It wasn’t an accident that I called my studio Tiny Fitness – years later, I still stand firmly behind my promise that tiny changes bring the biggest results. What are those tiny changes? I’ve talked about them before (and here) (and here) and even given you a free 30-day journal to find some of your own to make, but the. resistance. is. real. Let’s take another lap around the track of tiny changes together.
Eating healthy?
Great, let’s eat healthy! (Or healthily, for the grammatically-prone among us.) Ready, go! Problem solved. We are eating healthy now!
If that worked for you, let me know.
Eating well involves lots of tiny decisions every day which, you guessed it, are where we make those tiny changes. For me, I know I won’t eat enough vegetables if I don’t have them ready in advance (I learned that by tracking my food). So, I made a change to have cooked vegetables ready basically all the time, and now I eat vegetables.
See, “cook the kale” is a change I can make. I know if I have cooked the kale or not. It’s tiny.
If you’re trying to eat breakfast, for example, there’s at least one tiny change you have to make in order for that to happen. Do you need to have it cooked ahead of time? Or do you need to wake up 5 minutes earlier? Do you need to be able to eat it during your commute, or even after you’ve arrived at work or school? Make the right tiny change for you, and eating breakfast becomes easy.
Sit there and try to “eat healthy” and just watch your head spin about macros, calories, saturated fat, sugar, keto, IF, no eating after 7, eat a salad, Greek yogurt, and whatever other odds and ends float around in your brain when you think about trying to “eat healthy”.
Eating’s too hard! I just want to get in shape.
Awesome! So, go get in shape!
Are you back yet? In shape?
You have to know what you mean by in shape – do you just mean looking a certain way in (or out of) your clothes? Do you mean you can run a marathon easily? Do you mean you look more like one of these photos? Do you mean you are active in a way that supports your longterm health?
Now, why aren’t you already doing something toward that goal? Do you not know what to do? Are you not consistent? (Trainers like me can help with either of those problems, to a point.) Are you not making the time to do it? Are you burnt out from jumping from pilates to Zumba to Crossfit to spin class? Are you sad because when you work out it’s just to punish your body for not doing what your brain wants it already to do? (That last one really doesn’t work out well.)
Maybe you need to start with committing to 10 minutes a day, every day. Maybe you need to wake up 15 minutes earlier and have a great workout ready to go for the morning, or maybe you need to commit to working out every Saturday morning before time gets away from you. Maybe you need to switch from happy hours to active activities. Maybe you need to move closer to the Olympic training camp that will prepare you to win the gold. Whatever the next tiny change is that you need to make, it will be specific to your goals, and it will be obvious when you’ve done it (and not too hard to do).
As opposed to, you know, just getting in shape.
Trust me, I was a lost dabbler once myself. I did workouts from magazines, stuff I remembered from old sports practices, stuff I saw other people do at the gym, little bits from classes here and there, the occasional too-long run…. But when I started working smarter by focusing my time and efforts toward specific, measurable goals, I reached all of those goals within a year.
And stayed there.
And set new ones, and reached those. Again and again. One tiny change at a time.
Mindset is Basically Everything
All real changes are tiny changes. Every big, nebulous change like “get married” or “write a book” starts with that first date or that first word on a blank page. Every fitness success starts with making a real, concrete change – as tiny as it can possibly be – to move in the direction of your goal.
I know, I didn’t mention the part where you have to believe you can succeed. You don’t have to believe that, at first. You can believe me instead, for about 3 months. You’ll have to take the reins at some point. but I will loan you my belief in you for about 12 weeks until you start to see what you’re capable of. Anyone can make fitness progress – losing bodyfat, getting stronger and faster, and honing their success mindset.
But that progress has to start with a tiny change.
