Gym, swimming pool, running and jogging, but also diets and many many rules. To get fit, lose weight, tone up, or even improve your lifestyle .
Fixing the goal in the face is the right thing to do, but will the goals we set for ourselves be fair?
To answer is the online medical journal Precision Nutrition that lists 3 fundamental matra of fitness that explain why and how wrong we are in setting ourselves goals. Quiet, they also tell us how to choose the right ones.
1. Turn final goals into behavior goals
If someone asks you what your goals are, you would respond like this: I would like to lose 5 kilos, have a flat stomach, hone my thighs.
These are all results, but the truth is that each of them can be out of your control, either for physical reasons or for external factors: you are traveling a lot for work and you can not regulate the power, your metabolism is changed based At the age, you’re late at the office, you have a chronic illness, you have trouble sleeping.
You can not always “force” the body to do what you want, but we can control what we do. Experts advise starting from a general goal, how to eliminate the drop-down arms and then think about what actions you could do to achieve it, making your primary goal become that kind of behavior.
Behavior goals a good practice to follow every day. Another example is the desire to have an ultra flat stomach . A behavior that experts suggest to adopt is to eat slowly because chewing slowly they break down better foods that are digested from the stomach more easily and also ensure a greater sense of fullness.
This rule applies to all the goals you want to achieve in life , not just in fitness. To improve the relationship with the partner: organize a dinner at least once a week; to sleep 8 hours a night: create a pre-sleep routine to be repeated every night before getting under the covers, and so on.
2. Transform the prohibition objectives into new methods of approach
Do not eat chocolate, do not drink coca-cola, do not smoke, do not, do not, do not! The bans are counterproductive, even in diets and in fitness. Forcing yourself to not do something will make you want to do it even more. And when you do it (because yes, you will) you will feel guilty.
To avoid all this the advice of the experts is: do not say no, rather turn the bans you have given yourself in a new way to approach the thing . Or rather: do not eat junk! food becomes I prepare fruit and cereal snacks in advance for the afternoon. Or again, I do not have to eat when I’m stressed out can become writing a list of activities that I like and I do when I feel stressed.
To do so you can focus on the benefits of the type of approach you are taking: I no longer drink carbonated drinks, so I can drink 3 glasses of water before meals, and the benefits are that I will not feel more compacted.
3. Turn performance targets into mastery goals
Win a race, get first to the marathon: these are called performance goals and yes, they are great because they can motivate but can also be influenced by external factors, such as the results we want to achieve (point 1). For example, the day of the marathon could hail and you may not win because it is hampered by weather conditions.
The performance targets are also those related to the comparison with others, such as “I have to lose the same kilos that my sister has lost, even more”. The suggestion of fitness experts, however, is to focus on opportunities and turn them into a work on themselves for themselves. Do you want to win the marathon? Focus on: learn to run in the right way, elegantly and quickly. Watch videos of professionals online and take notes on the techniques, work on you.
This will be effective on achieving all your main goals because you will feel motivated and avoid unnecessary expenditure of energy.
Carefully choosing the right fitness goals (and others) is important for making real concrete actions that really lead to something. After all, only those who act can change things .
