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The Reasons You Struggle With Consistency (And How To Change It For Good) · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your Strongest Body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body, betsy, here.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I'm excited for us to start chatting this.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Last week, we got some sickness going on in my house.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: We got some procrastination on my end for tax day, so this episode is going to come out on Thursday I think it's April 18th April 18th, and so just catching you up giving you the personal scoop because that is life Life gets in the way of the plan sometimes and you got to roll with it is life.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Life gets in the way of the plan sometimes and you got to roll with it, and I think that transitions really well into today's episode.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: If you know anything about fitness, if you've heard me speak about it, if you've heard probably anyone in the fitness world speak about it, you know that the biggest contributor to fitness results, strength, physique, overall quality of life improvements is consistency.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Consistency is the glue that holds everything together and moves you forward, and I hear over and over and over again the biggest challenge for folks is that they can't get consistent, and so today we're talking about three potential reasons why you haven't been able to get consistent yet, and I want you to listen.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I want you to listen deeply and I want you to recognize in yourself when you hear some of these traits, because this might not be like anything, like anything, as it has to do with sort of motivation or emotional and psychological concepts around exercise and body image and everything.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It's not always exactly as straightforward as we think it is ways exactly as straightforward as we think it is, and so the reasons that you may have not been able to create a consistent habit yet might surprise you.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: These are the three, I think, most common ones.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give them to you and, of course, you know me.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I'm going to help you understand why you might be experiencing them and what you can do to change it.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I want to give you some help there.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So, number one biggest one, probably we all fall into it to a certain extent, at some point in our lives, with something in our lives, is the idea that, in fact, we are not expecting consistency, we are expecting perfection.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But consistency, specifically, is not perfection.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Consistency is about the ability to repeat that we, on average, are doing our activity for the same amount of time, that there are similar amounts of time between when we did X and when we do X again.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Consistency how frequently can we do this thing?
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: And consistency for the frequency piece is going to be different for different people, based on the demands of life, the demands of your schedule, the stage you're in, the time of year, your own energy levels, your own health.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: All of those things are going to contribute to your ability to increase the frequency of your training or the frequency that you eat the way you want to eat, because all of these things really rely on consistency, nutrition and fitness.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: But for most people, the idea of consistency is so interlinked with some ideal amount of frequency that we get wrapped up in this idea that there is some kind of perfect number.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: There's a perfect number of workouts, there's a perfect length of workout, there's a perfect amount of weight to use, and we believe that that is then the marker for the consistency, and that is why you're failing at it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: You're failing at it because no two days are alike.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Truly, no two days are alike.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: We are creatures of routine in a lot of ways, and we create routines for ourselves to minimize the unknown and to create some comfortability.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know that for a fact that children tend to really appreciate the routine because it takes out the unpredictability.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: They know what is coming.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: We like that as adults too.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: The truth is, though, that we just can't always control everything.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: So the idea that we are going to hit some perfect frequency based on what we have in our mind, based on what we see on the internet, based on what our coach does, whatever that may be, based on what our coach does, whatever that may be we then set ourselves up for disappointment when we cannot manage it every single day in and out, not every single week in and out.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: So what you have to do in order to overcome this is reframe consistency as less of a target, with a specific frequency, and more of a what feels possible what is the most that feels possible, what is the most that feels realistically possible, and let that be enough, because the only way to increase frequency consistently is to have a base of consistency.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: To begin with, let go of the ideas that every week is going to be the same, that you are always going to hit the same numbers.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Consistency is about can I maintain this kind of momentum, can I maintain this schedule?
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So aim for a schedule that you can maintain and then you can always add later as you build that consistency.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Number two you can't.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: One of the way, the number two reason that you are struggling to get consistent is that you aren't thinking ahead to the possible ways that things could go awry.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: One of my you know messages that I keep coming back to.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I keep coming back to it with my clients, with my coaching groups.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: I'm coming back to the fact that if we want to have success in fitness and or nutrition, physique strength, any of that overall health, we have got to start being proactive versus reactive.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: You got to be proactive, you have to look ahead Now.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: This does not mean obsessive, this does not mean rigid.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It simply means aware of what's coming ahead, so that you have a couple of plans in your back pocket.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: A couple of plans.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: The ways to become proactive are to think about patterns in your own life, to think about instances where you've had troubles or roadblocks before and then prepare for them.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: So if you're struggling to get consistent, it might be because the same common roadblocks are getting in the way, or a simple change in your schedule and or extra task is throwing off everything.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: It is creating an inability for you to get exactly that ideal frequency in mind, and and then you sort of throw things out and try to start all over again, or you end up sort of derailing your progress and having two weeks where you don't even give it a try because you are disappointed with your quote, unquote failure here, and then you're struggling to get back on track.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Instead, if you are able to anticipate the kinds of things that might get in the way, or even anticipate the fact that things will get in the way, inevitably it will not go exactly as planned.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: What we can do to improve our consistency and to improve the chances that we will be able to complete the things we want to complete, all we have to do is think ahead and we either come up with some loose plans or we come up with some more options.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: It's always good to have options, in the way that it's good to have options when you are hungry and to have foods readily available that are high in protein and high in nutrients, so that you don't turn to something that is going to not last with you and not provide you the energy you need.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: The same thing goes with our plan about our workout frequency or our meal planning or anything like that.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: We have to have some backups, sort of loaded in case, and we have to manage our own expectations about what good enough looks like, because I think in a lot of cases people are very hesitant to think that good enough is actually what we need, and so that again, we're aiming for that perfection.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: When we aim for it and we're not satisfied with good enough, we're not even getting enough anytime.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Good enough If we do good enough consistently, we see results.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: So anticipate the possibilities for yourself.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Anticipate that the workout is not going to be you know there are two workouts a week that are going to get interrupted or that the schedule of the day is going to change.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Anticipate that the machine that you want is not going to be available.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Anticipate that you ran out of energy.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Anticipate, you know, anticipate, anticipate, anticipate and then have options.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Is there another piece of equipment?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Can you do a home workout instead of getting to the gym?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Can you move the workout to tomorrow?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Can you do 10 minutes of a workout rather than not do anything at all?
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: These kinds of swaps or shifts in mindset so that good enough happens is what is going to ultimately get you results.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It really really is, and I know I've mentioned before a little bit about anchor actions.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: But if this is really important to you and you have an anchor action like I want to exercise every day or I want to exercise four times a week, if that is your anchor action and something gets in the way, you can exercise for 10 minutes and you've still completed that.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: But because it was an anchor for you, because it was 100% a thing that you were going to make happen, you made it happen in the way that it was possible for you.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, number three lastly, one of the reasons that you probably have not been consistent yet is because you're looking at consistency in two ways short term.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes when we think about consistency again, we are thinking typically about frequency, but frequency doesn't inherently mean consistency.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: But when we think about that, then we start to think about it in the short term.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: We think about it.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Most people think about their workouts in terms of a week okay.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: So they're like I'm going to get four workouts in this week week Okay.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: So they're like I'm going to get four workouts in this week and then the week rolls around and they only got two, so that week feels like a lack of success.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Then they're like all right, this week I'm going to do it.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I got three workouts, but I didn't get my two and my four.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And now next week I feel so frustrated I'm not going to get any workouts in and I'm not going to work out for another two weeks because I'm so frustrated with myself, whereas if we look longer term, if we look at like, yes, the goal might be four workouts per week, but what I want to see is consistency over a whole month.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So maybe I'm using the short term as a quick, short term sort of target, but I'm measuring my consistency over a month, or I'm measuring my consistency over three months.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: If you allow yourself to see a larger amount of time, a longer term, you probably might see more consistency, because it allows for the vacations that pop up or the weeks that are challenging or the times where it doesn't go exactly right.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: But you can look at those 12 weeks and see that you did more workouts or had more success in those 12 weeks than the previous 12 weeks.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: This could also be useful, depending on your job or your phase of life.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: It might be worthwhile to look at consistency over the school year.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: If you're a parent and everything is really hectic over the school year, maybe you're looking at consistency for that whole time, and then you're able to create new goals and change your idea of what consistency is for the summer, because now you have more time or more flexibility, or maybe it's vice versa, something else.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Depending on how your calendar is split up, you can take any amount of window is good to use to look at your consistency.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Longer term is going to show you probably a better idea of how you're faring in terms of results, because, honestly, the one week doesn't really matter if the three weeks after aren't successful.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: What we want to see is probably consistency over a whole month, two months, six months.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: That is where we're going to see results.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So stop stressing about the short term and start thinking about your consistency in the long term.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Look back at your last six months and ask yourself have I been more consistent with my nutrition over the last six months than the six months prior?
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Have I been more consistent with my workouts in the last six months than the six months prior?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: All of these can serve as better tools and show us a larger picture.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: It will release some stress and it really is a really good indicator of that consistency.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: We want it for longer periods of time so you can be consistent, and maybe you have been consistent and you've been judging yourself on too hard a scale, or you haven't been consistent because you've been putting these rigid limits or definitions to what consistency is.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to implore you to reshape how you feel about consistency.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Again, I'm not saying don't try.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I'm saying create different expectations so that you will continue to want to try, day in and day out.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: This is a forever thing.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: This is a forever thing.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: That's health and fitness especially, you know, and it's going to.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It's changes over the years and and the goals change and the parameters change.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: But, like, how we care for our bodies is a forever thing.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So let's make it something that we're able to sustain and that we're able to nurture for years and years to come.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, I would love to talk about this with you or anything else.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: You can send me an Instagram DM at foster underscore strength.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You can send me an email, betsy, at B Foster Strong.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: That's the letter B foster strongcom.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And if you liked the episode, if the message is resonating with you, if you found something helpful in it, go ahead, if you wouldn't mind, and share it.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: You can share it on social media or you can send it in a text or an email to a friend.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Getting the word out is always, always helpful.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: All right, go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you next time.