A short advice clip from Ben Greenfield (BenGreenfieldFitness.com) answering a listener (Jessica) about maintaining motivation to exercise and eat well. He emphasizes the importance of setting quantifiable, dated goals (e.g., weigh-ins/body-fat measurements on specific calendar dates) and using scheduled events (races, triathlons) or appointments for external accountability.
Hi, my name is Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and this is question number nine from the top 10 fitness, nutrition and lifestyle questions that I get. This is from listener number Jessica. Listener number question number nine from listener Jessica. I constantly lose the motivation to exercise and eat right. What is the number one key to consistency? You're probably going to get a lot of different answers from a lot of different people, Jessica. But in my experience of helping people over the past decade in human performance and fat loss, one of the number one things that I see is making the mistake of not actually setting a date on a quantifiable goal. So what I mean by that is if you say I want to get healthier this year or I want to lose 10 pounds this year, that's not enough. What I find really helps people is if we actually write on their calendar, for example, on January 1st, we write on the calendar on June 15th, that we're going to do a weigh in and body fat percentage at my office. And their goal is to be from 25% body fat down to 20% body.
Fat to be from 211 pounds down to 176 pounds. And that dates right there, stirring them in the face.
Now, the other thing that I found to be really, really effective with people.
Is to go out and sign up.
For a local 5k, 10k half marathon, sprint, triathlon, whatever the case, may be something that actually almost plays to your fears of not being ready.
I have seen people gain fitness and.
Lose fat in leaps and bounds just by doing something as simple as signing.
Up for a triathlon like eight months down the road.
And this might be somebody who's never swam before and they don't own a bike, but over those eight months they.
Get their body in fit shape because.
All of a sudden there's something greater.
Than just that big goal of fat loss.
So think about getting something on the calendar. If it's an event that works, even.
Better because then you've got a lot of other people that you know are going to be out there. You've got that accountability factor.
But if it's just something as simple.
As going to your local gym, meeting with an exercise professional and hopping on.
The scale and having a commitment to them to be at a certain weight.
On that scale or to be at a certain body fat percentage, that as.
Well, what it comes down to, Jessica, number one key to the consistency is.
To set a quantifiable goal that has the date.
Great question.
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