Friday, October 19, 2012

Baby Steps


When forming new habits it’s all about taking small steps, one at time. Most babies don’t walk clear across the room the first time they try, but instead they take a step or two, experience a little success and then add a few more steps with each new attempt. Before long they’ve grooved the new pattern and life for them (and you) will never be the same.

When people ask me about fat-loss and particularly what foods to eliminate, I try to premise my response with this “baby steps” analogy. In my experience, when we try and change too many things, or take too many new steps at once, we often fall. Most people have better success creating new health habits if they change one thing every two to three weeks, before attempting another new change.

Just like a baby we need to have success in our steps before we can continue down the path, so make sure your first attempts at creating change are ones you feel confident you can handle.

So, lets say your favorite food is pasta, we would not even talk about pasta at first.

Maybe instead you have been thinking of giving up milk. You don’t really drink full glasses of milk anymore and you would only really miss it in your coffee, so lets replace it with coconut milk or almond milk and see how that goes for a few weeks. 

When you have success with that change we might go ahead and try replacing white potatoes with sweet potatoes, or instead off eliminating a particular food, we add in more veggies for a few weeks.

Eventually after a few months of creating these new fat-loss lifestyle habits we would attempt replacing pasta with spaghetti squash or some of the other “paleo” type pastas that are on the market. By this point you will be seeing the small changes add up to big differences in your body composition and those earlier successes will drive your future success!

Your Coach,

Cecily

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