Moving from 'Starting' to 'Doing'

When you start something, the initial few weeks are always a bit tricky, as you learn the nuances of your chosen activity or start to make the small incidental changes in your life to make your new habits easier to maintain. Keep going, everyone must start somewhere and lose the ‘start’ mentality, instead this is something you are doing and will continue to do until such a time that you decide to evolve onto another activity.

Outlined below is a simple exercise to assist you in getting through the starting phase and onto ‘doing’ it. It’s simple in its format and content but quite an effective approach to making your health and fitness lifestyle changes.

When you’re completing this exercise, be honest, be patient and keep an open mind.

How much time do you really have? This step requires honest of effort and a little bit of faith in you. On a piece of paper, on a notepad, in a .txt file, in an excel sheet whatever you want to use, list out your week Monday – Sunday along the top. Then down the left-hand side list 00:00, 01:00, 02:00 and so on all the way to 00:00.

This is your week. Fill in the gaps as accurately as you possibly can, so if you work 9-5 on paper but realistically are in there from 08:30 – 18:00 put that down. You’re going to need to be realistic for this to work.

Include your commuting time, include time dropping or collecting the kids, include time cooking dinner or preparing meals, include housework, watching your favourite series, include everything that’s taking up your time during the week. Make sure you the times you’ve exercised over the past few weeks and include sleeping time too.

If you do shift work, you’ll need to do a few different versions of the template but the concept remains the same, fill in the blanks and see where you stand.

Please don’t fill in the details in such a way that you lose your motivation e.g., showing you have no time. I understand sometimes we have very little time, but in those cases, you need to make changes. This template will help you identify the areas that are most suitable to be shifted, chopped, or changed to allow for your new habits.

Sometimes you must shine a light into the darkness to find your way out.

You may be surprised with just how much time you lose to things like commuting, getting the kids to school or simply being in work. Review the information you have compiled as ruthlessly as you can and start to identify the areas you can change to match your health and fitness goals.

Take a different colour pen or highlight it with a different colour and mark in where exactly you would like in your week to set aside time to train, whatever type of training that might be. For you perhaps it’s simply one day a week, two or three or maybe you want to do seven days a week, be realistic and start slowly.

Chances are the times you want to train conflict with your current lifestyle. This is to be expected. Mark in the times you can train as per your current daily life schedule. Maybe it’s only 30 minutes here or an hour there one day a week.

Just mark it in; this is about giving you all the information you need to start formulating a plan.

That plan you formulate won’t just paste over your existing life schedule right now but ultimately you’re going to start to move towards it and making the necessary adjustments bit by bit to get to where you want to be.

Some points for you to consider.

• Would leaving earlier help you avoid traffic and give you time to exercise?

• Could you train during lunch at work?

• Can you cycle to work or walk to work?

• Can you work from home some days and train those days?

• Could you negotiate time to go to the gym with your employer?

• Many companies are highly conscious of the negative effects of sitting all day on employees, you may be surprised at the level of support you receive from HR. Note while your manager may not be fully in favour of the idea don’t be afraid to ask.

• If you train directly after work will this allow you to miss the heavy after work traffic?

• Conversely if you plan to train after work how likely are you to miss it due to working late?

• Can you train at home before going to work?

At this point you know where you are and what you face. You can see your week in all its glory or its failing. You’ve marked when you can train as-is and when you would like to train. One of your goals is now to get from a place of training when you can around your existing lifestyle to training when and where you want to with your health and fitness lifestyle goals.

You’ll need to make careful considerations on what the best approach is. You’re not going to get it right straight away; in fact, it would be impossible to get it right on the first time. This is simply one of those things you need to do first and review after.

That’s perfectly fine and you’ll learn more doing that anyway. You need to remember our long-term philosophy here, it’s not what you do in 6 weeks it’s what you do in a year.

I work full-time while serving as a military reservist and have recently taken on much more responsibility in my day job which has led to me working later of course. I have always sought to exercise in the morning for the simple reason that there is a much lower chance of work preventing me doing this.

If I didn’t train in the morning it would be impossible for me to guarantee I could train, most days I’m exhausted after work and the gym is extremely busy. Even I couldn’t motivate myself to do that consistently. The pain of getting up early is far less than the pain of both missing the gym workout all because of work. Also, in having to train hours after I was supposed to actually finish work, I would be depleted energy wise and wouldn’t be training effectively or efficiently.

You are fully capable of objectively looking at your busy schedule and finding a spot to train. Watch yourself during the process and try and spot any mental incidents of you self-sabotaging by becoming frustrated or immediately dismissing an idea.

Try it before you do it, for example six weeks will pass no matter what you do so would you not prefer to have tried out different approaches over those six weeks and understand where best to slot in your time or would you rather be in the exact same position as you are now?

It’s an easy choice so make it and start ‘doing’.

When I first did this exercise, it became apparent to me when I was at this stage that my job at the time was always going to be a hindrance to my personal health and fitness. The hours were long and often unpredictable; it was extremely physical and mentally taxing and left me with little or no energy after work (my commute was very draining).

I could never get a regular eating pattern or a balanced nutritional intake because of the volatility surround when I got a lunch break.

It took a couple of months, but I eventually found a better job, a 9-5 gig that didn’t require that I work every weekend and gave me routine and consistency that I could base my workouts around. You might come to a similar realisation yourself, this isn’t an excuse to stop and give up on your health and fitness lifestyle, if anything it may serve as a catalyst to get you from point A to point B even faster.

I don’t believe I wouldn’t have changed my job without the need for training.

There is always something you can do. While I was in the former job, I started to bring in my own lunch and stopped eating the canteen food, I started to up my water intake by carrying a water bottle with me everywhere. These were small things, but they became habits and when it came to moving to the 9-5 job right from the get-go, I was bringing in my own home cooked lunches and drinking a healthy amount of water every day.

Remember no more excuses there’s always something you can do, and the smallest things add up to make big differences. Don’t spend your time feeling sorry for yourself because your week isn’t exactly as you need it to be. You never put the time in to get your week in that format so you can’t expect to have it ready made for you in an instant.

Focus on small changes, focus on your weekly overview, and cut the rubbish out, find the slots in your day when you can do some training and as I say make the small changes that are going to add up make big impacts on your health and fitness lifestyle.

To get from ‘starting’ to ‘doing’ you have to get passed the initial couple of weeks. Some people have a mental marker for X amount of weeks that they have to consistently train or eat healthy for X weeks and then if they miss a day the whole thing is ruined and they have to start again.

That’s not how you’re going to go about this anymore. The best way to go from starting to doing is to get the facts about your current situation and your current weekly commitments to understand what you can and cannot currently do. Then use that information in conjunction with what you are learning now to come up with an effective plan to get your going.  

An effective plan is one that is measurable, achievable and consistent for you.

It’s very important that you go on the days or the times you set aside for training consistently. If you can only accommodate training once a week at present then that is what you aim to do. You can work on your mental resilience and commitment while you consider what adjustments you need to make to accommodate a healthier lifestyle.

Just as soon as you learn to remind yourself that you’re working towards a year or health and fitness and not a sprinted 6 weeks health and fitness the better off you’ll be.

There is a very specific balance required here between accommodating your current situation and the facilities available to you for training yet being strict and firm when it comes to implementing your new plan. Don’t take this as a contradictory statement you can apply both of these to your planning.

The power is in being as objective as you can and not allowing your mental blocks or bad habits (thoughts in this case) overriding what you know you need to do or feel you need to try. It can be a nerve wracking process but know that many have done this before you and you too will do this and you will succeed. Have faith in yourself again.

Remember, chin up, chest out and handle it.

Yours,

Stephen