WS#55 - Be reasonable
Week of 5/6/24
Creating reasonable goals is a hard task without guidance. In health and fitness, if you do not understand the subject matter, where you are starting, and what needs to take place to create the change you want, goal setting is not only difficult, but can feel impossible with the standards we hold ourselves too today. This is part of the reason why people hire me. I help guide people to setting realistic and achievable goals and then move them through the process.
The standards many hold themselves too today are not achievable. Social media and the internet, from a very young age, push both men and women to believe they should be some perfect version of themselves. The algorithms behind the social media platforms we use take advantage of our base desires and push them in our faces consistently. If one woman is biased towards a curvier body, then that will be the theme of their social feeds. The same goes for a bias towards the body of a bikini model who is tall and thin. Men have the same problems. If a man wants to look like some version of a bodybuilder competing on stage, they will be led to believe that they should always look like that. It is a rare person who, through their actions on social media, leads the algorithm to push them towards reasonable goals. Most people do not want to doom scroll through Instagram and look at a bunch of decent looking bodies preaching about being realistic. This is not the way to grab the most attention, accumulate the most followers, and make the most money.
Recently, I have had clients ask me about parts of their physique they want to change. I have been asked about reducing fat around mid-section, back of the arms, shoulders, and thighs. My response to clients is always the same and fits the following template.
“Absolutely we can work on that. We can’t spot reduce fat so we need to continue to work on nutrition to get you into a calorie deficit. We can also shift the programming to work on those muscles a little bit more than in the past. The other option would be to make sure we are eating enough food to grow muscle. If we can grow some more muscle in those areas, it can help decrease your body fat percentage and make you appear leaner. This will take some time (X months, could be years) but with consistency it can happen”.
Not the sexiest answer, is it?
My point here is to call out the same thing I always do. The only way to achieve a goal and have a shot at maintaining the results is through consistency. Most people you see in real life who look the way you want to look have done it for a long time or are blessed. You may be seeing the results of decades of consistency and comparing yourself to that. One year of training experience vs. 30 years are not comparable things. The same goes for using age as a guide. If you are 65 and have worked out for a few years you should not use a 28-year-old as your guide to what you should look like. A reasonable principle to follow is that you should not use any social media influencer as your guide for what to look like. There absolutely could be great information out there and you should utilize that if you have the tools to understand it. Start with how much work you think you can put in and be realistic. If you can dedicate your entire life and all your time to your health and fitness goals, then you can probably get to some ideal version of yourself. Do you really want to do that? Instead, think about what matters to you in your life and build your health and fitness routine around that if you can. Get off fitness social media for a while if you can as well. This is a much healthier way to live from a mental health standpoint and can give you a shot at being consistent and accomplishing your goals.
-Matt