Key Points
- Just get started
- It’s not going to happen overnight
- Go at your own pace
Getting Started
What it takes to be healthy isn’t a secret. You just don’t want to put in the hard work and be consistent with the hard work to be healthy or to hit your fitness goals.
Sorry, that’s the truth.
It’s hard to keep a healthy diet or a workout plan going for an extended time. It’s hard to change the habits you’ve formed your whole life.
I’m not here to tell you there’s a magic pill to get you in shape, look good, and feel good. I am here to say that it’s a combination of getting started and remaining consistent.
Getting started is a major hurdle. However, being healthy is a lifestyle…that needs to last forever.
It’s not a goal, and it’s not something that you should have to think about. It’s changing everything that you’ve done your whole life up to this point. Because you’ve been doing it wrong. Sorry, but unless you’ve been eating healthily and exercising consistently, you’ve been doing it wrong.
You’ve been living the processed food and couch surfing life, which isn’t right.
It’s time to change your eating habits, which isn’t easy. It’s time to change your activity and fitness habits, which isn’t easy.
The first step is getting started, which is no easy feat. Not putting it off another day and committing to eating right and working out. Making a plan and putting it into action. That’s the first step.
Without that, you don’t have a chance to be consistent and change your lifestyle.
It Doesn't Happen Overnight
My biggest problem when starting new things is that I want to see immediate results. I’d go to the gym for a month and expect there to be an overwhelming impact on my physical appearance.
Or I start eating healthy and change my entire diet, so I want to see some sort of impact on my life right away. No matter how hard you work out or how well you eat, visible results don’t happen to your body overnight. It takes time.
The fact is, gaining muscle and losing fat are bi-products of a healthy lifestyle. They should be the whole end goal. They should be part of the larger goal.
It takes time in the gym and eating right for weeks, months, and years. Living well isn’t a goal you strive for in six months or a year.
What happens once you lose that fat? You have to keep it up, or it will come right back. Living well is a lifestyle that never stops.
Setting goals of six-pack abs, bigger biceps, or
clearer skin is incredible. However, they’re just pieces to a more giant puzzle. They’re bi-products of living healthy.
A healthy lifestyle isn’t always visible from the outside. Eating right doesn’t always show in the mirror. When I started my health and fitness journey, the goal was to lower my LDL Cholesterol.
You can’t see that in the mirror. Hopefully, you’re seeing that with a longer life and more trips around the sun with your friends and family.
What’s the Real Goal?
Getting started with the right goals is critical. Throughout high school, college, and after college, I would start working out to get ripped. Without care about eating healthy because I was skinny.
I could eat whatever I wanted, and I didn’t get fat. I didn’t consider that being skinny didn’t mean I was healthy.
The fact that 80% of building muscle is in your diet was completely overlooked.
I wasn’t worried about what was going on inside my body. The outside was top of mind. That’s all that I was concerned with.
One of the main problems is that I wanted to see results overnight. So many times, I worked out hard for six months, and that would be it. Maybe a year.
I would see results but not the drastic ones I was looking for. So, ultimately, I took the easy route and stopped working out. Over and over again, this happened. Does this sound familiar?
Has this happened to you?
We start our health and fitness journey with the wrong goals in mind. We want to lose our belly fat, get jacked, have a six-pack, etc. Whatever it is, it’s generally the wrong goal.
The ultimate goal should be to live a healthy lifestyle. Guess what? If you do that, all those smaller goals will be achieved.
Let’s set out to be healthy and live longer? Not only to live longer but be able to enjoy our lives while we’re here. Let’s set our health and fitness goal to be…wait for it…healthy.
Make it a lifestyle chain instead of a short-term goal.
The small goals that we set only matter to us at that moment. I’m in my 40’s now and don’t care about being jacked. My wife and kids don’t care if I have big muscles. They want me to be fit and active.
My wife and kids want me to be healthy and capable of being part of their lives. Hopefully, I’ll be lucky enough to be part of my grandchildren’s lives.
So here you are. You want to be fit but don’t have the habits to make it happen. You were conditioned for the opposite style of living your entire life. So, this late in the game, you must learn how to live a healthy lifestyle.
You have to recondition yourself to a new way of life. What’s that they say about teaching an old dog new tricks?
Start with “Why?”
So here you are. Ready to start.
What’s going to be different this time from all the other times? How are you going to push you through when it gets hard?
What’s going to keep you from stopping…again.
It all comes down to your “Why.” Why are you doing this? Why are you changing the habits that you’ve had for your entire life?
If you don’t know, you won’t change.
For most of my life, I didn’t have a strong enough “Why.” I didn’t have a strong enough reason to be consistent every day for the rest of my life.
They were sprints that I was running. When I really needed to run the marathon.
For me, my “Why” is my family. My kids but also other immediate family members. Me having a six-pack isn’t going to help them. However, changing my lifestyle to live a healthier and longer life will benefit them. The great news is that I’ll have a six-pack. Two birds, one stone.
The Plan
No need to shoot out like a rocket. In fact, that’s one of the things that gets me every time. A complete 180 degrees from how I was living.
That’s too much. It’s too drastic of a change for most people to stick with.
I suggest coming out of the gates a little slower. Start with working out. They don’t need to be intense workouts. Start with something that you can be consistent with.
Beginning Workout
Do push-ups every day. Start with sets that don’t push you too hard.
Just 15 push-ups per set for 75 push-ups a day.
After a few weeks of this, bump it up a bit. Let your body tell you how hard and far you want to go.
Move it up to 100 push-ups a day. Every single day. Start doing 20 push-ups per set.
Keep this up every day and add as you feel comfortable with it. Only add to the point where you don’t push yourself so hard that you don’t want to do it anymore. Keep it, so you’re consistent.
What you’ll notice is that you’re going to start to enjoy this workout. You’re going to look forward to this workout. It’s going to feel good to get it done, and you’re going to feel good about yourself.
When you’re ready, mix in a pull-up bar. Use one that fits in your doorway. Start with a few pull-ups per set. Do just 15 a day. If you can do more, do more.
However, just like the pull-ups, keep it to the point where you can stay consistent and don’t hate doing it.
With consistency, your mind will enjoy these workouts and naturally start to push yourself. My suggestion is to let that happen naturally. When you’re ready, you can start mixing in more challenging exercises.
Beginning Diet
Building a new diet takes time. If you’re like me, you don’t have a lot of healthy recipes. But before you get all worked up about finding and cooking these new recipes, start slow.
Start with some avocado toast in the morning for breakfast. Mix in some eggs.
If you’re concerned about cholesterol, have hard-boiled eggs without the yolk.
For lunch, have some fish or chicken. Mix in some veggies. The more you plan on what you’ll have, the better off you’ll be.
Kill those cravings and have some healthy snacks around. This could be hard-boiled eggs, carrots, sliced tomatoes, nuts, raisins, etc.
Whatever you eat, cut out the sweets and processed foods as much as possible. It will take some time to ween you off of that completely. Even then, you gotta live, so there will be some cheat days.
Conclusion
Get started! It’s up to you where it goes. But it’s also up to you to get started.
