How to start a New Year

By Pete Ryan

Many of us have resolutions.  We think that from 1^st January we can suddenly go from our sedentary selves, to introducing a new diet, and a new training routine...in short begin a completely new lifestyle. I am sure there is a person out there that can do that, but for most of us that goal is unrealistic. There are several reasons for this, but the main reasons are the influence of willpower and habit.

Willpower

I see willpower like a bucket.  When you need to do something novel, new or you do not want to do, you have to take a ‘scoop’ of willpower from the bucket.  There is one bucket of willpower every day.  You dip into it to get up early, to wash-up, to get stuff done.  The trouble is the bucket varies in size daily and you need to use that willpower for everything that you need to get done throughout the day. Once that bucket of willpower is used up you will not get much more done that day.  The more stressful the day, the smaller the bucket and the more things you have to do that day, the faster the bucket is emptied, so if you rely purely on willpower, some days you will fail to workout or make good dietary choices simply because the bucket is empty.  Willpower can get you places, but you shouldn’t rely only on that or you will eventually fail.

Habit

Habit is the minds way of getting the body to do things that it needs to do.  So, if you always wake up at 7, you will tend to continue to wake up at 7. The trouble is, if you have always eaten badly, the force of habit can drive you to continue to exercise that habit.  If you always eat a burger and fries at 11AM, you will always want a burger and fries at 11AM. 

Putting them together

If you add together the power of habit and the limited reserves of willpower, you can see how and why you fail.  You actually have to use willpower to fight against old habits, as well as try to introduce new exercise and eating habits.

In the end after a couple of weeks of struggling you will find that your run out of willpower, old habits reassert themselves and you are back to your old habits not even understanding why you failed...again?

Making change

People forget that any positive change is a positive, and that you can accumulate changes over time. I believe that making one or 2 changes a month is the best way to introduce your New Years health plan.

Suppose you decide to work out once per week, but stick at it every Wed evening, and have a healthy lunch, every day.  Keep everything else the same this month, but stick at that.  I guarantee that after a month you will look and feel better than you have in years (assuming you have done no exercise and your diet isn’t that great).

Also, you only have to dip into the willpower bucket at lunchtimes, and Wednesday evenings.  Everything else is going with the flow.  After a month, you will see that working-out and healthy lunch eating has become a habit. If you want to make further changes, then you can, but keep those changes small; add an extra workout (say Monday evening), and add a healthy breakfast, then stick at that for at least another month before any more changes are made.

Adding it all up

People forget that changes are cumulative. If you make one change, then add another in a month they will begin to work together.  Very few people can rewrite their entire lifestyle and succeed, but many people can make a succession of small changes and keep those changes happening over the course of years.  Just little things, say you have a soda in the morning and you drop that for an unsweetened herbal tea, you will save almost 1,000Kcal per week! That alone will change your body composition. So, my advice is to plan this New Year as the beginning of a process.  You do not have to succeed 100% from 1^st January think of it more in terms of you will still be improving on 1^st June, as you keep introducing new ways to improve yourself.

So consider this isn’t a race. In fact it is the opposite. The faster you introduce new things, the more likely you are to overload yourself and fail. Add in things slowly one change at a time and watch the improvements slowly accumulate.

Make this year, the year you break the cycle of New Year failure and start on the road to exercise and dietary success. 

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Flooding your changes

By Pete Ryan

Changes can be hard.  New year is especially problematic. You start that ‘ultimate diet’, you go on a juice detox programme, you decide to start exercising, revamp the diet and start decorating the house as well!  The trouble is that for many people making dozens of changes at once overwhelms them.  New diets, new foods, new exercise programmes.  The body is hit on all sides with changes and many bodies do not like too many changes at once.

When changing for the better many hinder your progress

A famous powerlifter for many years ate a terrible diet of fast food and other junk.  He rarely saw a vegetable and never ate what most people would consider healthy options.  Eventually this came back to haunt him as a medical revealed that he had cholesterol and other blood markers so bad that the doctor was surprised that he was still alive, “I have seen better blood work on a corpse!” was what the doctor said to him and warned that if he did not change his diet then he would probably die in the very near future. So, this powerlifter decided to change his diet for the better.  He dumped the junk food, included vegetables and moved to eating wholefoods.  He got very ill?  He went back to his fast food diet and the symptoms disappeared?  He tried again with the same result.  He became totally confused?  Was he allergic to healthy food?  Were wholefoods bad for him?  In the end he found a nutritionist and over the next 6 months began a slow transition to eating a more healthy diet.

So, what was this?  Was it that 'detox crisis' many gurus talk about?  You can get sick if you lose a lot of fat very quickly as toxins are stored in fat, this is to help keep you safe from poisoning, but this wasn’t the case.  In this example the individual had the wrong enzymes being produced to break down healthy food and had the wrong bacteria in his gut to survive on wholefoods.  This can be fixed, but it takes time for the body to adapt.  The ‘human digestive system’ (the symbiotic relationship between our body and the bacteria that live within us) is an amazing system. You can eat virtually anything and survive, you can eat things far away from what are considered healthy and still grow, even train hard and look good.  Usually the issues that develop are invisible, with increases in cancer, cardiovascular issues and probably an earlier death than you would have had otherwise.

Just as the body can take time to adapt to changes, so the mind also needs time to incorporate changes into your lifestyle. If you attempt to include 20 new changes into your life you will most likely fail to get them all done.  Each one will add to the stress of the day and you will finally get overwhelmed by the mass of changes and crumble. A better plan is to slowly bring in changes.

Over new year just think if you said I am going to go to the gym twice a week (or if you prefer, exercise at home).  Just that, nothing more!  Focus on that for a full month just make sure that every Tuesday and Friday you hit the gym with a full body programme.  After a month that training has started to become a habit, next add in the idea of a healthy breakfast, stick at that for a full month, while the training still continues, the month after that add in the idea of a healthier lunch...and so on.  Add one small change and things will improve, you will not be overwhelmed and by the end of a year you will begin to reap real changes. 

 

One point I would like to make...THIS IS IMPORTANT... if you are aiming at losing significant fat, start weight training, start body brushing and apply coconut oil.  These things will help the skin adjust to the new shape.  You may not be able to eliminate lose skin, but you could possibly lessen the effects. Those are a few changes at once, but you could start with a month of weights & bodybrushing, then the next month begin the fat loss and coconut oil.  If you aim to add mass I would start with resistance training (lifting weights) and pick one meal to increase the calories per day (breakfast is the easiest if you can eat in the mornings), go from there.

Simply increase by one or 2 things every month as you adapt and things will go better.  If you try to add too many things you will be flooded by changes and soon revert to your old ways.  Make 2016 the year you succeeded with your body goals!

 

Pop over to Gorilla gym if you need help with your training or nutrition

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