One of the biggest barriers to improving your health & fitness is simply not believing you can actually do it. This is understandable. If you have tried to lose weight ten times, repeatedly started and stopped exercising or spent years trying to improve your health, then eventually you start thinking it could never happen. You may also believe even if you could get results, there is no chance you could maintain them long term.
However, I think most people massively underestimate what is possible. You can change your body, fitness and health. You can also change how you think and act around food and exercise. More importantly, you can do this in a way where you are able to maintain the change long term. If you do not believe you can be successful then these questions should be of help:
Can Your Body Actually Change? – People often believe their age, genetics, metabolism, hormones or health mean their body simply cannot change. Yet in most cases the body will definitely get results IF you do the right actions.
Weight loss is the easiest example. Almost everyone who believes they cannot lose weight has actually lost weight previously. The problem was usually maintaining it. We also know from famine, or medical ward nutrition studies (where food is controlled) everyone loses weight. This doesn’t mean losing weight is easy, as hunger, emotions, habits, stress and your environment all make it hard to eat less or move more. But that is very different from your body being physically incapable of losing fat.
Fitness works in much the same way. Take someone who has done no exercise and gradually make them walk, run, cycle or lift weights and they get fitter every single time. Your health can change surprisingly quickly too. Improving your exercise, nutrition, sleep, alcohol, smoking and stress improve health markers.
Can You Really Change Your Behaviour? – I feel most people instinctively do know they could achieve their goals if they could stick to the needed behaviours. However, you do not feel you can change your habits.
Yet your entire life is evidence that you can change your behaviour. Think about all the habits you have developed over your lifetime. Unfortunately, some of these may be bad ones. Perhaps you gradually started drinking more, exercising less, eating more takeaways or spending hours on your phone.
If your brain can create bad habits, your habit-creation system is clearly working. You have almost certainly created good behaviours too. Perhaps you stopped smoking, started eating vegetables, took up exercise, reduced your drinking, learnt to cook or developed routines around your work.
Your life story is basically one long sequence of behaviour change. The question therefore isn’t really whether you can change. You are changing all the time. The useful question is how you can deliberately make more of those changes work in your favour.
Can You Put In Enough Effort? – Another common belief is that getting results simply requires more motivation and effort than you have available.
Yet we often forget how much effort not changing takes. Being unfit makes normal physical tasks harder. Poor sleep makes the day harder. Constantly worrying about your weight drains your mental energy. Starting restrictive diets every few months takes effort. Going from being “good” all week to overeating every weekend takes effort.
You may already be putting enormous effort into your health & fitness, just in the wrong places. Trying to survive on tuna and broccoli takes effort. Doing workouts you hate takes effort. Repeatedly losing and regaining the same weight takes effort. The answer isn’t necessarily finding more motivation. It may simply be directing the effort you already have towards things that are easier to repeat and actually produce results.
But Could You Maintain It? – Why put all that effort into changing if you are eventually going to end up back where you started? The mistake is imagining that maintaining your future results requires you to continue doing everything you did to achieve it.
Losing weight requires a calorie deficit. Maintaining your weight doesn’t. Getting fitter requires enough exercise to force your body to adapt. Maintaining fitness requires considerably less.
You also don’t have to maintain your absolute best forever. If you trained for a marathon last year, you don’t always need to be ready to run another one tomorrow. If you get into the best shape of your life for a holiday, you don’t need to look exactly like that every day for the next twenty years. Long-term success is not permanently living at your peak, it is about generally living at a better level of results.
It is important to remember that future you will not feel like current you, therefore exercise that currently feels difficult may eventually feel normal. Foods you currently struggle to control may become less important. Behaviours that currently require conscious effort can eventually become habits.
You Don’t Have To Believe You Will Succeed – Millions of people buy lottery tickets despite knowing they probably won’t win, but they all believe they could win That tiny amount of possibility is enough for them to buy the ticket.
I think health & fitness is similar. I’m not asking you to believe you will definitely transform your body, become incredibly fit, optimise your health and completely change your relationship with food and exercise. You should simply accept that it is possible. Your odds are considerably better than winning the lottery as your results are based on actions you control.
What Does This Mean For You?
If you have struggled with your health & fitness for years, don’t make the mistake of using your previous failures as proof that you cannot change. They only show what you tried previously didn’t create lasting results.
Your body can change, your behaviours can change and you are capable of putting in the necessary effort. The best bit is that maintaining results is much easier than obtaining them in the first place.
You don’t need to believe that everything will work perfectly this time. For now, just leave the door open to the possibility that things could be different if you give it a try.
Photo – Talking of impossible feats, the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona is now considered to be complete after 144 years. This photo was from a year ago where I ran 80km in four days. Finally, Battersea park legend Joe running and lifting at age 90
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