Where’s Your Head At?

Mindset and behavior are a two-way street when it comes to achieving fitness goals. One should not come at the expense of the other, but they sometimes do. You may have all the motivation in the world but falter as soon as you enter a situation that is not on your fitness or nutrition plan. This is where automatic behaviors may creep back in from the animal brain and set-back your process. Conversely, fitness may be as automatic as brushing your teeth, but if you don’t have the impetus to keep improving, it is also human nature for you to train or diet only so hard as you need in order to maintain your current state. The body likes homeostasis, and it has smart ways of reinforcing it.

Mindset

To me, mindset comes down to a number of factors that determine whether healthy habits will be followed with a long-term view. Sure, you could spend a fine chunk of change on an 8-week plan, but what happens when you lose the structure of the plan which is dictating your behavior? In the absence of your coach, do you succumb to temptation and wonder what the hell happened? As if you blacked out?

When our environment changes out of the norm, the thing that keeps you on track is your larger reason for undertaking a fitness and nutrition plan. Personally, I am someone who views adverse scenarios as a challenge to be overcome. I hate the idea of food, a person, or a circumstance having some kind of power over me. I like to refer back to Dwayne The Rock Johnson’s speech about putting your back against the wall, to remind you of the circumstances you came from, to remind you that you are treading a fine line.

But dwelling too long on your current situation, or a past-life may not be wise. There is something to be said for putting the past behind you but to learn from its lessons and internalize them. This is where behavior comes into play.

Behavior

What can help here is to see your future goals as something that are flexible, rather than rigid. Taking an agile approach if you will so that the little things you do along the way add up and make a bigger impact over time. This is where focusing on behavior can come in handy. Because at times, we can’t see just how much progress we are making on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis. And sometimes, the body doesn’t even respond to new changes right away.

If you make a commitment to exercise 4 times per week, no matter what, and eat regular healthy meals every day, you will see results one way or the other. Mindset can falter as motivation loses its novelty, and this is where automatic habits can safeguard long-term progress. There are days and even weeks where my workouts are like drawing blood out of a stone, but I still show up. It is as automatic for me as brushing my teeth.

The convergence of the Two

What can be helpful is to pick a time when motivation is high to make a change and to take the 4-6 weeks to make incremental changes in behavior that will carry through once the honeymoon period wears off. Then to avoid feeling like you’re just going through the motions, it can be helpful to give say organize a photoshoot or something to work towards. What you will find, is that you manage to cross the finish line, no matter how it felt along the way, and are surprised at how much you really have improved.

You have now experienced some positive reinforcement of your new lifestyle. Repeat this enough times and you have successfully conditioned yourself to grind through the hard times, knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. You opt for long-term goals, over instant gratification. You switch from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.