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Creating the body you want and keeping it comes down to your lifestyle behaviours and belief systems.
I call this the “un-fu*king” process.
The process involves taking all of your current habits and your perceptions on what’s “normal” and replace them to create your “new normal”.
It’s a slower process but it makes for great permanent body transformation changes that don’t require you to lose the same 10kgs you put back on again from last years dieting efforts. That said, let’s understand how the “un-fu*king” process works.
Step 1: “Burn your Boats”
In 1519, the Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernando Cortez decided that he wanted to seize the treasure that the Aztecs had been hoarding. Cortez’s crew were vastly outnumbered and skeptical of success.
So Cortez did to his ships what you need to do to your current habits. He burnt them. No ships to sail home with meant he and his men had to find a way to successfully carry out the mission or die trying.
Long story short, create habits and processes that you have to do – don’t give yourself a choice because there is only one boat that can get you to your goal.
Step 2: Ditch the Diet Mindset
If diets worked, you would never have to diet twice!
Eating less and moving more will only take you so far. In most cases, you end up getting caught in a constant cycle. You cut your carbs and amp your cardio, you’re grumpy and tired, you get sick of it start binging so you gain weight and then guess what you’re back to “dieting”.
It’s crazy how we think we can just do this over and over and expect great improvements.
The concept is right, if you burn more calories than you consume you will lose weight, but if you don’t build a strong foundation of healthy food habits and a high functioning metabolism you will find your fat loss efforts will just grind to a halt.
But is your goal to lose weight or to lose body fat? Because there’s a big difference.
To lose body fat you need to eat more, not less. It can be a challenging concept to adopt but eating more of the good stuff (nutrient-dense, protein-rich, high vitamin whole-foods) is sustainable long term and is proven to lower body fat.
This step is all about creating a “new normal” for yourself. Studies show that 9.9/10 times we will eat out of habit and we don’t even realise it. (ref) To create new habits, find healthy foods you actually like so you don’t spend all week looking forward to your ‘cheat day’. If you’re not sure about what you should be eating or what ‘healthy’ and long term meals look like, keeping reading.
Step 3: Don’t try to fill a cap that’s already full!
Let’s be real for a second, you can’t solve the same problem with the same mindset that put you here in the first place.
The hard truth – if you want different results you need to change because doing things that you think will work but have failed you in the past will put you in the same situation, without fail. Real progress starts when you are tired of your own sh*t! The best way to stop sabotaging yourself is to stop focusing on all the minor things that amount to nothing.
Example 1:
- Freddy sets a goal to eat two celery sticks every day.
- Freddy fails in the first week and loses motivation and binges on a donut.
- At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter whether Freddy was eating a celery stick, a cucumber, or an apple – it’s a minor thing.
Example 2:
- Micaela set a goal to eat 3 serves of vegetables a day.
- Micaela’s got the option of choosing from hundreds of vegetables, all she needs to do it get 3 in per day.
- It’s sustainable and she can choose what she likes to eat. After a while, Micaela has created a new habit and left her old one behind.
- If you are sick of one failure after the other, stop, re-assess, and change.
Remember:
- Create a ‘do or die’ system so you don’t find yourself backing out of everything
- Ditch the 5-week diets and improve your long term relationship with food
- Forget about what you think you know and re-learn
