A watched kettle…

…never boils.

Let’s face it, most people start working out because they want to lose weight, or at least change shape. Many of my new clients are scale hoppers, i.e. jumping on the scales at least once per week and often much more frequently than that. We’ve all been there, waiting until you’re, er, empty before the morning weigh in, I know! I’ve done it too.

But here’s a thing. Change the focus to a non weight based goal and a few things will happen:

Firstly, your motivation will be completely different. If your goal becomes to run 5k without stopping (or in a particular time), then you start with a plan. And providing you stick to the plan, you’ll achieve your goal.

Secondly, you’ll stop focussing on all those foods which you think you crave but ‘can’t’ have. It’s the big red balloon syndrome: I want you to think about anything at all, except a big red balloon…. What are you thinking about now? Exactly. So focussing on what you can’t eat is a similar thing. Why not think about something positive? Like how it will feel when you’ve run your 5k/held a plank for 3 minutes/achieved your other goal?

Thirdly, you’ll lead yourself onto another goal. Once you’ve run 5k non stop, or in your goal time, you’ll want to run further or faster. Or you’ll want to be able to do 20 perfect pressups rather than 10…. whatever your first goal was will now become your warmup and your next goal will progress you to the next level of fitness.

And while all this is going on, guess what? If you’re fuelling correctly to help you achieve your goal, a happy byproduct will be weight loss/shape change too.

Personally, I haven’t had a real goal which has inspired me to train hard for over a year and it has definitely affected my training. Yes, I still train hard and yes I’m still fit but I haven’t had the same drive to push myself as I used to have when I entered rowing competitions. Well, guess what? I have a goal. And it’s one which is pushing me waaaay out of what has become my comfort zone of regular training. Some of you know that I set a world record on the indoor rowing machine back in 2010. Well last year, it was broken. And I don’t mean just pipped, I mean well and truly smashed. In May of this year, I’m going to attempt to break it again and it’s going to take every ounce of motivation, training energy and focus that I’ve got. In fact it’s scaring me. But having started my training with that goal in mind, I’m already seeing body shape changes.

So, if your only goal is to lose weight, let’s talk! We need to eliminate that big red balloon…