How to have the MINDSET you need to become the healthiest version of YOU
I think you clicked on this blog because you saw that it talks about giving you the proper mindset to getting healthy and reaching your goals. Based on the title you surmised the article would help you begin a process towards good health and wellness. If you are reading this you are on the right track.
Why?
A lot of people start their journey towards health with different diet tips and different exercise routines. All those things are necessary and good. You will need that advice as well. You should find those. In fact, I've got a video of six health hacks regarding this, and these are the ways you can start. Learning how to diet well and exercise well is wonderful. But sometimes it goes beyond learning the "what" of healthy. There actually does have to be a "why" behind why you decide to eat healthily.
I'm going to give you some good framework for what it means to begin from literally zero.
You may be asking, "how do I start my journey?" or "What do I even think about first?"
It begins upstairs in the mind.
You need a Vision for your Life, Goals, and Future
If you don't know where you're going, how are you going to know when you get there? That's what vision's all about. Who do you want to be when you get older? Who do you want to be in 6 months, in a year, in 12 weeks, in 10 years? What do you want to feel like? What do you want to do? These are all the things you have to think about when it comes to crafting a vision for your life.
What are some examples of a vision? You may say something like this:
"I want to be healthy for my children."
"I want to be there for my kids."
"I want to walk my daughter down the aisle at her wedding."
"I want to have a dance with my son at his wedding."
"I want to see my grandchildren get older."
"I've got a contest that's in 16 weeks."
"I've got a Spartan race."
"...a bodybuilding competition."
"...a marathon."
"I'm training for a sport."
or even..."I need lower my blood sugar or my LDL cholesterol".
You've got to begin to define your vision for your life. So, what is that vision in YOUR heart?
I want you to get some paper or a note on your app on your phone. Think about what you want to be. Who do you want to become? What is your ultimate why? For me, when I played football, the vision I had was I want to be the MVP of the league, to be the MVP of my team, and to be first-team all-conference
My wife Sarah once had the vision of running a Spartan race three months after our third child was born. Her goal was, "I want to get in shape so I could run this Spartan race." Running a 10-mile obstacle course race 3 months after having your third child is no small feat! But she envisioned herself running that race in the desert of Arizona and she did it. She might tell you it wasn't her best race, but I think it was her best actual accomplishment because of the adversity she had to go through. Don't let circumstance stop you from dreaming up the vision of your dreams.
Once you have that vision statement you have the perfect framework for planning out how to achieve it. You can now define your life forward and then you plan it out backward. Your vision allows you to know where you're going, then you can reverse-engineer your life from the future back to the present.
Think Momentum over Motivation
If you're here, you're at least motivated enough to click on an article and read until this point. That is a great start. But you know and I know that that's not enough.
There has to be more than that, but here's the idea behind motivation that people fail to understand.
I played in the NFL for five years and also played college football. I have had the opportunity to be around the most elite athletes our nation has ever seen. A lot of people think that athletes like LeBron James, Tiger Woods, or Serena Williams are so much more motivated than other people. But the reality is, motivation is never going to just strike you like lightning. If you're sitting around praying for motivation, I think you've got the wrong mindset. You have to get up every single day and create momentum that begins to build that motivation for you going forward. These elite athletes weren't born motivated, they were disciplined enough early to see success and then became motivated, knowing motivation could take them to the next level. So instead of thinking motivation, think momentum.
Momentum is very difficult to generate at the beginning. When you think about pushing a boulder on a hill. It's very difficult to start moving or pushing. But once you start pushing it, it gets easier and easier and easier. That's momentum.
Mass x Velocity = Momentum.
You're pushing that rock slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly... And then you hit that downward slope on the hill and it just starts rolling on its own. So once you gain momentum, the motivation gets easier.
Motivation is actually very difficult to have initially. You might have a little spark of it, but after a couple of workouts or after a couple of days of eating healthier it's going to wane. But once you get that momentum over the course of time, you're going to see it's easier to get motivated because you're starting to see results a lot faster. So don't think motivation right away. Think momentum.
Habits are the building blocks of your future
What does it mean to create healthy habits? If you have a vision for your life, you have essentially placed a large nebulous goal at the end of your journey. Reaching that goal is all built on small habits
You can't change your end goal overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. And the way you change your end goal overnight is through small daily habits. Those daily habits accumulate to a weekly habit, and those weekly habits accumulate to a monthly habit, and then a yearly habit.
Eventually, a series of good habits become a permanent lifestyle change. What are the small habits you need to implement that will lead to your future success?
For me, I can tell you I wake up every morning and I work out before 5:30 AM. That's a habit for me that gives me an edge and puts me in the right frame of mind to achieve my goals.
I don't always wake up with the motivation to get out of bed at 5 am, but I think I've created enough momentum with following that habit every day that it's becoming a permanent lifestyle change. I have made a habit to drink eight 20-ounce bottles of water a day. I have a giant canister that I fill up eight times. That's another habit. For you, you might say, it's going to be sleeping eight hours a night. It may be, "I'm going to drink water or unsweetened iced tea at every meal. I'm not going to have any sugary drinks." That's how you're going to begin to build up towards your goal.
Remember, people live average lives because they do not commit to doing the little things right.
Set a "Time Goal" and work to accomplish your task in that time
Now you need to choose a time goal. You need to have a set time in which to accomplish your vision so that you can mentally lock in for that amount of time. So you may say to yourself, "I'm going to do this for 30 days. I'm going to do this for 60 days. I'm going to do this for 90 days." Most studies show that it takes at least 40 days to create a habit.
I'd start there. 40 days.
"I'm going to drink water only for 40 days."
"I'm going to go to the gym four times a week for 40 days."
"I'm going to eat no carbohydrates for 40 days."
Whatever level you're at, choose a goal that's easily attainable for you. Another option is to choose an end date that is near a large event like a wedding, a vacation or a beach trip. These can serve as massive external motivators as well. When you build your Time Goal around an event, you have something to look forward to and to be accountable towards. I know some people will even buy clothes that they know will fit them the size lower to help them motivate them to go towards that goal.
Consistency over Content
Consistency is king. There are so many diet and exercise plans that people quit after 30 days. There are so many different diet books and blogs about how so-and-so lost all this weight, and if you google them now, you see that they have quit and are back to eating garbage! The issue with following crash diets is that people often rebound and regain their weight just as fast as they lost it because of their inability to become consistent after the initial diet.
Consistency is the name of the game. If you can be consistent regardless of what diet or exercise plan you are using, you are going to win. It doesn't matter if you're paleo, vegan, keto, vegetarian, Whole30, Mediterranean diet. It doesn't matter if it's a shake diet or an intermittent fasting plan. If you're consistent and it's a decent enough diet, you're going to win.
Think consistency over content.
Ask yourself how you can go for the 40, the 90, the 120 days straight being fully consistent within the parameters you've laid out for yourself.
Of course, along the way, you will realize you need to tweak some things. But before you worry too much about the content of the plan, worry about being consistent with the plan in the first place.
Embrace the suck
The next thing you need to realize when you're just getting started is that you're going to have to "Embrace the suck." And this comes from a retired Navy SEAL friend of mine learned this language during his combat days. Sometimes things are hard. Life isn't all sunshine and living like that sets you up for a rude awakening. When it comes to diet or exercise, the road can and will get difficult. Getting healthy early on can suck, especially if you're used to eating so much sugar, consuming copious amounts of carbohydrates, or not working out.
Your legs are going to be sore from squats. You are going to be tired from early morning workouts. You'll be tired from running and your feet are going to be sore. You may get blisters from running. You're going to need Epsom salt baths, and it's going to hurt to get up out of your chair after leg day. And it's going to be hard not to have the ice cream after dinner every day. You're going to have to embrace the suck.
I remember my first training camp in the NFL when I was a rookie. It gets very muggy in the summer in Washington D.C. I remember sitting in a meeting room and a bunch of the rookies were sitting in the back waiting for the meeting to start. A couple of the guys begin going back and forth at each other, "Man it's so hot out there. It's so warm. I hate how hot it is here. I just don't like it. I went to college in a different place and it's just not as hot." And one of the veterans turned around and I'll never forget, he yelled and said, "Hey, it's supposed to be hot."
It's supposed to be hot.
Training camp is supposed to be hot. It's supposed to get you in shape for a long hard season.
Your diet plan is supposed to be difficult at times. If it wasn't difficult, everybody would do it. But everyone isn't doing it because it is hard. But you aren't like everyone else. Not anymore. You are someone who wants to make actual changes. So remember, when things get difficult during your diet and your workouts, say to yourself, "it's supposed to be hard".
Don't be Normal, be Weird
Don't be normal. Look at normal today. Normal today is sick, overweight, underperforming, and chronically malnourished.
Normal is 91% of our prescriptions being filled in the United States for chronic diseases caused by diet. Consider that. That's what normal is. Normal is by 2030, $47 trillion being spent worldwide on chronic disease that we can prevent with our diets. That is normal.
Don't be normal. Be weird. Weird is somebody who is in shape after 35 years old and into their 40's, 50's and 60's. Weird is somebody who cares about what they eat on a daily basis. Weird is someone who goes to the potluck or the party and doesn't eat all of the snacks and cooks something healthy for everyone to eat. Weird people don't do takeout very often, if at all.
Weird people succeed while everyone else quits. Weird people lose 30, 40, 50, or 100 lbs so they can live a long and healthy life. Don't be normal. Be weird. Weird people win.
