of mind other changes such as toning and loss of inch’s all seem to fall to the wayside. Now that is just one example of bad motivation I am sure there are many others out there.

               Now I should add that having a positive motivation doesn’t necessary guarantee you will succeed. It will set you up with a stable base but there are still many other obstacles that will come between you and your goal. Motivation is like flipping a switch, it works both ways. So weather you have flipped it to get healthier or improve at you particular sport they both generally require complete lifestyle shifts that can be hard to maintain.

               I know I may be repeating myself but I am very serious about this. The important thing to remember is that it’s not uncommon to not always feel like training, or eating clean. At times like this we all need to start saying “I’ve flipped the switch now I have to keep the light on”. I find the reason why people don’t do this is because they don’t hold themselves accountable. The excuse is always something got in the way or someone led me astray. Long story short nine times out of ten you can find a way past this. That`s when we come back to keeping the switch flipped.

              There are very simple ways to combat this kind of thinking. The first thing I would recommend when you flip on your switch is to write down your goals using the S.M.A.R.T acronym (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely). Specific relates to what is it you want to achieve and the more detail you use the more likely you will be to achieve the goal. Most people say to me,”I want to lose weight”, followed by my reply “can you be more specific?” really what they want is to reduce fat. I have a specific goal of lifting more than an 80kg snatch and 110 clean and jerk to go to nationals. You will want the goal to be measurable otherwise how will you know if you achieved it? I am measuring mine by kg`s. You might measure yours by cm/inches. Is it achievable this and realistic tie together well. I can realistically hit my goal this year within the time frame I set. If you’re an 80kg female setting a goal of losing 60kg this isn`t realistic or achievable without losing a limb or two. Timely is a favourite of mine because it can be hard on your own to set a time for something you aren’t 100% sure of. My goal is to be achieved by the 7th of October. Remember that you can have smaller goals tied into your overall goal in business sometime KPI`s is the buzz acronym, key performance indicators. I set smaller goals based on the above principles. So should you.

                Record things or situations that can get in the way of reaching those goals it is just as important as setting yourself a realistic goal. Writing these things down can provide perspective and you can brainstorm ways to overcome them. This goes a long to keeping the light switched on. It is so important to set yourself up for success. If you have even a small amount of motivation embrace it and focus on it and it will grow. Once you have the switch flipped keep the light on by using the two methods above. If you have any questions email us at therandomandthefit@hotmail.com