What Do You Really Want?

Seriously folks, that is an important question! What is it that you truly want for yourself physically? If you were to sit down all by yourself and honestly write down exactly what you want in regards to your physical condition, what would it say? I challenge you to do this. Be truthful and open with yourself. After that, take that piece of paper (or maybe entire notebook for some of us) and set it aside for an hour or so....either way, make sure that you come back to it and read it again to yourself carefully. There is something that I encourage many of my clients to do and that is to think of your progress towards your fitness goals as a journey. I guarantee you that nobody reaches their goals overnight, regardless of how bad we may want to. So first, you must get very real with yourself about what your destination is exactly. What will you feel like when you get there? How will your clothes feel? What kind of energy or mental clarity will you have? How will you look in the mirror? What will you look like in those family pictures? What kind of compliments will you get? What will your friends or spouse say to you? This is important to think about because unless you fully understand your destination, then how will you know whether you are making progress along the way? In other words, once we know the goal...then we can measure progress appropriately. Frustration can set in when we are looking for the wrong markers of progress along the way.
If it is important to you to wear a certain dress size, or to have those jeans fit a little looser, then why would you rely on the bathroom scale to tell you how you are doing? What does the scale really tell you anyways? I've known many people who commit to an effective, proper eating and exercise program and begin to shed body fat and lose inches, only to get frustrated when their bathroom scale didn't register a change in the first few weeks that they were following the program. What the scale failed to show was that they were increasing the muscle mass throughout their body which, in turn was boosting their metabolism through the roof. Their bodies were storing more energy and quite possibly more efficiently storing water in their muscles. All of these things weigh something! At the same time, they were losing quite a bit of weight in body fat. However, when you add it all up their total body weight may have stayed relatively stable. They wanted to be more trim, fit into a certain size of clothes and generally feel better... all of which was happening! But they couldn't get past what the scale was showing and ultimately gave up out of frustration.
That was just an example of how looking for the wrong markers of progress can get in the way of ultimately reaching your destination. My point is that if you want change....clarify the goal.