Stuck?

There’s a new book on the shelves, Coach Yourself Thin, by Hottinger and Scholtz.  I haven’t read it.  But one of my professional health and fitness journals has highlighted some content of this book that I’d like to share with you.  Maybe it will inspire you to get the book, maybe these bits and pieces of ideas will be of help and guidance to you today and enough.   Here’s my take.

Why do we get stuck?

Ever feel like you can’t get traction on moving forward with your weight loss or fitness plan?  We’ve all been there.  An inertia sets in.  Or things get so complex in our lives that our food and exercise and everything surrounding them take a back seat.  We know it’s the one thing that will make everything else better – control over our food, eating, and weight.  And it does.  But when we’re stuck, we’re stuck.

Hottinger and Scholtz suggest you can free yourself by making 3 key shifts:

1)  Move away from all-or-nothing thinking

2)  Move away from going it alone

3)  Create a vision

1)  The rule of 80/20 replaces all-or-nothing

This is where flexibility plays an honored roll.  It’s not cop-outs, wimpiness, or the ‘what-the-hell’ approach.  Rather, it is going into the game well knowing that sometimes you are just going to fall short.  Instinctively, we think this is being too soft on ourselves, don’t we?  We think that if we can just come down hard on ourselves, we’ll feel bad  enough to just ‘do better’.

Well guess what, we don’t work like that.  When we pile on the guilt and remorse, it just creates more stress from which we want to relieve ourselves.  Hello cookie dough.  Instead, understand that less-that-perfect is part of the human condition and have some compassion for yourself.  The rule of 80/20 says that if you aim for reaching your standards 80 percent of the time, you have more in the ‘wins’ column than not.  It’s worth a try, isn’t it?

2)  Support and community, essentials for change:  No need to go it alone!

External support has proven time and time again to increase adherence to any kind of health-building plan.  When we isolate ourselves, we make it that much harder.  Hottinger and Scholtz recommend a system by which to ferret out the helps from the hindrances that they call a the “Bull’s-Eye Exercise”.  In this exercise, you assess the people in your life for what kind of support they truly do – or do not - provide you with.  Choose the supporters to be on your team.

3)  Build a vision to strengthen goal setting