Consistency over detail

Successful people do the basics well and consistently

Sometimes it’s easy to look at these things and think- they’re too simple there must be more to it than that. The reason I’m not getting the results I want isn’t that I’m eating too little or too much it must be how my body responds to certain foods… and so on.

Now the truth is there are lots of variables to our health and fitness. But, you can take account of all these things and yet if you don’t nail the basics it won’t be effective.

Think of your fitness and nutrition like levels in a game- to get to level two you must master level one. Each level acts as a foundation for the next level. You’ll often hear of things like the nutrition pyramid – that’s the same concept, you need to establish a solid base (in nutrition that’s getting your energy balance right) before looking at macro and micro nutrients, meal timings or supplements – you basically don’t want to build on a shoddy base!

It’s human nature for us to want to look into the specifics, the idea that little tweaks will be the things that makes everything fall into place for us is a tempting one. But it’s the little tweaks at the basic level that will first make the difference. Once you’ve cracked those then feel free to move onto looking at the specifics of what and when you eat if you still want to- although you might find that you feel less of a need to.

The key is you need to do these things more often than not and over a sustained period of time. That’s not to say you must never take a break or have off days, just that you do things more often than you don’t.

Habits are key

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

Real life health is all about habits.

You might think it’s about eating ‘good foods’ or training every day or drinking protein shakes but really it’s about creating small habits that you can do everyday without really needing to think about it that help improve your general well-being.

Here’s a few things I try to do daily that have now become habits I barely even think about.

1) Drinking at least 3 litres of water. Staying hydrated is good for you.

2) Drinking a pint of water and taking supplements when I first wake up. Helps with habit number one, wakes me up and the supplements help contribute towards anything I might be lacking. I only take a general multi vitamin and Omega 3, nothing expensive – whatever shop brand I happen to come to when I need to buy some. The Omega 3 I take because it’s supposed to help combat depression and I have taken them since 2015 because of this (even if it’s a placebo effect I take it!).

3) Getting at least 10,000 steps a day. NEAT is arguably more beneficial than exercise in staying healthy.

4) Having a simple but regular morning and bedtime routine. Just simple things that tell my brain it’s times to wake up and time to go to bed because I do them daily. The routine helps me wake up and then later in the day fall asleep!

5) Eat 5 portions of fruit, veg or salad. It might be an old fashioned number to aim for but if you can get this in as a minimum daily you’re likely getting plenty of vitamins in.

If you can’t train or eat your normal diet or do the perfect things every day but you can keep to some simple daily habits you’re more likely to stay on track. These things can also act as anchors, things that keep you feeling in control even if you don’t manage to do everything you planned in a day. Mentally that can be a good thing to help you stay on track because a lot of the time it’s mindset that matters when it comes to making progress and staying consistent.

Consistently doing something will always be better than occasionally doing everything

I’ve just got back from a long weekend in Austria. It was an amazing trip and very busy, we didn’t sleep much and were pretty much always on the move. Then I’ve come back to work and it’s a busy week with lots of deadlines.

So I’m pretty tired and more than a little stressed. This has meant I’ve had to adjust what I do in terms of training. I’ve done a little less than normal and adjusted some of my sessions so I’ve done them but they’ve been a little shorter / less intense. It’s a bit frustrating because I feel like this year it’s been one thing after another, illness, work stresses, life stresses. All those things have affected my ability to train and I’ve really not done as much as I wanted to, I’ve had to consistently adjust expectations and it’s difficult to not feel bad about that.

What I’ve had to remind myself is that how we react to things going wrong is what matters most. If we only train when it’s convenient and things are good we will find we are very hit and miss. If we consistently do what we can even if it’s not perfect results will eventually come and we will start to feel better overtime.

Consistently doing something will always be better than occasionally doing everything.

Consistency

I hate the feeling of unless things are perfect you’re failing. I think most of us know that consistency is more important that perfection. But it’s tallying the two notions up and finding the balance and feeling ok with that, that’s difficult.

I tend to beat myself up if I’ve not done everything I meant to in a week. I can have eaten in a calorie deficit but just not necessarily the meals I planned to and I can have trained more than most people, just not completing every session I meant to, and see that as a bad week. When in reality it’s helped me get closer to my goals regardless. The issue in my head is that I’m not meeting the standard I decided to set for myself, even though in reality I’m pretty consistent.

I think I’m pretty common on this.

Part of it comes from social media. On the one hand you see people talking about consistency but at an epic scale. Like, say you see someone super fit who trains on an epic scale every single day or runs every day and then presents this as consistency and shows you all the benefits from creating those habits. Now that’s both inspirational and a little bit disheartening. Because on the one hand you think look at them and if I was consistent like that it could be me. On the other hand, in reality how many people can be like a PT who works in a gym or an influencer who trains as a job? And when it’s someone who has a full time job and still manages to train like crazy, well that’s amazing but what have they had to give up to get it done? Prioritising getting a session in over sleep or seeing your friends isn’t admirable commitment, in my view it’s a bit worrying. Because consistency is getting things done and doing it regularly and week after week but not at the expense of everything else. It should help enrich your days not overtake them. Yes you need to find consistency to regularly make time for your health but also be ok with things changing, not happening, missing sessions or meals.

Of course there’s the other end of consistency, where you consistently do nothing and put getting started off. If you keep saying you’re going to implement a habit and then don’t so put it off for another week, well that won’t help you either. In these situations doing it and not being consistent at first is going to be better than taking an all or nothing approach. If you can then turn that into doing the habit more often than you don’t you will eventually find that consistency.

We need to remember too, that consistency can be lost and regained. Illness, injuries, life events can throw us off balance and it can be hard to regain that momentum again after sometimes. That’s not a failure on our parts, it ‘s pretty normal, and beating ourselves up about it probably does more harm than good.

Diet and exercise really is a lot about mindset and balance – not being all in one camp or all in another, not being all or nothing. Having goals but also being ok about where you are now, being able to celebrate what you can do or have done whilst also aiming to improve. Mentally that’s hard because you have different voices in your head competing and our brains tend to quite like black and white thinking and we’re less comfortable with the various shades of grey, so you have to find a way of not letting that make you feel bad. Fitness is in reality largely a mindset game.

Plan B

Where do you stand on Plan B? Do you have one?

When you plan to do certain workouts one week and then something happens on Tuesday that stops you getting one done how do you react. Do you get disheartened and feel like you’ve failed or do you go to Plan B? Plan B could be you squeeze a walk in instead or a 10 minute run instead of your gym session . Not what you wanted and maybe not ideal but it’s still moving.

If you were going to cook super healthy meals this week but then Thursday at work is awful and you are late home and haven’t had time to go shopping do you just order a takeaway and be done with it and berate how your life stops you from ever being healthy, or do you Plan B it? Maybe that means you take a high protein ready meal you keep in the freezer for such occasions and have that instead. Not what you planned but still it’s lower calorie than a Chinese (and cheaper).

The reality is you will never have a clear run on fitness or weight loss. Unless your life is highly dull you won’t have a training period for a race without Saturday night plans hindering Sunday’s long runs or birthdays and catch ups where you will not want to eat salad and drink mineral water. You will always have bad days at work where the idea of a run followed by chicken and veg post 5pm will make you want to scratch someone’s eyes out. When this happens you have a couple of options, you can think sod it and just go all out with a pizza and a night on the sofa or you can have little Pan B options in place that whilst not perfect are not the same as just giving up.

Sometimes Plan B’s are mental, they require you to change how you view and react to a situation and adjust your own expectations. Sometimes Plan B’s are having back up things in place for when things don’t happen as you meant, like having some emergency meals in the freezer, some healthy snacks in the cupboard, some go to options you can grab from local shops on the go. It’s taking the view that consistency will always beat short bursts of perfection so when things don’t go perfectly looking to mitigate things and find a middle ground rather than saying well I didn’t do my plan A so I may as well just give up. For instance I’ve recently started keeping some of Iceland’s new My Protein range in the freezer because they’re pretty decent size wise and high protein. I’ve also been buying some of Aldi’s Protein desert range (Protein Puddings, Granola yoghurt and Mousse), some of these taste better than others but in terms of getting protein in when I’ve fallen sort they’ve been useful.

Motivation, Consistency and Habits

Motivation as a concept really is rubbish.

The idea that people manage to do amazing things or get impressive results because of amazing motivation is ridiculous. Even when someone is really fired up to do something there will be times when the desire wanes and they just don’t feel like doing whatever they need to do.

Motivation is also pretty hard to get in the first place. The desire to want something is easy to find but the actual need to do something about it is a lot harder to find.

What does get results is creating actions that become habits, to the point where you just do those things regardless of what you feel like. You don’t only go to work when you can be bothered, or clean your teeth when the mood strikes you. These things are habits, you just do them almost on auto pilot, and that’s how you need to be with the things you need to do to achieve your goals.

If you want to run a marathon you need to make running several times a week such a habit that you get up and go for that training run regardless of the weather, what’s on TV, how heavy your legs feel. If you want to go to the gym three times a week you need to make it such a habit that you get there and get changed and get on the gym floor without even thinking about it.

The process of getting started with things, making them such an integral part of your routine you will barely even think, will allow you to start. Normally once you start something you will find you can get into it enough to get it done. That’s where the motion of ‘Just Start’ comes from. Motivation will always be up and down, yet just doing one little thing again and again and again will bring the consistency required for results (and ironically the motivation we all think we need)

When is a calorie deficit not a calorie deficit?

You might be surprised at how often people say to PTs, I’m barely eating anything and still not losing weight or I’m in a calorie deficit but nothing is happening.

This is when the idea that it must be your metabolism, carbs, the time you’re eating or the lack of random expensive magic juice in your diet that is stopping the weight loss.

Now I’m reality, on the odd week it might simply be water retention, not having a poo recently, your period or hormones affecting your weight.

But if your weight is consistently not coming down week on week even if you are in a calorie deficit here’s the reason for the scale not going down.

You aren’t actually in a calorie deficit.

– Are you actually tracking and if you are are you including EVERYTHING (sauces, coffees, left overs). You need to honest with yourself here.

– Are you consistently in a deficit. If you are Monday to Friday but waaay over calories on the weekend you probably aren’t actually in a real deficit.

– Maybe you are being honest about what you’re eating but overestimating how much your burning each day.

If this is the case you could try dropping your calories by a small amount each day (250 calories to start) and seeing what happens, you might need to drop a bit further but by bit until you start to see movement.

If you are in a calorie deficit consistently you will overtime drop weight so if you aren’t seeing progress you are not in a calorie deficit. Good news here – now you know that’s the issue you can work to change it.

Back to Basics

As I’ve written recently I’m looking at going back to basics to get back into a routine.

Over the last week my training has been more consistent, my NEAT has been decent and I’m drinking plenty of water and nailing a few other habits. There’s two things I’ve struggled with though have been my nutrition and getting up in the morning.

I’ve not eaten terribly but I’ve not eaten what I’ve planned and as such have ended up going over my calorie goal. The reason? Stress.

It’s been a stressful week, work and personal stuff combined has meant I’ve been anxious at times and just generally strung out at others, feeling a bit like I was never going to fit everything into each day.

I wish I was one of those people who lost their appetite under stress. I am however a person who turns to sugar instead. Between snacking on sweet stuff and then opting to not eat the nice balanced meals I’d prepared and instead eat more carb based high calorie meals has meant that my nutrition just hasn’t gone to plan.

In reaction to this though I’m not going to do anything drastic. I’ve got food planned for the coming week and I’m hoping for a quieter week so I won’t be as tempted to reach for a high sugar stress release.

The key here I think is to not beat yourself out when the week doesn’t quite go to plan, not react by going on some drastic campaign to make up for it and just focus on starting again the next day.

So I’m taking the same approach to my mornings too. Last week I snoozed my alarm a lot, this week I’m reverting back to a cheap old school alarm in the next room so I have to get up to turn it off. A few bad mornings last week don’t need to define the coming week and other than trying to make a few small adjustments to improve my morning routine I don’t need to do anything crazy.

Do the basic things really well

How are you feeling about your nutrition right now?

It’s really tempting when you aren’t feeling on top of things to look for radical solutions. But what we really want to do at times like that are revisit the basics.

If you’re currently feeling a bit lost think about

– Your TDEE

– Macros / proteins

– Your calorie deficit

– Your habits and anchors that make you feel better

Remind yourself of the most important principles.

You don’t need to drastically cut calories or change what you’re eating just remind yourself of the basics. Once they are in place you can think about more in depth aspects of your nutrition, but until then you will likely be sabotaging your own results by ignoring the foundations in an attempt to build the house quicker.

Do the Basics Well

Successful people do the basics well and consistently

Sometimes it’s easy to look at things and think- they’re too simple there must be more to it than that. The reason I’m not getting the results I want isn’t that I’m eating too little or too much it must be how my body responds to certain foods… and so on.

Now the truth is there are lots of variables to our health and fitness. But, you can take account of all these things and yet if you don’t nail the basics it won’t be effective.

Think of your fitness and nutrition like levels in a game- to get to level two you must master level one. Each level acts as a foundation for the next level. You’ll often hear of things like the nutrition pyramid – that’s the same concept, you need to establish a solid base (in nutrition that’s getting your energy balance right as we discussed yesterday) before looking at macro and micro nutrients, meal timings or supplements will be useful- you basically don’t want to build on a shoddy base!

It’s human nature for us to want to look into the specifics, the idea that little tweaks will be the things that makes everything fall into place for us is tempting. But it’s the little tweaks at the basic level that will first make the difference. Once you’ve cracked those then feel free to move onto looking at the specifics of what and when you eat if you still want to- although you might find that you feel less of a need to.