I know you want to get into better shape. I know you’re tired of being embarrassed to wear summer clothes. But you can’t go from where you are to looking like a fitness model or bodybuilder instantly. Gradual change is the only viable choice, no matter how frustrated you are.
This is an especially frustrating idea for guys to deal with. It’s our nature to dive head first into something new, damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead and all that. We sit in front of a computer all week at the office, then foolishly expect to be able to beat our teenager at basketball on the weekend. We have a hard time accepting that we’re not high school athletes anymore.
That said, we should look at this realistically. You don’t look the way you want, or you wouldn’t be reading this. The reason you don’t have the body you want is because of the way you live your life. If you want to make major changes in your physique, you’re going to have to make some pretty significant changes in your life. It’s going to take a lot to go from where you are now to looking like you could be on the cover of a fitness magazine. But there are two problems with making the transition all at once.
The first is killing yourself. If you are really out of shape, you could kill yourself trying to change too fast. That’s why you should see a doctor before starting a major workout program. If you try to go from your sedentary lifestyle & unhealthy eating habits to major workouts and eating like a fitness model in one leap, your body is going to freak out. Too much change too fast is too hard on your body. Your body needs a chance to adjust to new exercise and eating patterns. You’ll get ill or hurt yourself.
If you switch all at
once, your head is going to freak out too. You’ll find it hard to do the full exercise program, and your stomach will demand its daily extra-cheese pizza. You won’t see any results right away, and you’ll give up in disgust.
Finally, if you make all the changes at once and succeed in avoiding a physical or mental breakdown, you’ll be missing something else. You won’t know what works for you. Are the dietary changes working, or was your new diet useless with great results from the workouts? Would you get better results from making more dietary changes or working out more? There’s no way to know.
None of this would be a big deal if you could jump right into a program that let you get fit without having to adjust anything. But that’s rare. Most of the time, you need to make adjustments as you go along to keep the progress coming. You can’t tell which things to adjust if you went crazy and changed your entire lifestyle at one.
Gradual change is a better way. By changing one thing at a time, for example skipping the milkshake at lunch, you can start moving in the right direction without too much stress. Your body can easily adapt to small changes. You won’t freak out and quit because it is too hard. Instead, you will have your first small success under your belt and be ready to move on to greater fitness.
So there’s the secret to success. Change gradually for the best results. You won’t get there as fast as you would if you could dive in head first and change everything at once, but if that worked, you would already have the body you want, right?
