Creating healthy habits — not binge diets or boots camps — is the true secret to getting in shape.
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By James Fell
Abs and biceps and pectorals, oh my!
Looking to get in shape? Just imagine how awesome it’s going to be when you achieve your new body and show those rippling abs and pop those pecs on the beach.
Okay, now stop that. It’s bad for helping achieve your goals. Really.
Back in 1991 Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at NYU, first discovered that people who fantasized about a positive outcome were less likely to achieve the desired outcome. Published in Cognitive Therapy and Research, her study looked at 25 obese women, and found that “Optimistic expectations but negative fantasies favored weight loss. Subjects who displayed pessimistic expectations combined with positive fantasies had the poorest treatment outcome.”
So what does this mean? Let’s look at those who weren’t successful at weight loss first.
They were pessimistic about their ability to lose weight, but they fantasized about it. They imagined how wonderful it would be to transform their bodies. Guess what happens when you do that. It relaxes you. It alleviates the stress you feel about not having the body want. It takes away that bit of good stress that prompts action by giving you the feeling that you already achieved that desired goal, so there isn’t the pressure to strive for it. Fantasizing about achievement is a motivation killer, so keep your happy daydreaming about the future to a minimum.
Another study Oettingen was involved in was published in 2011 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology with the telling title “Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy.”
What does this mean for you? Focus on the journey, not the destination, and have faith in your ability to be successful at that journey. That’s what it means. You need to stop dwelling so much on that ultimate long term goal, and concern yourself more on positivity for the here and now.
It’s about outcome vs. process. Having a desired outcome is fine, but living the process is what makes that outcome happen. And living a process is about habit formation, and creating healthy exercise habits.
A big part of how I went from borderline obese to six four-pack abs is by learning to love exercise, but still there are days when I struggle with motivation, even though working out is a big part of my job description. And simply relying on “motivation” or “willpower” to always push you is bullshit. You need skills that make things more automatic. You need to develop habits so that every workout is something that is part of a daily to do list that you barely need to think about. You don’t need to psyche yourself up or grit your teeth (most days, anyway), but it just gets ingrained into your life and even your personality so that it just kinda happens.
The way to form habits are fairly basic, but to make it more interesting I did the call out on my Facebook page to get readers to tell me their tips to add into the mix. Here’s how to get into the habit of being healthy, so that your long-term goals become reality.
Create Tolerable Processes Using Baby Steps
The soul-sucking diet or hemorrhage-inducing workout regimen can only be sustained for a short time. Something you detest will never become a habit. You can build your way up to more frequent and intense workouts, as well as ever healthier diets with fewer treats, but it’s baby steps that get you there.
- “Tiny habits create momentum & snowball into success. Big expectations of perfection kill current happiness and hold you back.” – Dell Farrell
- “Goals should be fun. If you don’t find something intrinsically rewarding, you’re never going to turn it into a part of your life past the beat-me-up-stage.” – Alex Bowling
- “Start small. Be patient. Don’t talk yourself out of little changes because they seem ridiculous. It’s the little changes you make that stick and they add up to great things.” – Katy Wagers
- “Stay aware from the extremes, being consistent is the best way to form habits. Crazy restrictive diets and training for hours at a time is a recipe for inconsistency.” – Adam Marley
- “Coming from someone who’s lost 100lbs, its better to have slow progress then no progress. Be patient and enjoy the process!” – Shayla Britton Vandermey
- Having a desired outcome is fine, but living the process is what makes that outcome happen. And living a process is about habit formation
Prioritize and Schedule
There is an adage in business that if everything is a priority, then nothing is. Healthy habits are something that needs to be more than just added to your endless to do list. Speaking of scheduling, first thing in the morning is best, because that’s when motivation is highest. And even if you’re not up to going all out, remember that half the battle is showing up. Half a workout is better than none:
- “Even if you’re not up to the challenge of a workout, go to the gym anyway. The practice of parking the car, walking in the door, and hitting the mats for some easy stretching on the way home from work goes a long way toward instilling the habit of going to the gym.” — Lisa Kapsner Swift
- “Make exercise a priority. Schedule it, plan it and commit to it just like you would a meeting for work or making sure your child is at his/her hockey game.” — Debbie Faulkner
Focus!
Exercise is a powerful tool to improve eating habits, which is one reason why I recommend you work on the exercise part first, and improving diet later. These people agree:
- “Don’t try to change too many things at once. It’s better to get really good at one behavior change – which means doing ONLY that behavior change for a period of time — than it is to try to do everything right away.” – Connie Walters Dunwoody
- “The one who chases two rabbits, catches neither one.” — Christie Cooper Perkins, invoking Confucius
Create Associations
It used to be that when I took my kids to karate class, it meant going for a run. My new association is that when the coffee pot is empty = run. But also, telephone call = get up and pace. TV commercial, often = stretching.
- “Find a way to associate exercise with something you love. I started my healthy exercise habits by only allowing myself to read for pleasure while on the elliptical.” – Andrea DeJong
Create Accountability
Dogs. I love dogs. Dogs are great, and they can create accountability (be a good human — you can’t buy a dog and ignore it like you would ignore a Bowflex). Dogs make great workout partners. But so do people. You can be accountable to a trainer, or a workout buddy, or even to a race you signed up for.
- “Use social media to state your goal, and share your results. Most friends are pretty supportive. Have measurable fitness goals along with weight/size goals. Like, “run a 5k in under 30 minutes.’” — Jamie Jones
- “Find a buddy. I had poor gym habits until my husband and I started going together. We’d work out together, then hit the refreshment stand for a drink. With four kids under 7, it’s the only date we had some weeks.” — Catriona Muir
- “I started running about a year ago and my way to stay accountable to myself is to sign up for progressively longer races with friends.” — Danny Jorgensen
Remember, once you learn to enjoy the process, once the process becomes a habit, then who you are at your core becomes a different person. That outcome goal is no longer a goal. It’s just you.
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This article originally appeared on Ask Men.
For more like this from Ask Men, try:
LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE FULLEST IN 2015 WITH THESE POSITIVE CHANGES
IS VAPING REALLY SAFER THAN SMOKING? NEW STUDIES RAISE CONCERNS
SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE – HOW SHORTER WORKOUTS CAN DELIVER BETTER RESULTS
Photo credit: Alessandro Pautasso/flickr