Are You Doing Enough to See Physical Results?
by Anna Victoria in Fitness
I want to talk about reflecting on effort vs. progress/results. Often times we feel we are putting in effort, but really we have slipped into a rut and we’re just going through the motions. Sometimes we need to take a good, deep look at our actual effort and decide if this effort warrants the progress we expect to see. Are you really pushing yourself in your workouts? Are you really sticking to 80/20? These are important questions to ask if you’re not seeing the results you want.
The thing about this journey is that you get out what you put in. I often think of the saying, “don’t be upset by the results you didn’t get with the work you didn’t do.” It can seem like tough love, and may be hard to digest, but often times we want results and we want them now even if we haven’t put in enough work to justify expecting those results.
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Here are two questions I want you to ask yourself:
• On a scale of 1-10, how healthy am I eating?
• On a scale of 1-10, how consistently am I working out?
If your answer is below a 7-8 then you could be seeing more results than you are, you just have to increase your efforts.
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The reason I say 7-8 and not 10 is because your journey does NOT have to be perfect to see progress. You are allowed some wiggle room to be human! So if you have a bad day or if you have an extra cheat meal here and there, it’s not going to derail you unless you let it. Many of you FBG girls have been successful in adopting the “progress not perfection” mentality, and that’s exactly what will lead you to seeing and feeling progress. I hope each and every one of you reading this will reach that point of being able to focus on progress and let those bad days roll off your shoulders. 🙂
If your response to the two questions above was below a 7, I want to highlight some things you can do to increase your efforts.
• First and foremost, you’ve gotta get real with yourself. You can’t sugar coat your efforts or make excuses for why you couldn’t do this or that. At the end of the day, your results don’t care why you didn’t get things done, they just know that you didn’t.
• Take a look at how closely you’re following the Fit Body meal plan or your own macros/clean eating. If you’re a beginner and you’re deviating from the plan, try following it as closely as you can until you get a hold on healthy/clean eating. If you’ve been following the meal plan for some time and feel confident in your own meal choices, just be sure you’re substituting within the same food groups.
• If you don’t feel confident in your portions, try tracking your macros for a few days to see if your portions are lining up with the actual macros you need. Often times, women don’t see results because we underestimate how much food we need when we begin working out, especially when it comes to protein! Our caloric/macro intake nearly doubles! Don’t under-eat and miss out on seeing the progress you should be seeing if you were fueling your body correctly. However, with that being said, don’t feel that tracking macros is required in order to see progress. I recommend trying it for a few days to get an understanding of portions. Once you feel confident in your portions, tracking isn’t necessary. I didn’t do it for three years, myself! I track my macros now just because I’m at a more advanced stage in my journey.
• Drink enough water. Our need for water also increases once we begin exercising.
• Get enough sleep! This is a topic not discussed nearly enough considering its importance. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body can’t repair, heal or regenerate properly. It also throws off our hormones and our hormones are directly linked to weight gain. As adult females, we should be getting around 7 hours of sleep a day. Of course more than that would be even better, but we all know how busy life gets. If you’re getting less than 5-6 hours, you’re likely negatively impacting your body’s ability to regenerate and your hormones’ ability to balance out.
• Be consistent in the gym! If you can’t find the 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week that most Fit Body App programs follow, that’s fine! You can double up a few days of the week and do one strength workout and one cardio workout 2-3x a week if needed. I only recommend this if the alternative is no workouts at all. If you can fit the 30 minutes a day in 6x a week, this is what I recommend and how the workouts are designed. However, if this isn’t feasible, I would much rather you work out 3-4x a week than feel overwhelmed and get in no workouts at all!
• If you’ve done several rounds of the Fit Body App, up the weights or the intensity level! And then up them some more. Your body needs extra resistance and stress in order to continually be challenged. The workouts are flexible and can be changed to lower intensity with higher weight if that’s what your body needs.
• Remember that we are ALL different. We have different starting points, different backgrounds, different genetics, different body types. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else and how they’re progressing. The more time you focus on other people, the less time you’ll be able to spend focusing on your own personal growth.
• Don’t look at how far you have to go. I have been guilty of this myself and I know how overwhelming it can be. Take it one day at a time and see how you can make today and tomorrow your best. I include tomorrow in this because there is an element of preparation. You can’t just roll into each day expecting things to work out. You have to consciously think about where you will be, how you’re going to eat the right meals, and meal prep if that’s the only way to stay on track. You might have to schedule your workouts, or even wake up early each day to fit them in. If you leave your workouts to whatever time you want in the day, they may not happen, so focus on doing your best today while also preparing for tomorrow. Aside from that, let go of the rest!
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• Last but not least… accept that this journey requires some sacrifice. I want you to learn how to live a healthy lifestyle while still enjoying life. However, if you’re still learning how to do that and allowing old habits to creep in, you need to get tough with yourself and refuse to let that happen. Keep your indulgences to your one cheat meal a week, and if a second cheat meal happens, no biggie. But if a third and a fourth happens, that’s when you need to tighten the reins a bit.
At the end of the day, I’m sharing all of this with you because these are all things that I’ve struggled with myself. I know it’s not easy, but I know that you can do it. I’m still on this journey with you and we’re going to do it together. We’re going to make it happen!
