People in the fitness world love to throw around words like discipline, motivation, consistency, grind, go hard, stay hard, and a plethora of other gripping words alongside videos of their workout routine or food choices or whatever in 15 second snippets. They aren’t necessarily wrong in using this mentality to entice people. They are great qualities in people pursuing a life of health and fitness and most people WANT the things that disciplined, motivated people seem to have. We often assume discipline and motivation are the big movers when it comes to our wellbeing. And I agree.
But, what I wish we talked about more is the HOW, not so much of the what in the fitness world.
Be disciplined. Ok, but HOW?? And don’t give me your 12 step morning routine or I may scream. I’m pulled in one thousand different directions on any given day.
Stay motivated! Cool, but HOW?? I slept 4 hours last night, I skipped breakfast and the last thing I want to do is go to the gym. And frankly, I’m NOT motivated to do much of anything sometimes.
Be consistent. Got it, but HOW? I’m traveling every weekend for 2 months, every day is different and my right hip, right shoulder, toe, finger, (whatever body part ;-), has been bothering me for weeks and I don’t want to or know how to keep going.
Exercise. Ok, but when will that fit in my schedule? I’m already overwhelmed.
Eat more vegetables. Yep, K. But literally how? I can barely think about what to eat, let alone making that thing healthier.
Directives are fine. Do this, be this. But, I’ve found the greatest obstacle is often more about figuring out how the heck to do the actual thing than people knowing what they ‘should’ be doing.
In behavior change models there are what is called stages of change.
Here they are:
- Precontemplation: Individuals in this stage are not considering change and may be unaware of or in denial about the problem behavior.
- Contemplation: Individuals are aware of the problem and are seriously thinking about changing, but have not yet committed to action.
- Preparation: Individuals have decided to change and are preparing to take action, possibly gathering information or making small changes.
- Action: Individuals are actively making changes to their behavior.
- Maintenance: Individuals are working to maintain the new behavior and prevent relapse.
- Termination: The new behavior is fully integrated, and there is no risk of relapse.
At Mac-Town, we often meet people around the contemplation or preparation stages. I can usually tell in our consultation conversations where they are between the two. We ask questions specifically to sort this out because it matters in how we approach the individual. We want to help the best we can and understanding our starting point helps us help better.
In both stages, they KNOW they should be doing the disciplined, motivated, consistent thing, but that thing is new to them. We talk about the HOW, not just the what.
We ask about it all.
Exercise, yep.
Eat better, yep.
Drink more water, yep.
Manage sleep and stress, yep.
What’s most important to you right now?
Tell me about your day to day?
What’s an average day of food, water, sleep, stress look like right now?
These are the kinds of things we want to know.
For example, it’s not uncommon for someone to tell me they don’t eat breakfast. (Thanks intermittent fasting for the general population-insert eye roll). So after discussing the benefits of breakfast, we may talk about the how. If you wanted to start eating breakfast, how would you go about that? Do we need to wake up a little sooner? Do we need to add a few different things to the grocery list? Do we need to meal prep a few things when we have time? The how becomes more valuable than the what for behavior change progress.
What doesn’t work long term is guilting or shaming you into believing you just HAVE TO BE DISCIPLINED. “Just eat breakfast. It’s not that hard.” That motivation is a consistent state of being. (It isn’t!) These are learned behaviors!
So, yeah. Discipline. Motivation. Consistency. Those characteristics require effort at first. How do we help you move through the stages of behavior change so we eventually hit termination? That’s what the people who are truly, often quietly, living out these things have done, whether they realize it or not!
We want to help you develop new behaviors so YOUR life looks and feels different for YOU!
Just telling you what to do is a small part of the equation. I want to talk about the how with you!
And that often takes more curiosity and more questions and more options to help than your average gym/trainer/coach.
And, we’re not interested in being average.
