Friday with Heidi: How fast is fast enough?

I hear many conversations around the idea of changes not happening quickly enough.

“Why haven’t I lost weight yet?”

“Why aren’t I fitter?”

“When will I look different?”

We have lost the ability to be patient. We want the quick win feeling from a computer game for our minds, bodies and health.

There is a law in technology known as Moore’s Law which states how the overall processing power for computers will double every two years for the foreseeable future.

Great if you are into tech and the development of ever faster computers. But pretty frustrating if you’re into humans and the process of change.

For every computer instruction that can be generated more quickly, the faster we’ll be able to get data, answers and jobs done.

But this won’t make us thinner, fitter or happier. We need to be patient and it seems to me, that our patience just isn’t what it used to be.

Expecting changes in our bodies and brains after we’ve mistreated them for years is emotional suicide.

Expecting to be lighter because we’ve dropped sugar for 3 days or wanting a better pair of legs because we’ve run three times this week is going to send you insane waiting and give up before you see any progress.

I ran a survey amongst my Facebook members group and one of the questions was ‘how long do you normally stay on a diet?’ — the answer was 60% that were done within 3 months.

12 weeks, let’s call it 13 for generosity. That’s 91 days.

Did you realise that many cells take months to be replaced and regrow? They just don’t change any more quickly because you want them to or made it to bed a bit earlier twice last week.

The quickest are our intestinal cells at about 72 hours, now this is good for lifestyle change as you’ll be improving your first point of contact with your food for digestion and absorption which in turn will help your mental and emotional health.

However if you’ve been hoping for nicer nails, they take 8 months to fully repair.

Skin cells 10 – 30 days.

Fat cells – 8 years for the cells to go through a process of renewal and replacement.

This is not to put you off, but to show you that we’re not going to make changes quickly after long periods of inaction. If anything this is to show you that we must start NOW to make sure that in 8 years time our fat cells can be replaced healthier and smaller than they are now!

I validated these facts here and I was amused to read this line from the table of cell renewal speeds,

“we note that hair elongates at about 1 cm per month, while fingernails grow at about 0.3 cm per month, which is about the same speed as the continental spreading in plate tectonics that increases the distance between North America and Europe”

We’re trying to compete with the speed the planet moves continental plates! It’s time we stopped trying to compete with Moore’s Law and stick with Mother Nature.

This is why I changed the name our 6 Week Introductory Programme to ‘6 Week Feel Good Challenge‘ . It does what it says on the tin, and anything else you get along the way is a fabulous surprise.

You can sign up to this here — 6 weeks from now is 28 April, are you going to wait until then to start changing yourself from the inside out?

I’ve been challenged by a colleague to do a year long challenge. I’ll share with you next week how it’s going. It seems that as soon as you sign up the clock starts ticking, I better get a move on, I’ve only got 364 days left!

Have a fabulous weekend.

To your patience and ability to wait for results.