"New year, new me" by Personal Trainer, Ben

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Friday, 26 January 2018

Happy new year to all of the Fulham Massage & Wellness clients, I hope you have had a great festive period where you managed to relax, spend some time with loved ones and indulge a little with the amazing foods on offer! 

 As it is now January this is usually the time that people start with new year resolutions, " new year, new me!" I am sure you have probably seen that posted all over social media and we are not even a full month into 2018, but this isn't an issue, it is fantastic that people are looking to make a start on adjusting their daily habits and achieve a health and fitness goal. The real issue is that people go from 0-100 and that just isn't sustainable. 

So today I am going to go over how you can make changes that will actually last so that 2018 is, in fact, your best year yet. 

Goal setting

This is pivotal and you would no doubt have seen lots of talk about goal setting and I won't spend too long on this subject as you may already know a lot of it but when you come round to set goals they want to be SMART goals;
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic 
Time (you need a time scale)

People want to make a change because they are unhappy with their current situation and have the desired place in their mind as to what happiness looks like. This can be in the form of your body shape, your career, your relationship and many other aspects of your life, everyone has a standard that they believe means happiness. But let's say you are 10kg away from your "happy" weight that you think you want to get to and you are off on holiday in 6 weeks and you want to lose the weight, is that a SMART goal? No. 

Yes, it is specific, yes it has a time frame and yes you can measure your progress but is it realistic and achievable, not really. People want all or nothing but you need to set your expectations out early. Yes, you can set yourself an end goal of losing that 10kg but give yourself enough time to actually hit that number, the process ALWAYS takes longer than you think and this is why so many people never reach their goals. They set lofty goals, go all in and give it everything they have for 3 or 4 weeks and then when they aren't near their goals they give up. 

So first of all set yourself some SMART goals that you can actually achieve and that would be a great place to start, make sure that you pick yourself up a notepad or a diary and physically write down what you want to achieve, pen and paper, then you should review your progress either weekly or fortnightly, depending on how long you can wait to see progress. This will allow you to see how you are getting on, what went well, what you need to change for the next stage. You have to review and create a new game plan otherwise you will end up doing the same things and ultimately not see results and potentially give up. 

Then take the next few steps to give yourself the best possible chance of success. Understand obstacles will happen, some you can predict some will come out of the blue but just know that there will be obstacles you just need to accept that you will slow down at some stage and get knocked back, it's fine, it happens. 

Of these obstacles, I am sure you can think of 2 or 3 things that may slow down your progress so make a note of them and try to plan how you are going to get around them, get creative and try to figure out the best way you can succeed even when these obstacles come along. 

Next step, plan a break, yep give yourself some time off from your goal, if you are looking at losing weight, maybe head out on a date night and just enjoy some food that's been off limits for the last few weeks, if you are training for a long duration run then maybe replace a running session with a massage (at Fulham Massage & Wellness of course!!). Give yourself some time off as if you are constantly pushing, pushing and pushing your body will run out of the drive, focus and energy. Taking a day or 2 off will not ruin your progress, as long as you get back to where you were and stay consistent towards your goal you will succeed.

Finally, take action. Don't spend hours, days or weeks worrying about when to start, don't try to create the perfect foolproof plan. Get yourself your smart goal and start taking action, you can figure the rest out on the way but just make sure you start. Moment, persistence and consistency create results.

I hope this helps you focus on what you want to achieve for 2018 and remember to ease yourself back in, don't go all in during January, set yourself a plan for where you want to be, come January 2019. Remember life is a marathon, not a sprint.