Making a Habit

Do you want to lose weight, improve health, increase strength, or have another fitness related goal? If so, then your real goal is to make fitness a habit. A habit is something you do so regularly that it becomes hard not to do. A good example is brushing your teeth. You do it everyday and it feels weird if you don’t. Brushing your teeth is such a built-in habit that even if you skip a day, you still go back to brushing your teeth the next day and everyday after that. So how can you make going to the gym a habit? It’s going to take time, but with small steps you can get there!

To start, let’s go over what you can do while sitting on your couch before even getting to the gym. The big first step is to create some goals. When creating your goals, make a short term goal and a long term goal. Your short term goal should focus on building a habit, while your long term goal can focus on results. Results always take time, so your short term goals should always focus on habits and changes, such as going to the gym twice a week. Your goals should be easy to measure and attainable. If you are just starting out, having a goal of hitting the gym for two hours every day may be too big. Look at your current lifestyle and schedule and build goals that can easily fit in.

Once you’ve got your goals hashed out, the next step is to visualize success. There are two visualizations you want to do. The first is visualize yourself achieving your goal. If you want to lose 40 lbs, visualize yourself 40 lbs lighter. Don’t just visualize the image of yourself 40 lbs lighter, think about how you will feel as well. The second visualization is visualizing yourself taking steps to reach that goal. In the same example, you can visualize yourself at the gym working up a sweat, or cooking healthy meals. Visualizing your success and how you will reach it helps to motivate you and get you in the proper frame of mind to reach your goals.

Now that you have your goals and have visualized yourself succeeding, it’s time to get started. Here are three methods to help simplify the addition of new habits into your schedule. A great way to start building your habit is to tack it onto habitual things you already do. An example is working out right after work.  Additionally, schedule your workouts. At the beginning of the week, fill out the following sentence “I will workout on [day] at [time] at [place].” If you have a calendar you use, write it in. Seeing your commitment will help you remember to do it and you will be mentally prepared for it. Another method is to use “if-then” planning. Start thinking about your new habit as a part of another action. For example, “if it is 5:00, then it is workout time.” That is a very simple example, and you don’t always need to use “if”, it can be anything to help tie in the habit to something else. Other examples are “after dinner I will workout.” Or, “when it’s dinner I will cook a healthy meal.” Keep repeating your selected sentence to yourself as you build your habit.

Finally, when starting, keep it simple. If starting a new workout routine, ease your way into it; if changing your eating habits start by cutting out one thing. If you start with a difficult workout or entire diet change, it will be physically and mentally difficult for you, and failure is highly likely. Another way to keep it simple is to eliminate reasons to give up or to have cheat days. Pick a gym right by your work or house so it isn’t too far. Don’t buy that bag of chips when at the grocery store, so it’s not at home to snack on later.

If you do have a cheat day or skip the workout, make a note as to your reason why. This will help you track what exactly is stopping you from building that habit. If you keep skipping the gym because you had a stressful day at work, you need to look at reducing your stress levels. When making your notes be specific. Don’t write down “no time” because when you look back over your reasons it doesn’t tell you much. Write down “no time due to child’s school play.” It helps show you that you skipped the gym for something that is more important rather than “no time, Bond marathon was on TV.” Just be real with yourself, no one else needs to look at your reasons list.

Good luck building a healthier you! Let me know what other methods you’ve used to build up new habits.

References

http://99u.com/articles/17123/5-scientific-ways-to-build-habits-that-stick

http://jamesclear.com/exercise-habit

Self-monitoring

Self-monitoring is a behaviour change tool that can be used for almost any aspect of your life. A classic example is the progress grid Benjamin Franklin used to track his goals. He would track his progress towards each of his goals and would be able to see where he was falling short, and where he was succeeding. This same idea can be used towards fitness goals. Self-monitoring your fitness goals essentially translates into tracking what you want to change. If you are a competitive athlete and want to improve your lateral jump, then you may want to track your lateral jump distance on a weekly basis. If you are looking to lose weight, then you may track your weight on a weekly basis. If you are trying to eat healthy, you may want to track your food intake every other day. The important part about self-monitoring is regular tracking and reviewing.

Tracking your body weight is an important measure when weight loss is your goal. However, weight will naturally fluctuate day to day, so it can occasionally be a mental detriment when weight is not changing as desired. The best recommendation is to weigh yourself once a week around the same time and record it, ideally in a graph. The graph will let you see the weight change over time in a more visual manner. Focus on the long term trend, not the day-to day changes. Since weight is naturally changing, tracking weight alone is not an ideal measure of improved health. Couple it with food/calorie intake and/or workout tracking.

If healthier eating habits are your goal, a common method to view your progress is to track your food or caloric intake. Keeping record of your meals can become a burden and will often lead to stopping tracking altogether. A less cumbersome way to track food and calories is to choose three days a week. Ideally pick two weekdays and one weekend to fully capture your weekly eating habits. Compare your weekly intake to your goals, making note of where you succeed and what needs improvement.

Keeping up with your workouts is a very motivating way to see progress and encourage physical activity. Workout tracking can be done in many ways, such as counting visits to the gym, amount of weight lifted, or timing your runs. Make sure the metrics you pick are inline with your goals. If you are just starting out, then set a weekly goal for gym visits and track those. If you are training for a marathon, track your run times. When tracking workouts, do some research, set realistic goals and work with your trainer. Setting goals that are too advanced for your current physical activity level can be disheartening and unhelpful in reaching your goals.

No matter what you are tracking, figuring out the proper tool for self-monitoring is an important step. The classic pen and paper is still a great option, but with smartphones readily available, there are many self-monitoring apps that can be used. I personally use MyFitness Pal for calorie tracking, another good option is Lose It. Both apps offer simple workout tracking as well. For more advanced workout tracking, JeFit or Fitocracy both are good options. There are many more trackers out there for free, so find out which ones will provide the measures you are looking to track.

The success of self monitoring relies on constant tracking to the extent that it becomes a  habit. That being said, if you miss tracking a day or don’t meet your goal for that day, don’t beat yourself up about it. If a day gets missed, simply make a note of why you missed that day. This can be valuable information to help you change your routine, if necessary. For example, if you have a major project at work that is causing you to work late and then become too exhausted to workout in the evenings, making note of those days will show you the pattern you might have otherwise missed. You can then use this information to change up your routine and perhaps workout in the mornings, or put more emphasis on weekend workouts. Self-monitoring is about seeing your habits and taking steps to change them in order to reach your goals.

References

www.acefitness.org/prosourcearticle/5920/coaching-behavior-change-why-self-monitoring

http://creationbasedhealth.com/key-fitness-tip-self-monitoring/

http://www.ideafit.com/fitness-library/the-science-of-self-monitoring

Calories and Macronutrients

Calories and macronutrients play an important part of any fitness goal, as they are required to fuel your body and nourish your muscles. So what are they? Which ones and how much should you be eating? I’ll start off going over what calories and macronutrients are, then give some tips to determine how much of each you need.

Calories are, scientifically, a unit of energy. In the nutrition sense, a calorie is the amount of energy you will get from food. Over the course of a day, you will burn a certain number of calories just for your body to survive, this is your Basal Metabolic Rate. This means that, even if you slept all day long, you still burn calories. Moving around and doing your daily activities will burn even more calories. So, you burn calories on a daily basis, and just like a fire, you need fuel to sustain this burn. That is where food comes in. The calories listed on nutrition labels are the estimated amount of calories you will gain from consuming that food. I say estimated because the amount is calculated in a lab, and the human body is  more complicated than a controlled experiment. That being said, it’s still a good estimate to use the nutrition labels on food. The basic breakdown of how many calories you should eat is dependant on your goal. To lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than you burn. To maintain weight you should consume the same amount of calories that you burn. Similarly, to gain weight you need to consume more calories than you burn. Each person burns a different amount of calories depending on their metabolism, gender, age, weight, and other factors.

The calories in your food can be broken down into three macronutrients; carbohydrates, protein, and fat. The primary purpose of any macronutrient is to provide energy. The breakdown calories into grams for the macronutrients is as follows

Macronutrient (1g)	Calories
Carbohydrates	4
Protein	4
Fat	9

Let’s take a closer look at each macronutrient.

Carbohydrates bring to mind starchy food, like bread and potatoes; but they are actually defined as sugars. Aside from bread and potatoes, carbohydrates are also in fruit, milk, and anything sweetened. Carbohydrates are used for long term energy and for fueling your brain. Due to the use of carbohydrates throughout the day, a person should typically consume a lot of them. The recommended amount of carbohydrates in a person's diet is 45 - 64 % of total calories.

When you picture protein you will often think of meats, but nuts, beans, and dairy are also high in protein. Protein is used as the building blocks of our body and are broken down into amino acids for use in growth and repair. If you don’t have enough carbohydrates to fuel your day, protein will step in and be used to sustain you. It is not ideal to have your body run off of protein since it is needed elsewhere. The general recommendation for protein intake is 0.8g for every kilogram of body mass. This number will change depending on your fitness and dietary restrictions. For example, someone who is looking to build muscle and lifting a lot of weights may need as much as 1.7g for each kg of body mass.

The third macronutrient is fats.Fats are in pretty much everything and, despite their bad reputation,are an essential part of your body’s metabolism. Fats are your energy reserve. While you burn carbohydrates throughout the day and protein goes to repairing your body, fat gets stored for future energy burns and are essential during hard and long exercise sessions. Fat does not immediately get stored as body fat. An excess of calories, regardless of the macronutrient, is what causes body fat storage. Fats also are a source of fatty acids which are important in transporting nutrients throughout your body. The tricky part with meeting your fat intake is ensuring you choose good fats. Fats are divided into trans, saturated, and unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are the ideal fats and can be found in avocado, nuts, seeds, and cooking oils. The recommended intake of fats is 20 - 35% of your daily calorie intake.

Your required calorie intake will be unique. Work with a nutritionist to accurately determine your calorie intake and macronutrient amounts. The following two links can be used to get an idea of your calorie intake and macronutrient breakdown.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutcal.htm

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutrients_calculator.htm

References

http://www.livescience.com/52802-what-is-a-calorie.html

http://www.innerbody.com/nutrition/macronutrients