I’m sitting up in the not-so-sunny Bay of Islands this morning, drinking my cup of coffee and enjoying that balcony-sitting life.
Just a bit ago I read an email talking about how January 9th was declared as “Quitter’s Day”.
It’s the 15th of January as I write this, and granted I am on a light holiday where I’m paying attention to very little details of diet or training. This isn’t as big a deal as you think for an individual who has his daily routines and habits fairly well dialed in.
There’s always room for improvement, but the derailments that keep most people falling off the wagon are a mostly-solved problem around here.
But it occurs to me that much of the public does not have either the skills, or the awareness of said skills, to pull that off. They don’t know these are things that can be learned, practiced, and reinforced through repetition.
Here’s what I mean:
What happens if you’re away from home and get a hankering for some snacking?
Do you:
a) Lunge at the nearest bag of potato chips and wash it down with a Coke
b) Find a protein source and pad it out with a serving of quality carbs and veggies
These days I’m more liable to take option (b) over (a).
Not that I’m above fat-boying on some Doritos now and then. The point is that overall and for the most part, I’m going to cover (b) before I get into (a)
I’ve come to think that there’s a whole list of micro-skills, such as this one, that are necessary to even do the diets and workouts that obsess fitness culture.
We, fitness people, don’t think about them because they’re as second-nature to us as breathing. But normies don’t have them.
You ever hear stories about a broke blue-collar guy who wins a $10 million lottery? What always happens to those people? Check in on them in 5 years and most of them are right back where they started.
The money was handed to them by accident of chance. They never learned the skills needed to acquire money, or the even more important skills needed to keep it.
How many of these January 9th quitters are throwing in the towel because they made a goal too ambitious, too large, and too unbelievable for their present skill level?
I have no numbers on that. But from observation and conversation, my hunch is that the answer is “plenty”.
The main source of friction in sticking to any new habit or lifestyle change (which is a bundle of habits) is confronting the new way of living with your current way of living.
The smaller the gap, the easier to make the jump and stick the landing.
If you’re struggling cause you bit off more goal than you can chew, you might find it more to your liking… not to mention more effective… to back off that big boy and cover your basics in the kitchen, in the gym, and in your emotional reactions to food and exercise.
That’s all I got for you today. If you’re inclined to quit, go back to the elementals.
Elementals include subscribing to my email list for more wisdom such as this.
Matt Perryman