Why our Health and Fitness Goals Fall Flat

Have you ever started on a health and fitness journey in pursuit of a desired goal, only to reach it and then rebound back to where you started? If this is you, you are certainly not alone. This is not an issue of time, money, or motivation, this is an issue of self-identity and belief.

You may have heard the old adage, “it is 10% Training and 90% Nutrition”, when it comes to achieving your goals. This is a wildly inaccurate statement. The truth is, it is 100% Mindset. If you do not address the root cause of why you are currently not where you want to be, if you do not address the lack of belief in yourself to get there and if you do not battle the inner demons that coax you into unhealthy spirals, your training and nutrition plans are meaningless.

It truly is 100% Mindset, because only with a focused, committed and free mind can we take and maintain healthy and sustainable approaches to training and nutrition.

I want you to now think about the following analogy, as I really believe it drives home this point, and then we can take a deeper dive into the mindset piece.

I want you to picture that you are dropping rocks into a still pond of water. Every time the rock hits the water, it creates a splash and precisely five ripples. The fifth ripple represents the outer layer or problem that we are all trying to fix. For the sake of an easy example, let us say that the “issue” that you desire to change is excess body-fat. The fifth ripple is analogous to this excess body-fat. It is in our human nature to try to solve this problem by addressing the fourth ripple, for the fifth can only occur due to the presence of the fourth (cause and effect). In this case, the fourth ripple could be lack of exercise. If we were to go one ripple in, the third may be the consumption of excess calories.

Now of course if we were to address and dampen ripples three and four, by eating less calories and moving more, we can reduce the magnitude of the fifth ripple (excess body fat) for a period of time. You might even be able to sustain this strategy for a year or more before the fifth ripple begins to intensify and the weight “stacks back on” again.

While addressing the third and fourth ripples is an obvious and acutely effectively strategy in the pond of excess body fat, the more effective strategy is obvious to any coach or observer who truly knows you.

The most effective strategy is this: Stop dropping the rocks into the pond.

Rather than focusing on the external and visual cause and effect, we need to start with the root cause. If we can work on and break down that self-imposed belief and/or limitation, we can break the habit of gaining excess body fat from within.

Why is it that an individual is likely to yo-yo on their fitness plans and rebound right back to where they started?

It is because of a deep-seeded belief of self and usually stems from a place of lack.

“I am not a fit person”, “I am not worthy of love”, “I seek food for comfort when I am feeling down”, “I have always and will always be overweight”, “My health is not as important as my job/salary”.

These beliefs are the negative autopilots of our mind, that eventually conquer a mind driven only by short term motivation or surface level desires.

When we can begin to transmute this negative conditioning, into self-worth, self-love and compassion, we can make lifelong, sustainable changes that align with our health and fitness goals.

If you are trying to remove the fifth ripple, stop dropping the rocks. Adherence to a realistic, goal-orientated plan becomes easy from here, as you are not trying to fight off the inevitable, but rather the inevitable exists in alignment with your desired health and fitness outcomes.