Do you celebrate when you do well?
Or do you beat yourself up?
I had some really interesting conversations with two clients this week, basically the same conversation but with two very different women.
I was chatting with them both following a review of their progress.
The conversation was pretty typical of many conversations that I have with clients.
As we were reviewing progress after six weeks we looked at what had gone well and what could have gone better.
I asked one lady on a scale of 1 – 10 (10 being amazing) how well did she think she had done in the last six weeks with nutrition.
She scored herself a 5.
Now this is a lady whose diet is text book clean. Once or twice she has slipped up on treats, she hasn’t given up the fizzy drinks and occasionally has a bad day with a few biscuits but otherwise clean, clean, clean.
She is also a lady whose measurements recorded a loss of 8cm around her belly button in the past six weeks.
So I asked her what for her would be a score of 10 for nutrition.
Her reply was that if she could reach a consistent 80% good food 20% treat she would be happy.
We looked again at her score.
I asked her if this is not what she had just described her diet to be.
The conversation was similar with my second lady, her diet is as good as a busy working mother really can expect it to be.
There are treats and there are days when it is just not possible to be perfect but basically again pretty good overall and the results are good and improvements are evident.
These conversations left me wondering if these women could actually see how far they have come.
We spend so much time feeling guilty about what we are eating that even when we are getting the results we want, even when the belt notch is getting tighter, when we are running further or feeling fitter we still beat ourselves up for what we are not doing.
Is this something you do? When you are on your own fitness journey do you find that you are focussing more on the things you haven’t achieved than you are on the things that you have? Do you celebrate the small wins or do you just berate the fact you can’t do x or you are still not in size y clothes?
If this is you then here are my three top tips for feeling good about your progress and moving away from the guilt.
1. Keep a log of your progress
Record where you are now. If you can do 10 burpees in one minute now you can measure this again and see if you have improved. Take measurements around your waist, belly button, hips and bust too. Keep it all in a diary so you can easily refer back to it. In your diary record how you feel about things too, use the scale of 1 – 10 to record how happy you are with each element of your health and fitness so you can clearly see where to focus your attention and write appropriate goals.
2. Celebrate a win every day Instead of worrying about what has gone wrong each day – oops I ate an ice cream, I could have worked harder if it wasn’t so hot etc. etc. Focus on what you have done well today.
Get that diary out and write down just one thing you have done well each day. I managed 3 well prepared clean meals, I worked out when I said I would, I ran for two minutes longer than I did last week. Doing this re-programmes the brain to look for the positives and helps you to feel good about your progress.
3. Reward yourself
You have done well, you deserve a reward! We do it for our kids we should do it for ourselves….every time you do what you set out to do make a note, give yourself a star whatever you need to do to record it.
Do what you set out to for a week or get yourself 10 stars then give yourself a reward, whatever you need to make you feel good about it, just celebrate because you are awesome!
Oh and the next time I ask you how you are doing, make sure you answer with – “great, guess what I did this week” ;)
Have a fantastic weekend and if you feel like sharing your wins join us in the group we love to hear about the good things so come on over and say Hi!
Kirsty xx
