I was a challenge addict.
Yep, I would do one ‘challenge’ after another.
12 weeks were the go to challenges about 20 years ago, then they went down to eight, and now it is only six weeks for most of them.
I began my healthier and fitter lifestyle with ‘baby steps’, walking the dog to start with.
Not with an all out, all or nothing effort.
And it is funny to think back that I sort of had it correct to begin with. Just doing small tasks day in day out for the long run.
But along the way, I got lost. I found all these short term challenges that promised me the body of my dreams in only 12 weeks! And like I said before, they became shorter and shorter.
But my topic today is about the shift in my mindset that changed everything for me.
I was someone that wanted it all right away, and I fell into the hype of having my name in lights, hey I was even featured in a national magazine as a monthly ‘winner’ of one of these challenges.
Did I look good? Yeah, I had a six pack, I was below 10% body fat, and my photos for the challenges were so good, we had even bought a good camera to take them!
But did I feel good?
The simple answer is no, I didn’t.
I was looking for the next thing, the next challenge, I was looking at oh, maybe I can take off another 2% BF, maybe I can add another 2kg of muscle! Once I do that then I will be happy.
But I wasn’t. I was seeking out gratification based on some things outside my control.
To win those challenges you had to not only shed kilos etc, but you had to have judges decide if it was good enough to win. There was also no incentive to maintain where you were at, after all the winners were the people that had the biggest transformation over the shortest time. So come the end of the challenge, if you didn’t win, it seemed in your best interests to eat everything, relax your training, gain a few kilos so you could have the before pics that would help show the biggest change in your physique.
I would be looking great, people telling me so, I was confident enough to take my shirt off again at the beach, but I was still quite miserable inside.
All that work at times to not ‘win’.
Yet I had won, I just hadn’t realised it.
Doing all of those challenges I had actually developed quite the habit in the gym. I was putting in good sessions. And that was when I realised, it wasn’t about winning a prize or gaining accolades it was about doing the reps.
And to successfully do those reps, I had to be enjoying what I was doing. And that was when I changed up my program.
I shifted from the traditional bodybuilding style workout advocated by so many back then to a combo of hill sprints(I do actually love these) and bodyweight exercises, changing up my routine in the weights room regularly, doing super sets, mixing weights with bodyweight stuff. I found that I loved training even more when it was quite varied.
All of a sudden, I didn’t need to win. I didn’t need a prize. The carrot had been dangling in front of me the whole time.
When I shifted my mind from ‘I need to go all or nothing, all out to beat the competition to win!’ to ‘I am my own competition, I need to be better than I was yesterday’ this was when it all changed.
I began to enjoy working out more and more, I was not fixed on one specific style of training, I no longer need to go on severely restrictive nutrition regimes to only blow out ‘at the end’ of the challenge.
You see the mindset shift came in that there is no end. If there is an end date on when you workout then in your mind you will think, ‘oh hey! It is time to stop, I have done this.’
And that is the thing, life is not done until well, we know when. So our health and fitness, it has to last until then.
So when I talk about the MESH framework, this part of headspace is so very important for the rest. If you see your health as an exam you can cram for, you will be stuck on the yo yo type hamster wheel forever.
If you see your health and fitness as something that you can maintain with a little effort each day, you will realise how much better all areas of life become because of this solid foundation that you have built.
If you ever want to talk about this just flick me a message and we can sort a time to come up with a plan of attack specifically for you.