There will be a right/perfect time to start.
Ask 10 people how their day was or week looks and the answer you’ll get is “busy”. Everyone is busy and there’s never a perfect time to start working out or eating healthy. Waiting for the “right time” is a procrastination technique and only makes it harder to start later. There’s always another holiday coming up, another project at work or another __________. Start now and if life does calm down, you’ll just have even more time to workout and grocery shop!
If you “slip up” a little, the whole day/weekend might as well go out the window.
My favorite analogy for this is — if you accidentally dropped your phone on the ground, you wouldn’t proceed to stomp on it. Just because one meal doesn’t go as planned or you had an “extra” snack doesn’t mean the whole day or week is lost. One reason people aren’t successful is because they aren’t able to fail small. People who enjoy some candy on Halloween and then don’t worry about it on November 1st have a successful mindset. People who enjoy some candy on Halloween, then enjoy some more candy November 1-5th because they have been restricting sweets for so long, then feel guilty, then over-reduce calories to make up for it, then binge due to being restricted — usually aren’t successful. Stop the yo-yo madness, fail small and your stress level will thank you.
How look is more important than how you feel.
I relate to this one big time. I remember doing 500 crunches a night so that I could have abs like Brittany Spears. I remember needing to put on makeup before going anywhere. I can’t tell you how liberating it is to go to the gym without makeup after refusing to do so for almost a decade. If you are only concerned with what you look like, you will likely never be happy even if you achieve your “dream body”. A lot of the things we think will make us happy, won’t really do that. (Don’t believe me? Check out the Happiness Lab podcast.) So focus instead on habits you’ve created, strength you’ve gained and progress you’ve made mentally and emotionally.
I’ve failed before so I’ll probably fail again.
Learn to repeat this to yourself: Failure is a learning opportunity. I don’t care how many times you fail at something, there is always something you can takeaway from it. If you can’t find it, you’re probably not looking hard enough or need an outside perspective because you’re too close to it. Failing usually means that you haven’t found the right thing yet. I like the quote “It takes what it takes”, because it reminds us that we don’t decide what it takes to reach our goals. It simply takes what it takes. If we “fail” then we need to look at implementing more strategies so that we can do what it takes or find more reasonable/better goals. Everyone is different and if you’re trying to make your journey look exactly like someone else’s you might miss finding the way that is best and most effective for you.
“_______________” should be easy.
Says who! No one said weight loss, gaining muscle or learning to love your body at any size would be effortless. Both physical and mental goals take work. Most things worth doing don’t happen by accident. Whether it’s getting to a pull-up goal or not calling yourself “bad” for having a cookie, you’ll need to put in effort and break habits to make change. It will undoubtedly be uncomfortable, but that’s where the growth happens. So embrace it and one day you’ll find yourself on the other side of your goal 🙂