Have you ever really considered what it takes to create a successful transformation? Often people think it’s as simple as lifting weights and eating healthy, but there are some other key aspects you need to focus on for success as well. You see, health isn’t just about the physical, but instead, it includes the psychological side of change as well.
The MIND is a massive part of ANY transformation! It, along with few a other landmarks (including personal development), requires being realistic with BOTH goals and knowing the steps required to get there, as well as the time frame needed to achieve your desired result. And let’s not forget the big one either… CONSISTENCY! Without consistency, you simply cannot expect change. And with that in mind, here are Cardiff Sport Nutritions 6 pillars of success that we feel are necessary for anyone’s endeavour to change their lives.
1. Developing a Strong Mind
The mind-muscle connection doesn’t just apply in the gym but in ALL AREAS OF LIFE. – PICTURE IT THEN DO IT. We need to train the mind as we do our muscles.
- Have a morning routine
- Meditate, breathe, relax
- Have a winding down routine
- Listen to podcasts/read/colour in/do puzzles
We need to beat FEAR, fight CRITICISM and have EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE. If we have some sort of goal we want to attain or to make a CHANGE in our lives, we’re always going to have some sort of criticism. Once you get past that barrier of criticism you are going to be able to unlock MORE of what is within you. FEAR impacts so much of our lives. From our day-to-day thinking, our goal setting, our intuition or attaining our fitness goals, fear can genuinely be a limiting factor in achieving success.
Fear is like an imaginary barrier to unlocking your true potential. Understand that, you can overcome anything, step over it and take that leap of faith. Be emotionally resilient!
2.Reflect on Your Personal Development to Enhance Your Journey
Personal development is about bettering yourself … internally and externally – create the best version of yourself. Why not sit there and try to make the most badass version of yourself by increasing your personal development overall?
It should be about bettering yourself overall, not just looking under a microscope with just training and nutrition and being obsessed with your body image. It’s about enhancing yourself overall as a person, as a human being, learning to be better in relationships, learning to be better in your career, learning to love yourself more. It’s so many different things, and it can just create this huge dynamic person within yourself that you never thought was there.
Not just in the gym, not just in the kitchen, but both mentally in relationships, self-love, self-worth and physically to enhance your overall fitness journey.
3. Be Realistic
Be real with yourself and know your body’s limitations. Knowing when to say no and when to let loose are finely honed dietary skills that develop from knowing yourself. A dietary regimen that is hard to maintain or creates undue pressure isn’t realistic for the long haul.
Rather than simply telling yourself to eat less food, try swapping out all your dinnerware or Tupperware with smaller versions. It’s all about small, manageable modifications that don’t set off your internal alarm bells with the overwhelming nature of change.
4. Consistency
Of all of the pillars, I would have to say that consistency is the pillar that people struggle with most of all. And yet, it’s one of the most important.
Too many people work in cycles or go on “roller coaster diets,” where they go all-in with their exercise and diet programs for a week or two, and then completely stop their progress for a week or two, before starting back up again. This type of on-again, off-again routine is one that is destined to keep your wheels spinning in neutral. Any gains made during the “on” part of the cycle will be immediately offset by the “off” portion of the cycle.
My biggest tip when it comes to improving your consistency is simple… start small.
People often tend to go from one extreme to the other, which causes people to burn themselves out quickly when they are not used to eating properly and exercising. But to see constant improvement, we must maintain consistency with the above three pillars as much as possible.
5. Patience
Today is very much a microwave society, a culture in which we want to see results right now. And with the advent of modern technologies, in many aspects of life, we often do get what we want right away. Unfortunately, the field of fitness and health does not work like this.
This is where most people fall off the bandwagon, expecting to see visual results in a week or less, and not getting what they want. But what you need to know, is that it is going to take time to see results; there’s no way around it. While you should be able to start noticing improvements in strength and endurance within the first two or three weeks, it generally takes up to 4-6 weeks to start seeing physical changes on your body.
Be patient, and stay consistent with the first three pillars, and I’ll be willing to bet that over time, you will probably be pleased with your progress.
6. Evolve Your Training & Diet Based on Needs
When your eating plan isn’t working as designed, you need to make small but calculated steps to get it back on track. The same goes for training. Remember, there are no magic cookie cutter systems. When something is broken, make small adjustments and monitor these small tweaks. Be scientific. Don’t be one of the program jumpers who, when they find that a program isn’t working perfectly as written, take a deload week and jump to a vastly different program the following week.
If your diet isn’t working 2 weeks later BUT it was calculated educationally… YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN IT ENOUGH TIME!! Successful people adapt programs to their specific needs. You must be able to do this yourself.
Don’t fix what ain’t broke! And there we have it! The 6 pillars for your multidimensional transformation.
Mind, Body, Soul!
Enhance your life outside of the gym as you only spend on average 6-12 hours out of the whole week in the gym so make sure you are putting in the efforts outside that will FEED INTO your health and fitness transformation as stress and mindset PLUS a reduction of environmental stressors is extremely underrated.
