Whether you’re a competitive athlete, a meathead, or just a regular person who wants to look and feel better, you probably have some body composition goals in mind. You may want to gain 10 pounds of muscle, lose 5 pounds of fat, or change your body even more drastically. This can be a daunting task, but by using these 4 tips you can help keep yourself on the right path.
Be Process Oriented
Results are incredibly important and they’re ultimately what we’re all after, but they don’t happen by accident or over night. While for the most part weight gain and loss will occur based on your caloric intake and expenditure-achieve a caloric deficit and you lose weight, achieve a caloric surplus and gain weight-there may be certain factors that keep results from being entirely under in your control (time of the month for women, last minute trip, etc). This means that if results are all that give you satisfaction you’ll become frustrated and discouraged after your first bad day or week. However, if you derive some joy from the process, which is entirely in your control, you’re more likely to stay consistent and achieve your desired results.
Setting up a process that you can stick to day to day and get small victories from will set you up for a big win long-term. This can be as simple as making yourself breakfast every morning instead of grabbing something out. Or making sure you get up from your desk every hour to move around for five minutes. A few habitual changes will add up to big results if you maintain consistency, but chasing results without having a solid process in place will lead to disappointment.
Start Slow!
The biggest mistake people make is trying to do too much too soon. Having huge goals is great, but it’s also important to break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces so that you don’t get discouraged and give up. For example, if you’re new to training hard and eating well, don’t try to eat only brown rice, chicken breast, and broccoli six meals per day while also adding a 6 day per week training program on top of that. While you’re new to training and eating well, small changes to your lifestyle will lead to big results, so enjoy that in the beginning and learn to fall in love with the process.
Plan Ahead
As the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This is especially true with diets. If you don’t plan your meals you may wait to eat until you’re so hungry that you lose self control and grab fast food, or whatever guilty pleasure of choice. The hungrier you get, the more your willpower will wane, so don’t let it come down to that. This may mean meal prepping for some, but it doesn’t have to. If money is not an issue and you’re willing to eat out for all, or most of your meals, just know where you’re going to eat and when while keeping your goals in mind.
Don’t Get Caught Up in the Minutiae
Learning how to eat healthy, eat enough, or limit your consumption is difficult enough without having to concern yourself with the perfect supplements to take and times of day to eat. Nail the big things first and then you can worry about the smaller things. Worrying about the last 1% without doing the other 99% first doesn’t make very much sense.
Start by making sure that you get lean protein and a serving of fruits or vegetables at every meal. If you’re trying to gain weight and have had trouble doing so in the past, try adding in a handful of nuts or a spoonful of nut butter at the end of two meals each day. Nuts and nut butters are calorie dense without being large in terms of volume so they’ll make it easier to add calories without feeling uncomfortably full all the time.
Changing your body is not a short term goal, and there will be challenges along the way, but by using these tips hopefully you can stay consistent and see some great results!
Resources
Photo:
“A variety of sports nutrition supplements and one plastic shaker.” by Sérgio Raul Abreu CC BY-SA 3.0
