Every year, tens of thousands of people in the USA and Canada buy gym memberships in the beginning of January and make a resolution to “get in shape”. However, after the first three weeks of January, their membership becomes inactive and they suffer relapses.
If you have ever suffered relapses and frustrations, then I think that you will find this article very helpful.
Once you know the reasons why something does not work, you will be able to stop doing the things that don’t work. After that, you can replace the things that don’t work with what actually works.
1. You have an unclear goal. If every January your goal is “to get in shape”, then you are setting yourself up for failure and frustration. The reason being is that such a goal is very vague. When a goal is vague, it’s very hard to measure your progress. How are you supposed to know if you are making progress when you are not clear about where you’re going?
For example, if your goal was to lose 12 lbs of body fat over the next 3 months then that would be a much more clear goal than “to get in shape”. This is because it’s SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely). You can see your progress and a fat loss of 1 lb per week is realistic and attainable.
2. Your goal is too aggressive. If you say that you want to lose 10 lbs a week over the next month, then you’re either going to burn yourself out and suffer a relapse (regain all the weight you lost) or you are going to quit because you’re not seeing the result as fast as you want. Losing weight at that rate most likely requires drastic measures and a routine that you may not be able to maintain.
Setting a more realistic goal can help you decrease the chances of regaining the weight or quitting.
3. Your diet. Even if you’re diligently going to the gym 3-5 times a week and workout for a solid hour doing a combination of weights, cardio and flexibility, you will not see many changes in your physique if you continue to eat potato chips, fast food, fries, other deep fried foods, cakes and candy. If you’re trying to lose weight, you should have a negative calorie balance.
4. Wrong exercise program. If you’ve developed your own random exercise program without knowing what results each exercise produces and how to do it properly, then you are also setting yourself up for injuries and lack of progress.
For example, you may be doing too much or too little cardio or may be lifting too heavy or too light for your level in addition to not doing enough or doing too many reps. Also, if your posture while you’re lifting is wrong, then you may end up with injuries without making any difference in muscles that you’re trying to develop.
5. You’re doing the same thing over and over again. So, you’ve been diligently going to the gym for 3 months yet you are seeing virtually no changes to your physique or your weight. This is because after about 6 weeks, your body gets used to certain exercises and intensities. This means that every 6 weeks, you should change up your workout program in order to continue challenging your body.
Your body adapts to exercises, therefore you should gradually increase intensity (ie. add more weight for weights and add more speed for cardio), increase duration (more sets/reps for weight and longer cardio sessions), or change the order in which the exercises are performed as well as possibly replacing the beginner exercises with more advanced exercises (if you’re unfamiliar with an advanced exercise, seek help from a trainer, who knows the exercise, to avoid injury).
I wish you success in all your fitness and life goals.
Thank you for reading.
Yana 🙂