Spring Clean Your Fitness Mindset

We’ve spring cleaned our fitness gear and our pantries and we’ve got just one more task ahead of us…let’s spring clean our fitness mindsets and get to work on what really matters. Here are a few ideas for how to clean out your fitness mindset!

1. Ask yourself if you really need to be doing THE MOST no matter what.

Even God took the seventh day off! Take care of yourself every day, but unless your health or fitness professional has given you a specific reason to work out every day, choose a workout schedule that allows you to work out at 75-95% of your max energy on your workout days and recover on the other days. You will see results much faster from challenging your body in a few focused workouts than from doing a few things every day.

Think like a pro athlete and train for focused, specific goals. Extend your body the tiniest bit of trust that it will listen to you if you stop sending it mixed messages.  If you are training for bigger muscles, fat loss, smaller muscles, endurance, tap dance, and cardiovascular efficiency all in the same week, every week, don’t be surprised if you don’t see the results you’re looking for (or if you get injured).  That might sound silly when I put it in writing, but I hear it allllll the time.

2. Say so long to outdated food ideas.

Only you know which ones you’re still carrying around, but if you got it from a magazine cover (cabbage soup diet, no eating ever after 8pm, low fat/fat free is best, 5 calorie dinners…), you might want to check and see if current research seems to say 👍🏻 or 👎🏻.

For example, I myself will still hear the phrase “good fats” come tumbling out of my mouth from time to time when talking to clients…but really, it’s pretty hard to find a “bad” fat these days except in fast food and a few processed foods! Trans fats (like hydrogenated oils) have largely been removed from sale, so while EVOO, avocado, grass fed dairy, and high quality egg yolks may have some special benefits, most fats are fine for most people most of the time. If you’re not sure what’s best for you, there are qualified professionals who can help you sort that out.

Need some new food ideas to replace those old ones? How about moderation, lots of plants, and quality over quantity for starters?

3. Accept that there aren’t many shortcuts.

You know those workouts in nearly every magazine that are like “do these two moves twice a week for three weeks for amazing results?”

As a trainer, here’s what I see when I read those:

It’s not that it’s not sort of true, it’s that there’s a litttttle bit more to the equation. But it sounds so appealing, and there’s that kernel of truth in there, so we fall for it again and again.

You can’t get the results you want by sitting on the couch and eating a random assortment of mostly snack foods and caffeine.  You can’t even get them by only eating the “light” version of most foods, by starving your body into submission, or by doing a 30-day squat challenge.

There’s no pill, tea, powder, shake, or slime that can get you where you want to go and keep you there.  (Most of them just make you poop a lot.)  Doing 1,000 floppy crunches once a month won’t get you a six-pack.

There aren’t many shortcuts, but consistent, quality effort will get you where you want to go faster than you think it will, and then you’ll also know how to maintain your results. Stop looking for a magic answer and just start chipping away at the real life situation that you have.

(PS – that whole “burn 100 calories doing 25 jumping jacks to work off the mini Snickers bar you just ate” thing isn’t true either, sorry!)

4. Ditch the shame.

I saved the toughest one for last, but hear me out: it’s time to ditch the shame about not eating perfectly/working out like an Olympian/anything else that’s already in the past. Being ashamed about decisions you’ve already made is like making those decisions twice – or way more than twice.

Eating isn’t shameful.  Struggling isn’t shameful. Not getting to your goal as quickly as you had imagined isn’t shameful. Not always doing what’s best isn’t shameful.  It’s human.  And, chances are, you’re probably a human if you’re reading this.  Struggling is how we learn many things – so acknowledge what has happened, appreciate the lesson, and then move forward one tiny step.

Trust me – I’m literally in the business of reminding people to do things like “eat breakfast” or “take a walk”, which sound simple here in isolation on the internet, but can be really tough when other things get in the way.  Life will provide a limitless supply of those “other things”, so don’t spend any extra energy being ashamed about when things don’t go perfectly! Just find a way to make one tiny improvement on one thing, and eventually you will be miles down the road from where you are today.

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So, what will you spring clean this year? Your gear? Your pantry? Your mindset? All three? Something else? Share if you want to!