Fort Worth Personal Training: The Power Isn’t The Plan, It’s the Planning
You always hear about the power of writing out your goals.
But far less common do you hear about writing out your plan..
Sure you have meal plans, and diet plans, and exercise plans but as you know most pre made plans have an extremely high failure rate.
Diet books that never get opened.
Exercise plans that are abandoned the first day you stay late for work.
Meal plans dialed into the smallest micro-nutrient just for you and they’re stuffed under the car seat never to be seen again.
The reason meal plans don’t work may surprise you.
There was an interesting study done.
In 1992 a British psychologist walked into two of Scotland’s busiest orthopedic hospitals and recruited five-dozen patients for an experiment she hoped would explain how to boost the willpower of exceptionally resistant people.
The patients were on average 68 years old, earned less than 10,000 a year and didn’t have more than a high school degree.
All of them had undergone hip or knee replacement surgeries.
Recovering from a hip or knee replacement surgery is an incredible arduous process.
While recovering even the smallest movement-shifting in bed or flexing a joint-can be excruciating.
However it’s essential that patients begin exercising as soon as they wake from surgery to insure proper joint mobility and muscle strength is maintained.
The Scottish studies participants were the most likely to fail at rehabilitation.
The researchers wanted to see if it was possible for them to harness their willpower.
She gave each patient a booklet after their surgeries detailing their rehab schedule, and in the back an additional 13 pages (one for each week) with blank spaces and instructions…
“My Goals For This Week are__________”
Write down exactly what you’re going to do; For example if you’re going to go for a walk this week, write down exactly when and where you’re going to go for a walk.
To make specific plans
She then compared the recoveries between the patients that filled out the plan and those that had not.
The patients who had written plans in their booklet had started walking almost twice as fast as the ones who had not.
They had started getting in and out of their chairs unassisted almost 3 times as best.
They were putting on their shoes, getting dressed, making meals quicker than those who hadn’t planned ahead of time.
The psychologist wanted to know WHY.
As she scrutinized the booklets of the successful patients they all had one thing in common: They focused on how patients would handle specific moments of anticipated pain.
The man who exercised on the way to the bathroom knew the first step was always the most painful, so he planned ahead to not hesitate when he stood and to take the first step right away.
He had detailed the every obstacle he might confront and came up with a solution ahead of time.
The patients were telling themselves how they were going to make it over the hump.
There’s no reason why the other patients- the ones who didn’t write out recovery plans-couldn’t have behaved the same way.
All the patients had been exposed to the same warnings to keep moving from the hospital.
They all knew exercise was essential for their recovery.
BUT, the patients who didn’t write out any plans were at a significant disadvantage, because they never thought ahead about how to deal with the painful inflection points.
They never deliberately designed willpower habits.
Even if they intended to walk around the block, their resolve abandoned them when they were confronted with the discomfort of the first few steps.
This is why we do meal plans WITH our clients.
The power is NOT in the PLAN.
The power is IN the PLANNING.
You can do this yourself by using my 100 Best Foods list.
Checking all the foods that DO work
for you.
Taking a piece of paper.
Writing down.
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
And plugging the foods you CAN eat into those meals.
This forethought lets you see the possible obstacles to you eating in a supportive manner throughout your day.
Example:
You don’t/can’t brown bag your lunch?
Where can you get a fast healthy lunch consistently nearby?
Subway? Great that will work.
Lunch is solved.
Is Subway the best thing you could ever eat, no.
But it beats not having a plan each day and eating nothing, wings, a hot dog, or some other garbage. Every day.
See the power isn’t always where you think it is in the beginning.
In the beginning the power of exercise isn’t in the exercise.
It’s in the SHOWING UP part of exercise.
You’re building the SHOWING UP habit.
And when it comes to developing the meal
plan.
The power is not in the MEAL PLAN.
The REAL POWER is in the PLANNING.
That’s the secret.
Dave
P.s. If you’ve been struggling to stay with your exercise program long enough to get results. And your diet could be generously called “inconsistent”. We can help. Get the coaching, accountability, support, workouts, and nutrition to get the results you want and deserve.
Click Here=>Fast-Start Consult
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