Success: Thin, Fit & Healthy!

As you continue The Recipe for Weight Loss Success, it is good to review what has been accomplished.

• You know what you WANT when it comes to your health and fitness.
• You are taking Effective Action in your day to day life. Which means you are doing everything you do better than you have ever done it.
• You know exactly HOW you are going to make changes to your life to be able to achieve the results, the success, that you WANT.

The Thin, Fit and Healthy You is within your reach.

The Foundation for the New You

The HOW you have determined should be specifically designed to take you from who you are now to the who you want to become, the New You.

HOW are you going to change your life? HOW will you achieve your goals?

You want to change your body, you want to change your life, and you know HOW to do it. This is often when a problem will creep into your mind.

You Are Where You Are

There is no denying the fact that you are where you are. The results that you are experiencing today are the manifestation of all of the thoughts you have and the actions you have taken up to today. Your entire life, up to this point, has led you to where you are today.

This can be a trap where you can get caught in reactionary thinking. Instead of thinking about what you WANT, you start thinking about what you HAVE.

Reactionary thinking of this kind, at its best, is a waste of time. It can change your mood and cause bad feelings. However, at its worst, it can lead to you completely forgetting about what you WANT. It can stop you from focusing on your goals.

Don’t let your current results take over your thinking. You must be in control.

Go Where You WANT to Go

You have got to realize that you are at your starting point. Each and every day you have the choice to either do nothing or go toward what you WANT.

Be thankful for where you are. Be thankful that you know what you WANT. There are millions of people, trapped in reactionary thinking, who don’t know what they WANT. You not only know what you WANT but you know HOW you will get it.

Instead of letting your current results make you feel bad about yourself, think of your current results as the beginning. They are your starting point and the foundation upon which you will build your success. Go where you want to go, starting here and now.

The Path to Healthy Habits

Earl Nightengale, know as the “Dean of Personal Development,” has an absolutely beautiful definition for the word success.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. – Earl Nightengale

I just love this definition.

• Progressive means moving forward; advancing; continuing steadily by increments.
• Realization is the making or being made real of something imagined or planned.
• A worthy ideal is the ultimate objective of an important endeavor; something valuable to strive toward; a useful or valuable goal.

The Recipe for Weight Loss Success embraces this definition of success. Therefore, the best way to progressively realize your worthy ideal is to slowly implement healthy habits. Follow your HOW every day and get a little bit better and a little bit closer to achieving your goal. As you do this, the results will come, your WANT will be realized.

The Habit is More Important

I have stated it before and I will state it here again. Making drastic changes to your diet or exercise routines is a recipe for disaster. This leads to an obvious question, “How do I change my diet and exercise routines without DRASTICALLY changing my diet and exercise routines?”

You can’t do 2 years worth of work in two weeks, but you can, every day, get a little bit better, get a little bit closer to your WANT.

Therefore, the habit of exercising is more important than the type, quantity, or intensity of the exercises you perform. I must state this again: The habit of exercising is more important than the exercises you do.

For example, a habit of doing one push-up a day will benefit you more than any exercise routine that is implemented inconsistently with no real planning. Doing one push-up a day for 60 days will guarantee you at least 60 push-ups. The reality is that you will probably do many more than 60 and you will add other exercises.

If you do something every day for a long enough period of time, you will get better at that something, and as you get better you will want to do more of that something and you will be less likely to stop doing that something. The doing of that something will become a habit.

What starts as, “I will do 1 push-up a day,” will eventually become “I exercise every day.”

Start with a simple and easy to implement daily practice.  Eventually, the practice will become a habit and the habit will become a part of your identity. The Statements of Fact that you use to define your WANT and HOW will be realized.

Habit Is as Habit Does

Getting down on the floor right now and doing 100 pushups or 100 crunches is not going to help you get what you WANT. More than likely, they will cause you pain and suffering if you are not used to doing these exercises in these quantities. Even worse, that pain and suffering will probably prevent you from exercising tomorrow. It is more important to exercise on a daily basis than it is to do a lot of exercises.

The same can be said for your eating habits, your diet. Today, you are probably not following your ideal diet, so how do you get from where you are today to where you WANT to be without making drastic changes?

Don’t make drastic changes. Progressively change your diet. Think, “An Apple a Day.”

For example, say that the paleo diet resonates with you and implementing it is a HOW you’ve identified to achieve your WANT. Since the habit is more important than what you do, start off with a simple daily practice of eating one quality paleo snack each day. It is easy to eat one quality snack each day.

As you continue this daily practice, just like with the push-up example, the one snack a day can turn into one meal a day, which can turn into a permanent change in your diet, and more importantly, a permanent change to your identity.

Plan the Work – Work the Plan

Typically, people want changes to happen fast.

• Purge everything not “compliant” from your fridge and pantry on day 1.
• Go run 2 miles today, even though you haven’t run in months, or maybe years.
• Do that workout you used to do back in high school, 10+ years ago.
• Lose 20 pounds in 20 days!

I may be sounding like a broken record, but this statement is too important. Drastic changes are a recipe for disaster. The Recipe for Weight Loss Success is founded upon NOT making drastic changes to your life.

Figure out what you WANT. Figure out HOW you can get what you WANT. Then, implement the HOW in small increments on a daily basis to create habits that will get you what you WANT.

The habit is what is important.

• Start with small change.
• Experience success.
• Gradually increase your change.
• Experience more success.
• Continue this process.
• Be patient and keep going.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

Plan your work, then work your plan, and you will achieve success.

The Success You WANT

When you start thinking of yourself as someone who is thin, fit, and healthy, you will become thin, fit, and healthy.

It will not happen overnight. It will take time. It will take mental and physical effort. But it all starts with thinking, taking effective action and determining HOW you can get what you WANT. Then you implement your HOW with small changes that develop habits that will get you what you WANT.

• Use your imagination to find out what you really WANT to achieve concerning your weight, fitness, and health.
• Create Statements of Fact that define your WANTS.
• Repeat your Statements of Fact over and over again. Focus on them constantly, continuously.
• When a negative thought enters your mind, squash it immediately by reciting your Statements of Fact.
• Observe your day-to-day life and identify Cycles of Doom.
• Evaluate your existing habits and routines. Are they taking you toward or away from what you WANT?
• Take effective action within your day-to-day life to create a Self-Sustaining Cycle of Success.
• Communicate with the “5 Years from Now You.”
• Determine HOW you can achieve what you WANT.
• Implement your HOW with small changes to your daily practice.
• Continue the daily practice to create positive daily habits.
• Leverage your new daily habits to realize your HOW and get what you WANT.

Think and imagine the new you. Imagine all of the things that you can and will do. Imagine what you can and will become. Take effective action in your day-to-day life. Experience success and build upon it. Determine how you will change your life and implement the HOW into your daily habits.

This is the final step of The Recipe for Weight Loss Success.