Friday with Heidi: Towards or away from…?
Hello July 🙂
I am not sure quite how that happened.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that it was a relief to have the clocks going back and getting longer nights. Now here we are in the midst of summer, with some heat (at last), and some sweaty Fit Camps under our even sweatier belts.
I spent the hottest weekend of the year so far in a hotel conference suite on a training course. We did get outside a bit, but not enough to really appreciate quite how hot you had it.
The three days are long and full on. We start at 9am and go through to 9pm on the Friday, then two, not quite so long, days over the weekend.
There’s usually lots of emotion, ah-ha moments and revelations that all help us to realise what’s holding us back from getting what we want.
It was a health and wellness weekend so it was interesting for me to see how other delegates (who don’t have this as their profession) dealt with it and processed it.
One of the recurring themes was the yo-yo bouncing of losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight and, sure enough I had a client this week too who was hitting the same wall.
When we looked at what the original goal was it was –
- To lose weight
- To feel better in clothes
- To feel fitter
- To be healthier
When we looked at what had been achieved so far, all of this had been done.
Yes weight had been lost, clothes fitted better, fitness was up and the health niggles had gone. But not enough just yet to find maintenance.
But the motivation had gone and there was a distinct feeling of ‘not being on it’.
Part of the problem here is that the goals were a bit vague and have, by all intents and purposes, been met and so the brain thinks that it can now stop being ‘good’ and revert back to normal.
As I said last week, old behaviour gets the old results. It’s new behaviour that gets better results and that needs to be maintained by goals that are beyond the ‘losing weight and feeling better variety’.
We talked about what was really important here. What hasn’t yet happened, that isn’t weight specific that can be used as a motivator to keep the choices good when life throws a wobbly.
Specific goals that you work towards rather than away from.
Your brain works to a ‘thing’ – ‘be fat’, ‘be slim’, be poor’, ‘be rich’, ‘be happy’, ‘be sad’.
When your goal is to work away from something it the brain will work towards the ‘thing’. And it feels like an uncanny way of pulling you back towards it.
I don’t want to be fat / overweight / unfit / in debt / out of work / lonely …
I don’t want to feel like that again / sad anymore / tired all the time …
Choose towards goals and choose them in the present tense, just like you have it already. Your brain will do just the same, it will work towards it, but you’ve given it a new direction.
I am full of energy / strong and healthy / happy and content / in control of my reactions
I have a high level of fitness / a great job / lots of friends
It can feel quite a big ask at first to keep telling your brain these new statements as you go about your day. But given that you’re saying the other ones all the time, swapping them over when you catch yourself is a great place to start.
It feels false, ridiculous at times and a bit of a faff. But it’s just forming a new habit and we know that can take time, but can be done.
I’d also suggest you look at the areas of you life where you are doing well and see what you say about those situations because the words and phrasing will be different. Take some comfort from this in that you do already know what to do, you just need to practice in this new area of your life.
Yes, I’ve over simplified how the brain works here, but check our articles on the reticular activating system if you want to read more.
Let me know how you get on, or how this has worked for you in the past. I’d love to know.
We’ve had some lovely reviews on our Google page this week, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to let us know what FastTrack Fit Camp has done for them.
It’s our 10th anniversary this year. It would be just wonderful if we could get to 50 reviews before our birthday party on 16 November! If you’ve enjoyed spending time with us, reading my book, attending a Weekend event, benefited from a Sunday Wake Up!, a Healthiest Year Yet event or been a camper in the past we’d love to hear from you! Please click the link and leave us a little review, we’d be chuffed!
This year FastTrack Fit Camp is 10 years old and we are making sure that we celebrate! If you’ve spent time with us at some point over the last 10 years I’d love to see you at our November event. It’s not your usual hotel affair, I do hope you can come.
As you can see burpees aren’t a feature!
Clean, Green Fit Camp
Trainers! They’ve reproduced even more! We’re really looking forward to the bins arriving this week!
Waste Not Wednesday! I’ve started a weekly anti-food waste blog that you’ll find on Facebook and Twitter each week. A little tip to help you keep and use more of what you buy each week. This week’s pesto recipe is here.
Trees! One of the projects I am going to support as part of our Social Enterprise is the planting of more trees. It’s one of many nice fixes to the climate problem that also fits with our outdoor ethos. There are lots of ways in which you can do it. Watch this space as we announce how we’re going to be doing our bit to spread a wave of trees across Britain.
FastTrack Fit Camp is an outdoor fitness business with the focus on improving people on the inside so they feel good on the outside. In 2019 FastTrack Fit Camp became a Social Enterprise and committed to distribute a minimum of 50% of profits back to community environmental projects each year with the goal of helping our local citizens feel good whilst being outside too.