Being fit and fabulous over 40 takes work. But you shouldn’t have to suffer.
When I work with my clients, what we are doing is not really about “losing weight”, “balancing hormones”, or “leaning up”.
Those things are the icing on the cake.
What we are actually doing is gradually accumulating a pile of healthy habits through careful goal-setting and planning.
And during the process you are learning about yourself, you are gaining confidence, you are becoming a strategic eater and “liver of life”, and you are becoming more comfortable in who you are.
A natural consequence of this growth and the cumulative achievements is that you also happen to be healthier, fitter, more energetic, and dare I say, absolutely fabulous!
How is all this achieved without some serious suffering?
By working through a process.
It is crucial that you understand what you want to achieve and why.
And from this you absolutely must set goals and determine a plan.
But the key here is that you set small, mini-goals along the way that carry you to success.
And most importantly, that you set two types of goals.
The first type of goal is what you are used to hearing about. It may be something like, “I will lose 4 pounds a month” OR “I will reduce my body fat to below 25%” OR “I will be able to get through the day without coffee.”
These are outcome-oriented goals. And they are definitely a must!
But we all know that most people who lose weight gain it all back.
The isolated emphasis on these types of goals is where we fail.
For sustained success it cannot be just about reaching a specific weight or body composition.
For success, you have to change and grow.
And the way you do this is by setting process-oriented goals in addition to those outcome-oriented goals.
For example, “I will give myself 9 hours a night of sleep opportunity each night so that I sleep at least 7-8 hours.” OR “I will do strength training 4 hours a week.” OR “I will eat 10 servings of fresh veggies every day.”
Now you are talking about lifestyle habits that are going to propel you toward your goal AND make you feel really good.
And because feeling good is addictive, you are going to want to keep it up.
I do highly recommend starting off with small, achievable goals. You may think it sounds silly. It is not.
Setting small goals and achieving them and then moving on to bigger goals is WAY better than setting large, unrealistic goals, becoming overwhelmed, and just giving it all up.
For example, if you want to reach the goal of strength training 4 days a week maybe you start with just walking for 5 minutes 4 days a week.
It may sound like you won’t get far just walking for 20 minutes a week but compare that to doing nothing. Now it sounds like something right?
And after about a month when you are really good about doing those 5 minutes, you will start to build on it. Maybe you increase it to 10 minutes a day for another month.
Again, it doesn’t sound earth-shattering but at this point you are going to feel more confident that you can reach your goals, because you are already doing it! And you may even start to crave those walks.
Then maybe you can bump it up to 20 minutes a day or you can start doing some body weight movements for 10 minutes before your 10-minute walk.
And so on, keep building on the small yet strong habits and in 6 months you will be well on your way to your goal of doing strength training 4 days a week.
Compare that to the person who goes all out and works out every day for the first month and then gets burnt out because the habit was too much, too soon, and then they just quit. 6 months later where will she be?
Do you see the magic of this? It is slow-going but it’s sticky!
And the cool thing is that because you are working gradually on building those habits and skills, the pain of change is drastically reduced!
Do you see how the process-oriented goals are very powerful and empowering?
And the outcome-oriented goals can almost be discouraging? (we still need them but they shouldn’t be the main focus)
If you are struggling with reaching your health goals and you desire to be fabulous BUT you do not want to suffer, reach out to me for a free clarity call.
