The gingerbread nuts & chocolate at Sinterklaas, a nice long dinner at Christmas & New Year's Eve, the hustle and bustle of shopping and cooking, we are undoubtedly all familiar with it. The holidays are certainly something to look forward to, but for some of us they can be a huge pitfall on the progress we have already made. How can you deal with this without pushing myself further away from my end goal?
The If – Then Plan!
First of all, be aware of why you do what you do. The more this comes from within yourself, the more chance you have of achieving your goal.
Many of our behaviors happen unconsciously without us even realizing it. But also that we have no safety net for when such a situation arises. The 'if-then plan' provides the solution.
Suppose your goal is to lose weight and you had planned to pay attention to your diet but also to do physical activity 4 times a week. Every year you notice to yourself that during the holidays you are mainly busy and neglect those physical moments. Ask yourself “What am I going to do about this?” A solution could be, for example, 'The first thing you do in the morning is perform your planned workout'
Other tips:
Come up with one specific solution: if you give yourself more options, the chance of success will be significantly reduced. “The first thing I do when I get out of bed is my workout.” If this doesn't work, I do it after breakfast. Be consistent in this.
The more specific, the better: it is better to say “the first thing I do when I get out of bed is my workout” rather than “I do a workout in the morning”
Choose a goal that you support: Don't impose a goal on yourself that you don't support or that you say "I'm not going to do this anyway."
Inform those around you of your goal: The more people know what you are working on, the more they can take this into account.
Do you really know your pitfalls?: e.g. “I eat too much”, make yourself aware at what time of the day does this happen? Then why do you eat more? Etc.
Perseverance: It will create resistance. But the longer you keep this up, the easier it will become at a certain point.
Gianni Van Dooren
Enforce Master Trainer
gianni@enforce.international
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