What Are You Doing To Stay Accountable?

I love when I get the opportunity to talk to anyone with my FT Family, and I had an opportunity to talk to one of my FT brothers who I haven’t seen in a while. In fact, I think today was the first time I saw him this month. Which, once again, this shows that even though we don’t see each other that often, how we continue to support each other. We were having the typical, hey how ya doin’ conversation, and then he asked if I ended up meeting my U2 goal. I know, you’re probably wondering what does this have to do with accountability. But, bear with me, I’m getting there! :) And, because I haven’t met my U2 goal quite yet, due to some minor setbacks, I got that, “well, crap, he had to ask” feeling. And with a disappointing tone I said, “No, not yet.” And then I proceeded to tell him about the Advocare challenge I’m on, and basically just telling him the things that I felt contributed to me not meeting my goal. His response to me was, it probably doesn’t help people keep asking you about it. And before responding to his comment, I stopped for a second thinking to myself it does kind of suck to have to say I didn’t meet my goal; but, then as I explained to him, that’s actually a good thing. It helps keep me stay accountable to my goals. See, told you I would get to the point! Ha! :)

 

Now, you hear A LOT about accountability in health and fitness, and if you have some type of accountability plan in place, it will definitely make meeting your goals easier. There are many ways you can keep yourself accountable and I want to share some of the things I do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and other ways that have helped me be so successful with my health and fitness journey.

 

As far as daily, there are two things that I contribute to my success, and that is daily journaling of my nutrition and workouts. I write down what I eat, the times I eat, and even make sure I’ve figured up the calories to make sure I haven’t gone over or under what I need for that day. I also have a workout journal that Michael provides to his clients if they choose to use it, and I write down all my workouts from my sessions to even my cardio. This allows me to, not only monitor what I’ve done for that day, but helps me know when I’m improving. For example, I’ll take an AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) workout from like six or eight weeks prior, do the exact same workout and see if I can get more rounds in than I did the last time. I carry these journals with me EVERYWHERE! I call it my health and fitness bible and anytime I need to refer to it, 99% of the time I can whip it out of my bag or purse. In fact, I had it in my purse and one of the girls with me asked, “Did that just happen?”. Yes, yes it did….LOL. But, these two things are a major key to being able to monitor your fitness and nutrition so you will know where you need to modify when something’s not working, or if it’s working where to keep doing what you’re doing.

 

Now something I do weekly to help me stay accountable, is I weigh in every Saturday. Even if it’s up a little, or a lot sometimes, it helps me know where I’m at as far as the scale. At this point, Michael and I are able to look back on my nutrition (or my week in general, especially if it was a stressful week for me) and modify where needed. Of course, we don’t only focus on the scale, and that’s really important that you realize the scale isn’t everything. You can be up a few pounds on the scale, but because you’ve improved in other areas, that week you might have hit a new PR or even able to finally zip those pants that you’ve wanted to wear for so long. So, even though we don’t want to focus only on the weight, it’s still a good weekly tool to help keep you accountable. Notice I said weekly, DO NOT weigh yourself daily or even multiple times a week. Pick a day and time to have has your weigh in time, and weigh every week on the same day and time. I weigh in every Saturday morning right before our 9:00 AM group session. And if at all possible, use the same scale. This will help you be more consistent and help better guide you with accurate results, at least that's my opinion anyway! :)

 

Each month Michael likes for us to have some type of goal. It can be any type of goal, weight loss, new PR in deadlift, more pull-ups, or even just doing something outside your comfort zone. Anything that will give you something to help you stay focused on your goals to make sure you don’t get completely off track. This month he wanted us to focus on getting outside of our comfort zone, so I have getting a tattoo and rock climbing. Well, one is done, my tattoo, and I’m working on setting up the other. It might not be this month, but I will get that done.

 

Some other things we do to help keep myself accountable, we do assessments so I can see how I’ve improved on inches and even body fat percentages. I also have this blog as a tool. Being able to get on here and write like this, not only helps keep me accountable, but it really helps so many others and that is something that really makes me happy. I love knowing I’m giving back to others who need a little more encouragement and motivation, and that they are becoming healthier just because of something I’ve written. But, I will say, one of the best things you can do to help keep yourself accountable, is verbalize what you want to do and even how you’re going to do it. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, anyone that you see that can help you stay accountable. When you do this, many times when you find yourself in those weak moments, you tend to get through them without giving into the temptations. For example, if you tell your co-workers you want to lose 20 pounds and in order to do that you have to really watch your nutrition, if they see you about to give into the temptation of buying the candy bar out of the vending machine they can say, hey what about that weight loss goal you’re wanting. Now, and this is from personal experience (and you’ll know from my last blog post), you want to make sure you’re telling the people who truly support you. Those who truly want you to be successful will be able to call you out in a positive way, without it coming across as mean or hurtful.

 

This morning when I was asked if I had met my goal or not, he didn’t ask in way that made me feel like I was a failure, but just in a way that reminded me, no I haven’t met my goal and yes I know what I need to do to get there. And that’s the other thing I REALLY want to stress. Set your goal, figure out what you have to do to get there, go for it, but if for some reason along the way you have a bad day don’t worry about it. So you had one bad day, get back on track the next day and keep going until you meet your goal. Also, if you don’t meet your goal in the time you set yourself, again don’t stress about it! I’m technically about a month past what I wanted for my U2 goal. Am I disappointed? Yeah, a little, but I know what and where I had issues; and I know what I have to do to get there so I’ll just keep moving forward. And as Michael has told me many times, “It’s not a matter of IF you meet your goal, but WHEN you meet your goal.” Don’t ever change your goal just because you don’t meet it when you wanted to, instead keep your goal insight and just keep moving forward until you get there. Because, as long as you continue to keep yourself accountable, you WILL meet your goal! What are you doing to stay accountable?

Negativity - Ignore It Or Use It

Recently I’ve encountered some negativity from some friends, or let me rephrase that, I’ve encountered some negativity from some individuals who I thought would always be considerate of my needs and feelings regardless of the fact we share different opinions of how I proceed with my health and fitness journey. It seems like every couple months I get a few people who, just when I think they’ve grown up, will reach out to me with negative comments about Michael and Fitness Together. Even though it still bothers me, I have however decided it’s not worth getting so upset that it affects me in a negative way, and I’ve decided it’s not even worth replying to anymore. I’ve even gone to the extent of telling them how it makes me feel when they do this, but they still don’t respect me enough to keep their negative opinions and comments to themselves. I mean it still hurts because I cared so much about my friendships with them, but at some point I have to do what’s best for me and just let go. So, for about the last month I’ve really just been ignoring any type of contact from these individuals (text and FB messages), but came really close today to replying with how I really feel about them and their comments. But, it seems every time I do reply with how I feel, it makes it worse for me because all they do is come back with more negativity instead of any type of apologies for what they’ve said or done to make me feel that way.

One of the things I’ve noticed is they only reach out when it seems I’m really doing well, and like I mentioned before about every couple months. And I’m not sure why, but it’s like they are seeing that I’m doing well and are doing what they can to point out the negative. For example, my most recent weigh-in update talked about how I gained a little over 6 pounds, but I also mentioned that in the past two days I lost almost 3 pounds of that because I was on the max phase of the Advocare challenge; and I also mentioned the new PRs I made on bench press and back squats. Well, in my opinion, they took this as an opportunity to point out the negative. They both mentioned the struggle of the scales, and one even made the comment you can be great and still be a failure as they pointed out my gain on the scale.

But here’s the deal, before Michael took over all my private training, I was literally stuck for like 9 months. I went up and down with the same five pounds. I just couldn’t break the plateau no matter what the trainer at the time had me do. We tried modifying my nutrition, cardio, and even my sessions, but nothing seemed to be working. Now, looking back, I will say a lot of it had to do with my attitude because I allowed myself to be pulled into a negative atmosphere. So, I had a negative mindset and kept a lot to myself instead of talking with Michael. I was so unhappy that it didn’t matter what I did, because until I changed my attitude and my surroundings, I wouldn’t break that plateau. Michael took over my private training July of 2013, and when he did, not only did I start to see results again, but overtime became happier and as some even mentioned, “Back to the old Shui!”. I was talking with Michael today via message, and he made the comment that this was probably my first plateau within a year. And as I thought about it, I thought, actually I haven’t plateaued at all since he took over my training. Yes, I’ve had a week or two where I may not have done so great, but we either knew it was from stress, lack of sleep, or he would modify my nutrition and then the next weigh-in I was getting results again. So, even though this past week I might have gained a little over 6 pounds, I know that is not a plateau but the fact I did something my body wasn’t used to and that was taking in an extreme amount of fiber and fruit for the cleansing phase of the Advocare challenge I am doing. But, now that I’m on the 5^th day of the max phase, I’m already feeling better and I have no doubt I will be down on the scale this Saturday when I weigh-in.

But, besides all that, here are a few highlights of how far I’ve come in just the past year since Michael took over my training by staying positive (for the most part, we all have bad days) and trusting the process by doing what he says with my workouts and nutrition.

• I’m stronger (I’m deadlifting 275 lbs, back squatting 215 lbs, and bench pressing 155 lbs)
• I’m leaner
• I'm down from size 18 to 14
• I'm down 40 pounds in the past year

So, today I decided to not only ignore their words, but I’m using all their negativity towards me and my efforts with Michael and Fitness Together to fuel my motivation! Instead of pondering on what they’ve said and sulk about it, I’m going to ponder on what they said and use that as fuel to push harder in my workouts, stay on target with my nutrition, and turn all my efforts into success. I will use their negativity to make my life positive!

Weigh-in Update - Keep Moving Forward

Sometimes I have to stop a moment, step back, and look at what all I've accomplished in the last three years and just exactly how far I've come; and today I had to do just that. As reported last week I was down a little over four pounds, and because I'm doing the 24-day Advocare challenge, I did a weigh-in on Thursday so I would know where I was at when starting the max phase of the challenge. I was quite disappointed, but did my best not to stress or get upset. I knew from what others have said that the bloating feeling I was having was normal and the results come in the max phase. I was up a little over six pounds when I weighed on Thursday, which I can already tell you a lot of that is water retention which is probably from all the fiber and fruit I was taking in during the cleansing phase. So, when I weighed in today, which is my normal weigh-in day and only two days since starting the max phase, I had some mixed feelings. Although I'm still up from last Saturday, I was happy to see I was down 2.8 pounds from my weigh-in on Thursday. This made me hopeful the max phase has kicked in. I really had to take a moment and just really think about this because I was upset and starting to get discouraged thinking I'm not ever going to meet my next goal. I also kept thinking what is the point of even moving forward with the challenge if it's not even going to benefit me or my goal. But, after taking a moment to just think on things, I know I've come so far in the past three years and I need to be very proud of that, which I am. But more importantly, I know as long as I have Michael and my Fitness Together family, I have no doubt I'll be able to not only meet my next goal I've set but I'll be able to go even further! And focusing on the positive of the week, I hit two new PRs and killed a burpee challenge! The burpee challenge was to complete as many burpees in seven minutes and I was able to get 61 burpees in, that's A LOT of burpees for someone who hates them so much...LOL! And then I hit new PRs on bench press and back squats. I increased my bench press by 10 pounds and was able to bench 155 pounds, and then increased my back squat by 30 pounds and was able to squat 215 pounds! So, even if I'm struggling on the scale now, I have to look at the non-scale successes I've had this week and also just remember how far I've come and that I WILL meet all my goals! I just have to keep having faith in myself and keep moving forward!