What is consistency? Can you build consistency?
To simply put it, you can build consistency as is it is a behavior, a way to “stay on the road” or to stick to a desired course of action.
Plans don’t always go the way you want them and there can be elements that disrupt them that are completely outside of your control but consistency isn’t, it is entirely, completely, relentlessly in your hands.
When you make a resolution, when you choose a goal (if you need to set your fitness goal read here), you have a timeframe and a list of actions that you need to do to reach the goal in the due time. All you need to do then is…well, to take an action.
That’s when things get extremely complicated. You can choose a perfect SMART goal, create a bulletproof plan to get it done that is so straightforward that it almost gets done by itself but after the first 3 days you actually work on it, it just fades away.
After 3 days your plan stays right there watching you go by leaving you with mixed feelings such as “this doesn’t work” “it’s too much” “I can’t do it” “I’ll start next Monday” but more than often with an angry and frustrated hint of “this is just not for me”, let me go back to my detox tea instead.
What do you need to stick to your plan?
What do you need to build consistency and go through this uneasy feelings of change to achieve, for instance, a fat-loss goal?
You are right: consistency. Call me captain obvious, if you already knew the answer to these questions, check the next article and move on IF you think that you already know everything that is there to know about consistency, if you have never struggled with it, and if you have a solid base that keeps you going.
In case, before you go, let me tell you that you are a crazy rare species, keep going, and nail goal after goal!
If you’re still here, let me reassure you, you are perfectly normal, you and I are normal people, with normal struggles and victories and it’s never too late to try to find a way to help achieve better results.
Feeling overwhelmed to build consistency, what to do?
Carlo, I read your dieting 101 article, it was great to understand the steps needed to approach a diet and a new lifestyle but….it’s a lot.
I tried to start having protein every meal, check my macros daily, add workouts, try to walk, and started my consistency calendar but it’s overwhelming, I feel like it’s too much and I can’t keep up, after a week I feel like I’m slacking and my motivation didn’t improve at all.
I hear you and I do understand, to kick off all of it from zero can be very overwhelming, hard and frustrating but the good news is that you do not have to do everything starting from tomorrow morning.
One simple action goes a long way to build consistency
What you can do to avoid being overwhelmed is:
Choose one single thing among the many you can do to improve your current lifestyle, your diet and ultimately your health.
For example if eating protein every meal is very hard for you, choose one single meal a day where you’re going to be consistent in having protein, is breakfast your go-to choice?
Awesome, take your calendar and from tomorrow morning, for the next 30 days, focus on becoming the champion of an high protein breakfast, do it every day, mark it on the consistency calendar and have at least 80% consistency for the next month. There you have it, a new habit
At the end of the next 30 days, look back at what you have achieved, how does it make you feel? Actions, create results, results motivate you and help you move to the next step.
Once you’re the master of your breakfast, add another meal or a snack and work on it for the next 30 days. You got the drill.
What matters is that you can choose the one thing that you are sure you can work on and the one that you, ultimately, hate the less. There is no way round it
Do you need to workout every day?
Carlo, I am busy, I don’t have time to work out every day
This is a very reasonable and common situation, the thing is: you don’t need to work out every day, but you do need to workout for your health first and for your body composition goal then.
I never said you need to become an Olympian tomorrow, didn’t I?
I also really get it, we are busy, we are running around at the mercy of our schedule, trapped in a meeting, entangled in this or that but…are we?
What I want to say is: are you ALWAYS, completely busy, so busy that your time spins out of control and as soon as you wake up if you don’t realize fast enough it is time to go to sleep already?
Surely days and weeks like these happen, and in such cases there’s not much you can do but to hold on and try to do your best but, in the normality of the situations, are you REALLY that busy?
Is being busy a state of mind? A mantra that you repeat to yourself in such a convincing way that it becomes your reality and there’s no space left for anything else?
If, for something to happen, you have to have it written in your weekly planner at a specific day and time… there you have it: schedule your workouts.
You don’t need 60 minutes every time as this, too, can be daunting. Let’s say, take 15 minutes of your time, at least 2 times a week and do a workout. What workout? You have millions of choices:
- Try a yoga routine on youtube
- Go for a slightly fast paced 15-minute walk around your neighborhood (yes, walking counts as a workout)
- Do some bodyweight exercises
- Play some sports or do some physical activity that you enjoy and makes you feel good
See what I’m saying here? Being busy is, of course, part of the reality, but if you realize that your evenings are “busy” because you spend 2 hours on Instagram or on Netflix on the couch…. don’t BS yourself.
Open your weekly planner now, schedule 2x a week of training and stick to the plan for the next 4 weeks. 8 workouts, no backup days or hours (that would give you excuses). It might suck at the beginning but at the end of the 30 days you will thank me, I promise you.
Build consistency and accountability
You scheduled 2 times a week your workout, it’s all on paper, you’re going to make it but…. You hear that voice that says “come on, I can do it later” or you start the first week and then slowly start fading.
It’s time to work on a way to take accountability into the equation. How to do that? There are a few ways to make yourself accountable, some can be very uncomfortable as they’d force you out of the comfort zone, some can be easier, let me help you from the easier to the hardest:
- Easy level. Ask a friend to be your accountability reference point: every week you’ll let your friend know your weekly results and how it felt.
- Why could this be easier? because having a friendly face could help ease the anxiety of having to report a success or a not-so-success.
- Don’t take this as a life threatening experience, use it as a challenge for yourself where you just need a friendly third party to check in and stay on track. Family works too of course.
- Medium level. Ask your trainer or coach, if you have one, to nudge you on the path to keep the goal in check week by week. If you don’t have one, consider finding one.
- This is more official than a friend, the pros in this situation is that with a friend you might feel more comfortable to not follow the weekly plan as a friend might be more understanding, with an external person it might feel less acceptable for you to tell that you had some drawbacks during the week so this might push you to keep the schedule on as you planned. Call this an official source of accountability.
- The key here, and this is very important, is that the coach or trainer you chose is able to guide you through the drawbacks and help you analyze the whats and hows to improve rather than make you feel judged or ashamed.
- Hard level. Make your commitment public on social media and post every step through it, your results, feelings, drawbacks and anything else you have experienced during your monthly challenge.
- This is, for most of us, way out of the comfort zone and way harder to accept to do.
- Pros in here? You tell everybody you’re going to do XYZ for the next 30 days and going to tell them everything about it, you now have a potentially huge audience to push your accountability.
- Cons? You might have a huge audience that will look at you even if you fail, and this could be a huge stressor without any doubt.
Willful and un-willful suffering
One last concept I would like to share, I heard this a few days ago while listening to Jordan Syatt’s podcast and found it a very good way to see things and to help the motivation.
Every time we choose to do something that moves us out of our comfort zone but that we know it will improve our health and lifestyle (and this is different for everybody) for example, choosing a different nutrition that will put us in a calorie deficit, working out even if we really don’t want to or dislike it.. we put ourselves through a willful suffering because even though we might not like the action that we chose to do, we still do it because we know it’s beneficial for our health in the long term.
The un-willful suffering is the moment when we are 100% aware that we should do that thing (change our diet, do exercise, quit smoking…) but we still don’t do it putting us through all the issues that avoiding it might cause us for example, hating our image in the mirror and hating ourselves for it, increasing the risk of potential diseases linked to an un-healthy lifestyle, not feeling comfortable to go out and meet friends, travel or dating.
The difference here is that we get to choose to willfully suffer or to un-willfully go through the risks and the problems of not being ok with a small but willful suffering.
Build consistency is a skill that takes time, trial & error
Your brain is programmed to be resistant to change and will find every way to have you stay in the comfort zone, on the couch or busy with anything else that takes your mind away from the hassle of changing our lifestyle for good.
You get to choose to stay where you are or get up and do something about it.
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