Paradigm Shifts: Change Your Outlook, Change Your Body

Fitness, for me, has not just been a physical journey. It has been an introspective one a well. Through learning about myself, seeing how I've changed, and interacting with people who have been in similar situations, I've come up with a few mental changes you can work on to be more successful - not just in your fitness journey, but in other aspects of life as well.

Learn your triggers, then learn to deal with them
I'll start this post out with a bit of honesty. I cheated on my diet today. Why? Stress. Today's my last day of spring break, I haven't done any of my homework, I had to wake up at 5AM for work today (and, due to daylight savings time, I lost an hour of sleep on top of that) and to top it off, I wrecked two wheels on my car in as many days.

So, I've identified stress, and specifically the cause of it, as what triggered me to overeat. Good first step. To deal with triggers, I suggest one of three basic strategies: Eliminate, navigate, and mitigate.

Eliminating triggers is probably the simplest and most effective thing you can do. Once you've identified a trigger, avoid it entirely. One easy example I can provide, I'm a beer snob, and I like my beer how I like my metal: black, heavy, and dark. However, when you like 11% ABV Russian Imperial Stouts that come in between 300 and 400 calories a bottle, you can't be drinking too many of them. So, the first thing I did, I stopped keeping beer in my house. My opportunity to drink as an impulsive decision has been eliminated, and I'm much less inclined to do so if it involves getting in my car, going to the store, and buying one. Second thing I uninstalled Untappd, an app where you earn rewards for, you guessed it, drinking beer. No longer feeling compelled to earn those rewards, the frequency of my drinking dropped dramatically about a week after I removed the program.

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to eliminate triggers. Option two is to navigate them. I work with food that doesn't fit in my diet. Dealing with that temptation on its own wouldn't be a problem, except I have one coworker who insists that I eat it. I politely decline, she becomes more insistent. Unfortunately, this dynamic has derailed me more times than I would have liked. Since I can't realistically avoid the situation altogether, I've had to develop strategies to navigate the situation. A few things I've done in this situation:

• Ate the food she offered me, just a lot less of it.
• Told her that I already had some, or that I would get some later.
• Reminded her that if I stop watching my diet, I gain weight rapidly.
• Took some of the food she gave me, and threw it out while she wasn't looking.

Option three is to mitigate. Mitigating is when you've already slipped up, learning how to apply the brakes and steer yourself away from a full out binge. Basically, avoiding the situation where you tell yourself, "Well, I've already blown my diet today, I might as well have another piece of cake." And, inevitably, one more piece of cake turns into at least three.

Mitigating is what I did today. I realized that my willpower was diminished, and I wasn't going to be able to stick to my portion sizes. So, I at least stuck somewhat to healthy foods, filling up mostly on chicken, oatmeal and cottage cheese. Once I'd eaten enough to satisfy myself, I was in a better state to wind down, and curb my calorie consumption. Admittedly, this is not an easy thing to do, and I'm not always successful at it. However, I have found that just being conscious of the fact that you're doing it gives you a foothold into controlling it.

Stop playing the blame game
In my paragraph about navigation, I could easily blame my coworker for trying to knock me off my diet. I could blame myself for being weak-willed. I could blame my parents, the education system, my genetics, or the manufacturers of El Monterey microwavable chimichangas for making me fat in the first place. How does this help me? Simple, it doesn't.

Blaming others for your own failures is obviously not productive. Primarily, because it's based on the egotistical idea that you are fundamentally perfect and don't need to change. That begets learned helplessness. Blaming yourself is equally unproductive. That leads to feelings of inadequacy, and again, learned helplessness.

So, who is to blame? It doesn't matter. Stop thinking about that question, and stop using the word "blame." What matters is the fact that you have the power to make choices right now and going forward.

Lose the sense of entitlement
While you're removing the word "blame" from your vocabulary, strike out the word "deserve" as well. I remember seeing a commercial for Planet Fitness, advertising free pizza nights for their members. "You've been working out, you deserve to have some pizza once in a while." A couple months later I was reading an article about why Planet Fitness is so financially successful, and one of the key reasons is because, in a given month, 75% of their members never show up. Now, think about that for a second. They're giving people food which counteracts their fitness efforts, as a means of rewarding their fitness efforts, when most of them put in no effort. That's flat out ridiculous.

While this may seem like an extreme example, it's really indicative of the mindset that a lot of people go into with fitness, that they have to reward themselves for sticking to their plan, even if the reward isn't sticking to the plan. Truth is, people often don't know how many calories they're burning, or how many they're consuming, so these rewards often undo the work they've done. This is why people who reward themselves are overwhelmingly unsuccessful.

I propose a new plan. You're probably an adult with a job, or maybe a student. You go to work or school every day because it's something you have to do, not because you've bribed yourself into it. Step one, learn to take some responsibility. Step two, make sure your plan is sustainable. If you constantly need external reinforcement, you should rethink what you're doing, because your plan will likely fail in the long term. Step three, change the way you think about your deviations. There are ways to build a certain amount of flexibility into your diet. If you do decide to eat some junk food, it will be because you've accounted for it and determined that you can eat it without significantly hindering your progress.

Stop being self conscious
I'm amazed at how many people come to the internet looking for a solution to the same problem. They want to start working out, but the thought of working out around other people terrifies them. However, the truth is that to make meaningful progress, you have to leave your comfort zone. Jogging in a crowded gym is one step you can take to get yourself more accustomed to taking risks.

Now, I occasionally get weird looks in the gym if I'm doing barbell glute bridges, or snide comments about my diet from coworkers as I'm shoveling handfuls of spinach into my mouth. However, I would recommend keeping the following things in mind.

• What you're doing, you're doing for yourself. The opinion of strangers should not matter to you.
• Maybe people will judge you. But unless it's a person who you personally care about, or who can directly influence your life, it's irrelevant.
• The vast majority of the times people judge you, they will forget that they have done so by the end of the day.

While I don't necessarily agree with the entire sentiment of it, The Complete Guide to Not Giving a Fuck by Julien Smith is an interesting read on the topic.

Realize that you're not as busy as you think
"I don't have time to exercise," is a pretty common excuse I hear. Yeah, I get it, everyone's busy. Between school and work, I'm out of the house 7 days a week, usually a couple of those days surpass 12 hours. I still find time to cook and work out. Let me rephrase that. Everyone thinks they're busy. I remember being in college my first time around, telling people I was too busy to do things, and routinely spending hours on end playing flash games.Without knowing the details of your schedule, it's hard to say exactly how. But, two general tips I can give you is to cut down on nonproductive activities, and find ways to streamline your schedule.

First, nonproductive activities. Over the past couple years, I've basically stopped watching TV and playing video games. I realize it's a thing that people enjoy, but once you're done, you have nothing to show for it, and you haven't even gained any meaningful experiences.

Streamlining your schedule can usually be done by eliminating redundancy. A few things I've taken to doing is doing meal prep in large batches rather than cooking a lot of individual meals, eliminating unnecessary shopping trips, and studying while I'm riding the train.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said, "If the President has time to work out, and the Pope has time to work out, you have time to work out."