In a sick way, the westernised diet is considered normal. And that’s the problem. When we eat healthy, WE become the freak. WE become the outsider. WE become the one ‘on a diet’. This needs to be flipped. Healthy eating needs to become the norm.
ROMcast provides bite-sized chunks of health, happiness, fitness and performance. Presented by Exercise Physiologist and Scientist, Coach and Director of Range of Motion, Dan Williams.
ROMcast provides bite-sized chunks of health, happiness, fitness and performance. Presented by Exercise Physiologist and Scientist, Coach and Director of Range of Motion, Dan Williams.
Enjoy ROMcast? We’d love if you could rate or review our show on iTunes or Stitcher, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss future episodes!
SHOW NOTES:
Episode Transcript:
Are you Scared of Setting Goals In Case You Fail?
Do you have a plan for your future? Something you want to do? Somewhere you want to be? Maybe it’s big and world changing. Maybe it’s so small and no one would ever notice, but it’s enough for a spark of self accomplishment and a tiny but determined pump of the fist.
Do you know how you’re going to get there? Do you have a plan? Have you set your mind to making it happen? It’s not a dream, it’s a goal.
Now, some people are ‘goal people’. They write them out and stick them on their bathroom mirror. They see them every time they brush their teeth. Maybe they even post them on Facebook. And maybe that’s not your style. You’re not a ‘scream them from the rooftops’ kind of person. And that’s cool. Maybe you’re a ‘whisper them from under the bed’ type of person. Maybe you’re not even that. Maybe you goals never escape the deepest reaches of your mind. Because if you don’t set a goal you can’t fail it right?
It’s a deep seeded human fear to not be good enough. Normally we can avoid this inadequacy, but with goals, we’re putting ourselves out there. We’re formalising our dreams and exposing our inner drive. We’re testing our ability to achieve something we set out to.
The fear here is a common on. ‘If I give it my all and fall short, then I’ll know I wasn’t good enough’. The fear is real. And for many people the fear is enough to push those dreams down so deep in their hearts that they never see the light of day.
Part of this fear has a name. Self handicapping. Self handicapping is when you give yourself an excuse to fail. So if you do fall short of your goals, it’s not really a failure – because you’d given yourself a way out anyway. You’re blaming the failure on a handicap that you’ve created, not on your own ability. This means it can never be your fault. It means you don’t have to take responsibility for your shortcomings. It means you let life happen and fall back on a fixed mindset and the crutch of ‘fate’ rather than a growth mindset where you know you can do anything you put your mind to.
Remember when you were a kid and you lost a race at lunchtime with your friend. ‘I wasn’t racing’ you cry! And suddenly you didn’t actually lose that race, because you weren’t ‘all in’. You can find examples of handicapping littered all throughout your life. ‘I probably won’t get this job because I’m underqualified’. ‘I won’t do well in this workout because I’m sore’. ‘I didn’t study enough so I’m not going to do well in this exam’. ‘I doubt I’ll lose weight because I smashed that entire tub of Ben and Jerries icecream’.
Suddenly not getting the job becomes ok, not doing well in the workout becomes ok, bombing the exam becomes ok, putting on weight becomes ok. It becomes ok because you haven’t failed at all, you’ve planted a reason that makes failure ok. You’ve given yourself an emergency exit – a way out. And by making failure ok, it’s not failure at all – because you weren’t really trying. And this isn’t ok. There’s a reason for everything we do, even if it’s not immediately apparent. Everything we do, we do to move away from pain or towards pleasure. The reason for self handicapping is to protect our self image and self-esteem. But you’ll spend your life living in the comfort zone. Living in your own personal sphere of mediocrity. You’re erasing the extremes of your experience. Sure, you won’t fail as hard, but you won’t win as hard either.
So let’s reframe this fear. Instead of being afraid to give it your all, fall short, and know you weren’t good enough, the REAL fear should be in NOT giving it your all and living out your days wondering just how great you could have been. How much impact you could have had? How many of your dreams could have come true?
Now if this sounds like you, things are about to get a bit scary, because we’re about to start removing that safety net. Going all in. Full commitment. This does three things.
Firstly, it increases your chance of success. If you prepare well and increase your effort, you’re more likely to achieve whatever it is you’re directing your effort to. Secondly it improves your self confidence and reduces anxiety. Going in to an interview, exam or sporting event knowing you’d done everything in your power to ensure success gives you a wave of confidence you can’t get anywhere else, a wave that washes away any anxiety you have about your perceived inadequacies. And finally, at the end of the day, after the race has been won or lost, full commitment gives you a deep seeded satisfaction. A satisfaction in the process, not the outcome. And sure, maybe everything you had wasn’t enough. And that’s ok. Believe it or not, the hollow feeling of accomplishment you’ll feel from winning easily is dwarfed by the accomplishment you’ll feel from failing at the end of your full effort.
Plus, there’s so much value in failing! If you don’t fail you miss out on so many lessons, so many opportunities to readjust and learn. So many opportunities to increase your chance of future victory.
If all you ever do is win, it’s a sure fire sign that you’re sitting right in the middle of your comfort zone. Constant and recurring successes and victories are the greatest signs we have that we’re underextending, aiming too low. Occasional failures tell us we’re pushing out limits. Sure, pushing your limits means you sometimes lose. But the only way to expand your limits is to push on them, to push right to the margins of our abilities and our experience. Trying to run six kilometres when you’ve only ever done five. Applying for a job where you don’t meet all the criteria. Asking that girl out on a date when you think she’s out of your league. Self growth comes from the expansion of our limits. Without pushing the limits, without expansion, we don’t get better.
Now, I get it, losing sucks. Failure sucks. But the suck is temporary – it’s short term. And as with most things that are difficult in the short term, they become a positive in the long term. Getting out of bed to exercise can suck. Putting down that donut can suck. But the short term pain leads to long term gain. Easy short term choices lead to negative long term consequences. Difficult short term choices lead to positive long term consequences. And choosing the possibility of failure is definitely a difficult long short term choice. But it follows our rule and this failure almost always leads to a positive long term consequence. Don’t base your value to the world on whether you achieve some goal, rather use what you’ve learned to drive you towards a better future. Being willing to struggle for something is a great determinant of how our life turns out.
If you don’t like how it feels when you don’t reach a goal, maybe the problem isn’t with goal, maybe the problem is with your perception. You’re not chasing progress but an unrealistic perfection. It’s ok to not achieve your goals. In fact, as we’ve discussed, if you achieve every goal you’re not stretching yourself enough. The pursuit of perfection is just that, a pursuit. A journey not a destination. Perfection is often impossible, and if you only judge something a success when you’ve done it perfectly, then you’re destined to fail again and again. With this constant beating down of your self image and self esteem it’s no wonder you’re scared of setting goals! When you set a goal it directs you attention to the habits and processes you need to achieve that goal. If you’ve set a goal to lose 10kg, and you only end up losing nine, YOU’VE STILL LOST 9KG! If you can’t distinguish between success and perfection, this incredible achievement will go down as a failure. The only failure here is your faulty perception. The goal directed your behaviours, the behaviours determined the result. You have two choices. You can fail a goal because you fell one kilo short. Or you could not setting a goal at all because you’re scared of failing it. I know I’d choose the failure of progress over the success of stagnation every time.
And then there’s some people who say they don’t set goals at all. Everyone sets goals. You go to work with the goal of earning money. Eating a healthy meal is a goal. Getting out of bed every morning is a goal. Exercising is a goal. Every behaviour you undertake with an end result in mind is a goal. It’s not that you don’t set them, it’s more that your goal setting process sucks! There are well researched and evidence-based processes for setting goals. They’re based on the science of the human psyche, and exist to help you achieve, grow, chase your dreams. So I can’t accept you don’t set goals. But I can accept that the way you set goals needs work.
Don’t live life never knowing what you could have achieved. Be brave enough to learn the lessons of your failures, to push your limits and expand and exceed them. So stop being afraid. Get out there and be your own version of extraordinary.
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Well, there’s a reason for it. And it’s not a problem with you. It’s not an indication of your lack of willpower or motivation. It’s not an indication of any failure on your behalf.
It’s a physiological process. And it’s a process that (if we understand it), we can hack.
It all starts when we ‘go on a diet’ (just remember that It is Not You That is on a Diet. It is Everyone Else!). This usually means we begin consuming a lot less, resulting in reduced energy coming in to the body. Our body has grown to expect a certain amount of energy coming in, so when we suddenly reduce that, it starts to panic. You see, it thinks you’re about to go into a famine. It thinks this because, for you 1600x great grandparents, they probably were. Back then, some 40,000 years ago, our bodies were the same, but our environment was very different. You can read about our description of Paleolithic humans versus modern humans here.
Periods of feast and famine were common, so when food became scarce, our body slowed things down. Our metabolic activity decreased. This meant that we needed less energy to stay alive. We went into energy conservation mode to stay alive. Of course, these days, we have plenty of food, but our body doesn’t know that, and ancient 40,000 year old bodies haven’t caught up with our new calorie rich environment.
Maybe we drop some weight. Our metabolism slows, and our body cries out for more food. It fights your new diet by increasing your appetite. It makes you hungry. If you’re hungry, you’ll seek out food, fighting your (self imposed) famine and therefore fighting your new way of eating. You succomb to the urges of your hunger hormones. Either you reach your weight loss goal and return to normal eating, or you fall off the wagon and increase your food consumption.
You enter a perfect storm of weight gain. Your new slower metabolism combines with hunger hormones circulating the body and increased energy intake. Not only are you eating more, but your body needs less energy to keep it alive, so the energy entering your body is stored as fat. Your metablism may start to creep back up, but its slow progress can’t compete with the sudden increase in appetite and food. In many cases, as your weight increases, your metabolism actually stays lower than it was before you began your diet.
You regain the weight, often ending up more than you did in the beginning. So you think you’d better go on a diet…
And so the cycle goes, a crashing metabolism combined with a physiological craving for more food as your body desperately tries to keep you alive.
What’s the answer? Small, gradual changes to your nutrition. Tiny habits that allow your body to adapt at the same rate as your behaviour adapts. Changes that are sustainable for the long term. All this coupled with forms of exercise to increase (or at least maintain) lean muscle mass. Resistance based exercise (lifting weights) to increase your metabolically active tissue and fight the metabolism loss. Exercise at intensity to increase the benefits to your metabolism after the exercise is over (read: Burn energy while you sleep with EPOC).
In short, gradual lifestyle change. Permanent change. Sustainable change.
Break the cycle. Cut the yoyo string.
Well, there’s a reason for it. And it’s not a problem with you. It’s not an indication of your lack of willpower or motivation. It’s not an indication of any failure on your behalf.
It’s a physiological process. And it’s a process that (if we understand it), we can hack.
It all starts when we ‘go on a diet’ (just remember that It is Not You That is on a Diet. It is Everyone Else!). This usually means we begin consuming a lot less, resulting in reduced energy coming in to the body. Our body has grown to expect a certain amount of energy coming in, so when we suddenly reduce that, it starts to panic. You see, it thinks you’re about to go into a famine. It thinks this because, for you 1600x great grandparents, they probably were. Back then, some 40,000 years ago, our bodies were the same, but our environment was very different. You can read about our description of Paleolithic humans versus modern humans here.
Periods of feast and famine were common, so when food became scarce, our body slowed things down. Our metabolic activity decreased. This meant that we needed less energy to stay alive. We went into energy conservation mode to stay alive. Of course, these days, we have plenty of food, but our body doesn’t know that, and ancient 40,000 year old bodies haven’t caught up with our new calorie rich environment.
Maybe we drop some weight. Our metabolism slows, and our body cries out for more food. It fights your new diet by increasing your appetite. It makes you hungry. If you’re hungry, you’ll seek out food, fighting your (self imposed) famine and therefore fighting your new way of eating. You succomb to the urges of your hunger hormones. Either you reach your weight loss goal and return to normal eating, or you fall off the wagon and increase your food consumption.
You enter a perfect storm of weight gain. Your new slower metabolism combines with hunger hormones circulating the body and increased energy intake. Not only are you eating more, but your body needs less energy to keep it alive, so the energy entering your body is stored as fat. Your metablism may start to creep back up, but its slow progress can’t compete with the sudden increase in appetite and food. In many cases, as your weight increases, your metabolism actually stays lower than it was before you began your diet.
You regain the weight, often ending up more than you did in the beginning. So you think you’d better go on a diet…
And so the cycle goes, a crashing metabolism combined with a physiological craving for more food as your body desperately tries to keep you alive.
What’s the answer? Small, gradual changes to your nutrition. Tiny habits that allow your body to adapt at the same rate as your behaviour adapts. Changes that are sustainable for the long term. All this coupled with forms of exercise to increase (or at least maintain) lean muscle mass. Resistance based exercise (lifting weights) to increase your metabolically active tissue and fight the metabolism loss. Exercise at intensity to increase the benefits to your metabolism after the exercise is over (read: Burn energy while you sleep with EPOC).
In short, gradual lifestyle change. Permanent change. Sustainable change.
Break the cycle. Cut the yoyo string.
Correct pacing strategies become even more important. Not just because of our knowledge of the energy systems and their role in energy production (and eventually, physical output), but also because our effort impacts our psychology, and our psychology impacts our output. And ultimately, we can increase our performance.
ROMcast provides bite-sized chunks of health, happiness, fitness and performance. Presented by Exercise Physiologist and Scientist, Coach and Director of Range of Motion, Dan Williams.
Enjoy ROMcast? We’d love if you could rate or review our show on iTunes or Stitcher, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss future episodes!
SHOW NOTES:
Episode Transcript:
Pacing workouts in functional fitness is now widely being accepted as an integral part of performance optimisation. In our article “CrossFits Number One Biggest Pacing Mistake“, we talk discuss that:
“CrossFitters face one major problem in trying to develop correct strategy and pacing strategies. They make the mistake of trying to use an energy system that’s too intense for the workout they’re doing. As a result, they reach a threshold and the byproducts of the energy system inhibit their ability to stay in that system, they ‘hit the wall’ and intensity (and therefore output) drops.”
We’re talking about pacing here purely in the context of the physical, but there’s a strong mental element that stems from correct pacing strategies, and by entering the psychological state it can give you, you’ll go full circle and further optimise physical performance.
The psychological benefit of pacing stems from the absence of pain and discomfort. Sure, discomfort is an inescapable part of maximising performance, but incorrect pacing increases discomfort, which prevents us from entering our optimum performance state. It keeps us out of flow.
Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform at our best. It is the optimal level of arousal to maximise performance of a skill. In his book ‘Happier’, author Tal Ben-Shahar explores the links between pain and flow, and proposes a method for shifting out of the ‘no pain, no gain’ mindset, into the ‘present gain, future gain’ mindset:
“…studies of flow show that the ‘no pain no gain’ model is based on the myth that only through extreme and sustained exertion can we attain our optimal level of performance. Rather, there is a specific zone, the line between overexertion and underexertion, where we not only perform at our best but also enjoy what we’re doing. We reach this zone when our activities provide the appropriate level of challenge, when the task at hand is neither too difficult or too easy.”
So correct pacing strategies become even more important. Not just because of our knowledge of the energy systems and their role in energy production (and eventually, physical output), but also because our effort impacts our psychology, and our psychology impacts our output. And ultimately, we can increase our performance.
Recommended Reading:
For competitive functional fitness athletes, competition is a skill. It takes practice. An athlete competing in the sport of fitness needs more than just training. They need to play their sport. Here are seven reasons why.
For competitive functional fitness athletes, competition is a skill. It takes practice. Just like someone playing team sports needs more than training for ‘match fitness’, an athlete competing in the sport of fitness needs more than training. They need to play their sport.
Competing is a skill and an art. And these are the top reasons to compete more:
So don’t shy away from competition. It’s an opportunity to grow as an athlete – and the benefits are much more than the sum of its parts.
Recommended Reading:
Correct pacing strategies become even more important. Not just because of our knowledge of the energy systems and their role in energy production (and eventually, physical output), but also because our effort impacts our psychology, and our psychology impacts our output. And ultimately, we can increase our performance.
ROMcast provides bite-sized chunks of health, happiness, fitness and performance. Presented by Exercise Physiologist and Scientist, Coach and Director of Range of Motion, Dan Williams.
Enjoy ROMcast? We’d love if you could rate or review our show on iTunes or Stitcher, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss future episodes!
SHOW NOTES:
Episode Transcript:
Pacing workouts in functional fitness is now widely being accepted as an integral part of performance optimisation. In our article “CrossFits Number One Biggest Pacing Mistake“, we talk discuss that:
“CrossFitters face one major problem in trying to develop correct strategy and pacing strategies. They make the mistake of trying to use an energy system that’s too intense for the workout they’re doing. As a result, they reach a threshold and the byproducts of the energy system inhibit their ability to stay in that system, they ‘hit the wall’ and intensity (and therefore output) drops.”
We’re talking about pacing here purely in the context of the physical, but there’s a strong mental element that stems from correct pacing strategies, and by entering the psychological state it can give you, you’ll go full circle and further optimise physical performance.
The psychological benefit of pacing stems from the absence of pain and discomfort. Sure, discomfort is an inescapable part of maximising performance, but incorrect pacing increases discomfort, which prevents us from entering our optimum performance state. It keeps us out of flow.
Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform at our best. It is the optimal level of arousal to maximise performance of a skill. In his book ‘Happier’, author Tal Ben-Shahar explores the links between pain and flow, and proposes a method for shifting out of the ‘no pain, no gain’ mindset, into the ‘present gain, future gain’ mindset:
“…studies of flow show that the ‘no pain no gain’ model is based on the myth that only through extreme and sustained exertion can we attain our optimal level of performance. Rather, there is a specific zone, the line between overexertion and underexertion, where we not only perform at our best but also enjoy what we’re doing. We reach this zone when our activities provide the appropriate level of challenge, when the task at hand is neither too difficult or too easy.”
So correct pacing strategies become even more important. Not just because of our knowledge of the energy systems and their role in energy production (and eventually, physical output), but also because our effort impacts our psychology, and our psychology impacts our output. And ultimately, we can increase our performance.
Recommended Reading:
How can we improve our diet by 80% while only putting in 20% of the effort?
ROMcast provides bite-sized chunks of health, happiness, fitness and performance. Presented by Exercise Physiologist and Scientist, Coach and Director of Range of Motion, Dan Williams.
Enjoy ROMcast? We’d love if you could rate or review our show on iTunes or Stitcher, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss future episodes!
SHOW NOTES:
Episode Transcript:
The 80/20 rule (or the Pareto Principle) can be seen everywhere.
20% of your customers take up 80% of your time.
80% of a business’ income comes from 20% of a business’ products.
80% of a country’s wealth is in the hands of 20% of the people.
20% of your enjoyment comes from 80% of your possessions.
Your wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time.
The numbers might not be exact, but the premise is sound. 20% of one thing can cause 80% of the outcome.
Nutrition is no different. What’s the 20% of food you eat 80% of the time?
Often, a complete nutritional overhaul can be daunting. Daunting to the extent that it’s a barrier to beginning the journey of diet improvement. People perceive the ‘perfect’ diet as so far detached from their current eating patterns that it’s unattainable, and they give up.
The problem is, they go after the 100%. They go after perfection, perceiving anything less as a failure.
The solution? Turn the 80/20 principle loose on nutrition.
If you look at what you’re eating, you’ll notice there are two problems. Either there’s something missing (more healthy, nutrient dense foods), or there’s too much of something (less healthy, often processed, nutrient sparse foods). Look a bit deeper, and you’ll notice some patterns. You’ll notice things are being repeated. Maybe you don’t eat any protein with breakfast. Maybe lunch always contains highly processed foods. Maybe you don’t eat vegges with dinner. These three examples may only comprise a small portion of your total nutrition, but the impact they have is huge. They might be the 20% of your diet that causes 80% of the problems.
So what can you do about this? Well, for a start, identify the things you consistently and repeatedly do. Identify the patterns in your behaviour. These are habits. These are the examples of where making a small change will have a major effect. Too often, people chase the one percenters – the tiny things that have a tiny effect. Willpower is finite, so don’t waste it on low value changes. Instead, look for the lowest hanging fruit that has the greatest effect. Look for the 20% of things you can change that will impact 80% of your health. They’re not hard to find – you’ll notice them popping up again and again and again.
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