The Grinch That Stole Fitness.

Posted by Tim on Dec 3rd, 2011 in Featured, Motivation | 0 comments

Oh, the Holiday Season. Personally, I love it. But right around the day after Halloween there’s a little monster I start to see lurking around fitness world. This little gremlin is clever. He takes the hectic schedules created around Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, and New Years and uses them to hijack your fitness progress and goals.

The hectic schedule isn’t the Grinch. The stress created by the hectic schedule isn’t he Grinch either. Let’s talk more about some of the stress created around the Holidays first, before we talk about the real Grinch.

Holiday Celebrations
Just about everybody already feels as though they live task saturated lives. Now throw into that his and hers company office parties, random friend invitations to celebrate, and your local charity events and you’ve got one top heavy schedule.

Family Obligations
A hermit or socially aversive person might have no problem with the holiday celebrations crunching the schedule, but NO ONE can avoid the family obligations on the holidays.

Traveling
Whether you go over the river and through the ridiculous traffic or you fly WAAAAAY over the River (as in the Mississippi) cross country to grandma’s, traveling not only destroys a regular daily schedule but also disrupts your usual access to where ever it is you work out.

Illness
Getting sick makes working out and eating right impossible. I wrote a great post a few weeks back on how to stay healthy during cold and flu season, but sometimes the little microscopic jerks get ya anyway. You can read those two preventative blogs Here and Here.

“I’ll get started after the holidays.”
Procrastination actually produces more stress in your life. Think about it. When do you feel better? When you put off what you know you need to do, or when you actually get it done?

It’s a little known fact that General Custer was thinking about starting a fitness program but instead decided to go fight Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn. I’m just saying that procrastinating starting a fitness program can be detrimental to your scalp. Ok, I’m exaggerating a little bit.

So what to do about all of these excuses? Who’s got time to exercise and eat right? These are completely real legitimate excuses, but they ARE NOT the Grinches that will steal your fitness this Christmas.

You’re a Perfectionist, Mr. Grinch.

Perfection is the Grinch that will steal your fitness this holiday season. Perfection is just what it sounds like it is. Perfection. Perfect attendance, perfect performance, flawless execution of a play, 100 out of 100. That is perfection.

High performance people can be prone to this and there’s nothing wrong with having high standards in general. But when the desire to do something well turns into “If I can’t do it right (read: ‘absolutely flawlessly perfect’) it’s not worth doing at all” look out. The Perfectionist Grinch just defeated you before you got your shoes on and you’ve got a recipe for getting out of shape by January 1.

Shoot for Consistency not Perfection

Or maybe that should be “Shoot the Perfection and be Consistent.” Anyway, by being CONSISTENT about your exercise and nutrition lifestyle you can really go a long way to making the impact of the Holiday Grinch that Stole your Fitness not much more than a blip on the radar.

Now I can almost hear your internal sigh at the use of the word “Consistency.” Bare with me here for a minute. Most people misunderstand what it is and what it isn’t.

What it isn’t and what it isn’t. Consistency IS NOT perfection. I think when most people hear the word their minds go to perfection. It is true that where you see a flawless performance there probably was consistency behind it. But not necessarily. And before your perfectionistic mind starts running away NO it is not possible to be “consistently perfect.” It is possible to be perfectly consistent. Perfection is a reward of consistency. Consistency is the discipline of practice. Wait a minute. I really like that. . . .

Consistency is the discipline of practice

so. . .

Now What?

How can we apply consistency as a discipline and not let Perfection ruin the holidays.

1. Shoot for shorter MORE FOCUSED work outs. If you normally work out 45 minutes 30 will be fine. Whatever you do DON”T TELL YOURSELF LIKE A PERFECTIONIST, “Oh, well I can’t get my whole workout in so I won’t do it at all.”

2. Shoot for fewer workouts. This is the same idea as #1. If you miss Monday’s workout don’t trash the whole week.

3. Nutritionally, enjoy the meals. Go ahead. Then get right back on your nutrition plan. Not after the Holidays. Right after that meal. Six of The 10 Best Ways to Keep the Holidays Pounds Off are great easy to apply nutritional tips. So check them out.

Enjoy this Holiday Season and stay tuned because next week. . . A Fitness Carol.