One of my new clients came to me with the almost universal goal to lose weight—10 lbs. to be precise. I asked her how long she had this as a goal and she admitted it was over a year without any real progress so I told her to throw that goal out as it was a dead goal not worth putting any energy into at all. But she persisted and said that she was concerned that she was now getting to the stage in life where weight that once came off easily wasn’t anymore and she had other health issues she wanted to deal with as well. I replied that I wouldn’t work with her on losing weight, but would support her in a bigger goal that would have weight loss be a by product of that bigger goal or project. That way she could focus on the big goal and I could support her in that and the weight would come off by itself. For example, she could enter the NY marathon and join a team of people in training to run it. Pretty fair bet she’d lose ten pounds without even thinking about it. Or take ballroom dancing lessons with the goal of entering a competition. Or take yoga teacher training, etc. I gave her a week to think of a bigger goal that would excite her but she came back empty handed saying that she couldn’t think of a bigger goal that appealed to her other than improving her general health and fitness. Not very exciting. I suggested that instead of that, she embark on a program of extreme self care to include things such as working with a nutritionist to design a food plan tailor made to her needs, working with her life coach (me!), getting a weekly massage, manicure/pedicure, facial, pilates three times a week, etc. Now that sounds like more fun! She also had to write down her weight every day in a log book and take her average weight lose for the week. She lost 1 lb. The first week already. Then she put down lose two lbs. this week and I had to stop her. She can’t really control whether her body will lose those two pounds this week so that goal had to go. Instead we put in the goal that she would put her nutritional plan in place this week and start working out at home when she didn’t have pilates that day. That is something she can promise to do and deliver on.
Just a general rule of thumb, it isn’t a good idea to set goals for yourself that you can’t control. She can’t really promise to me she’ll lose two lbs this week, but she can promise to exercise every day and start eating the foods on her plan.
On a personal note, I’ve decided to make fitness my own goal and get my body back to pre-pregnancy shape. As my youngest daughter will be two this December and my body hasn’t naturally gone back, it is high time I make this a priority. As with any current initiative, I give them first priority and do it first thing in the morning. I just couldn’t muster up the energy to do it at night so this was my solution. As a result, I had to squish my work time into the afternoon hours and be more efficient and start my day at about 12noon instead of 9am. So far, this has worked out just fine and my business is still intact.
Give your special project first priority and do it before you open your emails or check your voice mail and you’ll be amazed at the results. I’m quite pleased with my thighs these days J.
Warmest,
Talane
