The secret to health and fitness success

If you are looking for a quick and easy solution to improve your health and get the body of your dreams – this article will disappoint you.

If you want practical information that may help you achieve your health and fitness goals – keep reading.

What is the secret to health and fitness success?

Some people think that coaches and athletes have some secrets to fitness success that they keep carefully (because how else to explain why they succeed, but I don’t).

And.

There is no lack of “experts” who will gladly reveal them to you – for a small and fair fee 😊.

Unfortunately, most of them are platitudes or meaningless nonsense whose sole purpose is to sell expensive dietary supplements, diet or slimming pills, teas, etc.

Various Fad diets, hard to understand and conflicting information about healthy eating – all this makes the world of fitness and healthy lifestyle very confusing.

So.

What’s the secret of health and a beautiful and fit body?

I can reveal mine to you:

1. Intense physical activity at least 3 times a week. For me, it’s mostly strength and cardio training.
2. I cook at home as much as possible – lots of nutritious meals with plenty of protein, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, eggs, nuts, beans, fish, etc. Generally, I only eat food cooked by others when I’m visiting, on holiday (if I can’t cook there) or if my loved one invites me to a good restaurant for a meal.
3. I keep track of my calorie intake – I try to take in exactly as much energy as my body needs – no more and no less.
4. I have been following the first 3 points for more than a decade. These activities have become my lifestyle, and I no longer have to force/motivate myself – I enjoy both the sport and the cooking.

However, it is much easier to say than to do.

Firstly, of course, because of the lack of time. At least, it seems so to many of us.

And.

We usually have too much information we need to sort out first, and we tend to do too many tasks at once.

Today, I want to share a principle that can increase your chances of success and help you transform both your appearance and well-being. A Principle that can help you move from “maybe I can do it” to “I definitely can do it“.

The principle is simple – Less is More, or habit-based lifestyle changes. In other words, focusing on smaller but permanent changes helps you achieve more.

This concept is not new. It is based on the separation of the essential from the non-essential and the elimination of the non-essential. How to align your life with your goals and change your habits to purposefully move yourself where you want to be – how to live a more active, healthy, productive and fulfilling life.

In today’s world full of “technology”, “innovation”, “cutting-edge solutions” and “gadgets”, it is usually our habits that win.

When we come home, we always put our keys in the same place; when we change our place of work or residence, we sometimes find that we automatically go to the old one instead of the new one…

In other words, to make sustainable change, we need to create new habits.

Creating new habits

The only way to create permanent habits is to focus on just one habit at a time so that you can focus all your energy on creating that one habit:

• Choose no more than one habit per month – any habit that you think will have the highest impact on your life (bring you closer to your goal).
• Write a plan – what your goal will be, when and what you will do, and what will trigger your action.
• Make your goal public – tell that you are trying to create a new habit to as many people as possible – relatives, friends, on your social network account, etc.
• Report your progress daily – tell people whether or not you managed to do what you set out to do today.

In fact, you are writing a public diary on one specific topic – how I am building a new habit. It may not be easy, but if you take courage and make your goal and progress public – the chances of achieving your goal will increase significantly.

There are also some rules that need to be followed to make this challenge successful:

• Try to build only one habit at a time – trying to build several habits at the same time will make success much less likely. Trust me – experience shows that if you build several habits at the same time, you are more likely to fail, but if you build just one habit and follow the rules below, 50-80% of people succeed.
• Choose an easy goal – at least at the beginning. Later, once you have a good grasp of habit change, you can choose something harder. Start with something you are confident you will be able to do every day. Or something even easier – for example, if you think you can exercise 60 minutes a day, choose 30 or 20 minutes.
• Choose something measurable – you need to be able to tell whether you have succeeded or failed today. If you choose exercise, determine how long you will exercise (minutes) or something similar such as the number of exercises and/or repetitions.
• Be consistent. If possible, do it at the same time every day – it is more likely to become a habit.
• Report your successes or failures every day – the less often you report, the more likely you are to fail.
• Keep a positive attitude! Failures will almost certainly happen, but just You don’t need to be ashamed.

Only one habit at a time

In this blog, I share my experience and knowledge about everything you need to know about nutrition and fitness to improve your health and create the body of your dreams – the best version of yourself.

However, there is one small problem – if you try to apply ALL the information in my blog at once – your chances of success will decrease rapidly.

What to do?

Exactly what I wrote about above – try to achieve only one thing at a time, to form only one habit. For example, you could start with:

• Eat breakfast every day.
• Increase your fruit and vegetable intake to 5 portions a day.
• Eat lean protein at every meal.
• Use vegetables or fruits for snacks.
• Choose complex carbohydrates at every meal.

There are probably dozens of simple habits you can implement immediately.

However.

To increase your chance of success, implement ONLY ONE habit at a time.

Research shows that if we try to introduce/change one thing in our lives, we are more than 80 per cent likely to keep that habit for a year or more.

But.

If we try to adopt two habits at the same time – our chances of success are less than 35 per cent. If we try to implement three or more new habits – the success rate drops to less than 5 per cent.

In other words, when people try to make a significant change in their lifestyle in a short period of time, they usually fail.

The problem is that most people have no patience and want to be in shape – yesterday😊.

Select the most important

Evaluate your goals and determine what you want to achieve in the next year, three or five years – how you want to feel, how you want to look…

To determine which habits to get rid of, create or change, ask yourself which ones will have the most impact and which of them will help you the most in achieving your goal.

And.

Plan your days so that each day you do something that contributes to those goals.

The most common excuses I hear are “I don’t have time” and “I’m too tired during the day”.

So

Review all aspects of your life.

• Which areas of your life are overloaded?
• What would you like to simplify? Maybe you want to limit the amount of information you receive, maybe responsibilities, or something else? For example, if you receive too many emails – check your email only twice a day and reply to 5 emails each time. This way you will work more efficiently and only reply to important emails.

Focus is the most important factor in determining whether you will achieve your goal of creating a new habit. Focusing on the here and now can also help you a lot – help you reduce stress and enjoy life to the full.

Focus on the positive.

And.

Learn to say “No”.

Key takeaways

Our health and fitness is a lifelong journey – it never ends. Once you’ve reached your goal, you still need to maintain it, so it’s crucial to understand what lifestyle changes can best help you along the way.

The effectiveness of this principle (getting rid of, adopting or changing just one habit at a time) is proven by research and my years of experience.

Choose which habits can help you progress towards your goal the fastest and implement them – patiently, one at a time. This is the best starting step to improve your eating habits, how you look, and your life in general.

Cook more yourself, eat a balanced diet, exercise and – enjoy life!