The 7 worst mistakes to make while trying to lose weight, become fit and get healthy.

60 in 3’s last series of articles dealt with the most effective things people can do when they first try to lose weight and get healthy. Now, I’d like to cover the opposite topic. What are some of the least effective steps people take when they try to turn their life around? What are some of the things that seem helpful but may actually be harmful to your health and to your efforts to improve it? Just as with the last list, this one will consist of an initial post with the topics and some general information about each, and then follow up posts with more information on each item. So without further ado, here’s the list of things not to do when you’re trying to lose weight, get in shape and be healthy.

1. Fad Diets - You’ve heard of them, you might have even tried them. The diet with nothing but fruit, the diet with nothing but bacon, the Atkins diet, the North Beach diet, the diet with nothing but shrimp or even the diet where you fast for three days to detoxify. All of these are fad diets. They might show some initial weightloss but are difficult to maintain and, in some cases, bad for your health. You’re much better off living a better lifestyle with healthy eating habits than you are trying one of these fad diets.

2. Do no exercise - This is particularly bad among women. The belief here is that weightloss and health is something that is directly related to eating habits and nothing else. Exercise and physical activity is seen as unnecessary, which is why you often see women engaging in some diet but seeing little in the way of results. Yes, physical activity is absolutely necessary if you want to be healthy and lose weight.

3. Do no research - And before the men get too cocky, here’s the common failing of most men. Rather than do research, they simply do what they think is right, what their friend Bob the mechanic thinks is right, what they remember from that show they saw on the Discovery Channel two years ago and what they think that girl they dated two years ago did to lose weight. Many men will do absolutely no research before engaging in life changing projects.

4. Cardio too soon - While cardio is a vital part of any healthy life, try it too soon, when you’re still overweight and out of shape, and you’ll find yourself out of breath, demoralized and discouraged. Even worse, you could actually damage your health by pushing cardio too fast and too hard before you’re ready for it. Take it easy. It took you years to get your body into the doughy shape it’s in now and it will take some time to fix that damage. So start out slow and work your way up.

5. Weight training too hard - This is another one for the guys. We tend to work out too hard when we first get to the gym, especially when it comes to weights. It’s as though we think the whole world is judging us and laughing at the fact that we can’t bench press more than 50lbs. So we try too hard and we lift too much and two days later we’re in the most intense pain of our lives. And sometimes, this makes us never come back to the gym. Start out slow and with a low weight, then work your way up.

6. Treat little setback as complete failures - This one is common to both men and women and it’s one I wrestled with when I first started recovering from my health meltdown. It’s the tendency to blow up any little setback into a major failure and then self destruct. You wake up in the morning and the scale tells you something you don’t want to hear, so you get frustrated and spend the whole day binging on chocolate. You try to walk up two flights of stairs but are out of breath by the second one, so you get demoralized and stop walking altogether. You give in to temptation and eat a donut in the morning and then you beat yourself up and binge on steak and cheesecake in the evening. We tend to think that one small failure means all our efforts mean nothing. Even worse, we use that one small setback as an excuse to leap headlong into failure. After all, if we already had one little failure, then the rest of the day’s worth of major failures doesn’t count, right? Wrong. It all counts. Stop using your little failures as justifications for bigger ones. So you made a mistake, so what? It’s not the end of the world.

7. Do it yourself, with no support - Human beings are social creatures. What we do and how we act depends in large part on the people around us. Our eating habits and physical activities are reflections of our upbringing, family, social circle and professional life. A change of health and fitness involves changing all of these things. Therefore, it’s much easier to do if you don’t try to do it alone. Get your family engaged in your project, get your friends involved. At the very least, keep people informed so they know what you’re trying to do and why. You’ll find that your family and friends can be very supportive of your efforts to live a healthier life and you’ll find that your health can greatly benefit from their support.

7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #1, fad diets.

The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail, starting with #1, fad diets.

Fad diet is a term I use for a wide variety of eating plans. These include a wide variety of things, from Atkins to North Beach, from fruitarian to fasting. In fact, the diet blog recently ran a good article about the signs of a fad diet which can be found here. However, the real question is, what makes these diets really bad? What is it that makes them more than simply useless and turns them into a true mistake?

First, fad diets do nothing to educate people about eating habits. For the most part, fad diets simply tell you what to do instead of why you should be doing it. To me, this is one of the worst mistakes you can make. I greatly value education and knowledge so when I see a diet that simply lays down some rules rather than telling you why those rules exist, I see a mistake. You’re not going to learn how to eat healthy following this diet. You’re not going to learn about nutrition or the value of different kinds of food. You’re just going to learn the rules of this one specific diet. Now what happens if you are unable to follow that diet for a day? Maybe you’re out with family or perhaps you’re eating dinner with a customer. What do you do? If you actually learned about nutrition and health, you can almost always find a healthy meal, but if all you did was blindly follow a fad diet, then you know nothing and can’t really decide for yourself what is healthy and what isn’t.

Second, fad diets are by nature temporary. In fact, most fad diets will actually have a time limit as part of the diet. They’ll say things like “go on this diet for just 8 weeks” or “follow our eating plan for 12 weeks to see amazing results.” Yah, ok, and then what? What happens when the fad diet is done and you’re back to eating normally? All that weight comes right back on. True weight loss isn’t temporary and it’s not a result of temporary diets. True weight loss and good health come from permanent changes to your life. Unless you’re going to follow that fad diet for the rest of your life, you might as well not even start it.

Third, fad diets make you believe they’re the only thing you need. What I mean by this is that fad diets make the dieter believe that exercise, active lifestyle and all the other components of a healthy life are unnecessary. They do this by focusing on weightloss and little else. Unfortunately, weight loss is not the same thing as being healthy. Yep, you heard that right, losing weight is not the same thing as being healthy. Sure, for most people losing some weight will probably result in a health improvement. However, pure weight loss is not always healthy. For example, an athlete can lose weight by losing muscle mass. Is this healthy? Absolutely not, but a fad diet will make you think that all you need to do is follow the diet, lose some weight and your life will be perfect.

Finally, most fad diets will follow some odd eating habit that actually causes the dieter to eat in an unhealthy and unenjoyable manner. They will focus on only specific types of food or on a specific way of preparing the food. They will have you fasting, detoxifying, pureeing and eating nothing but frozen kidney beans. In other words, they will destroy any semblance you have of a healthy diet you can enjoy. To me, food is something to be celebrated and enjoyed. Healthy food can be wonderful, and even the occasional unhealthy snack (kept to a reasonable level) is a part of a life I love to live. I’d much slowly lose weight on a healthy, well rounded diet I can enjoy than eat a crazy diet of nothing but Asai berry smoothies in order to lose twenty lbs over the next three weeks.

Personal Experience

All that said, I actually tried a few of these diets when I first started to get healthy. I tried Atkins but stopped when I learned that some carbs are good and some proteins are not, something Atkins didn’t try to educate me on. I tried some of the meal replacement shakes, but stopped when meal time became a chore rather than a pleasure. I even tried a strict low fat diet, which seemed to work, but the weight came right back as soon as I stopped. I never once found a diet that was possible to follow long term, healthy and provided good results.

So I started reading about nutrition. I talked to my doctor about exercise and eating plans. I researched and learned and then researched some more. In fact, I’m still researching and I’m still learning and I hope to never run out of new things to learn. Eventually, I started understanding what I ate. I knew when something was bad or what meals were healthy and I was able to decide on my own what to eat and when. These days I don’t have a strict eating plan of what I can or cannot eat. I simply choose healthy, tasty food every meal and enjoy my life. That’s the diet I’m still on and plan to remain on for the rest of my days. Maybe I should name it something catchy like “Galometrics Diet” and write a book.

Summary

Fad diets are just that, fads. They’re things that are here today and gone tomorrow. Some of them might last longer, like Atkins, but that doesn’t make them any better. Do yourself a favor, educate yourself about nutrition and healthy eating habits. You’ll come up with a healthier and more enjoyable lifestyle than any of these plans.

7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #2, forgetting about exercise.

The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail. Today’s topic is item 2, do no exercise.

How often have you talked to someone who was overweight and thinking about changing their life? What’s the first thing they think of? Typically, it’s a diet of some kind. If they’re smart, they’re at least thinking healthy eating instead of fad diet, but they’re still thinking in terms of diet. There are two things wrong with this mind set.

First, it equates weight loss with being healthy. That’s absolutely wrong. Losing weight is not the same thing as being healthy. You can in fact lose weight and be unhealthy just as you can gain weight and become healthy. If people thought of losing weight as losing fat then maybe I would agree with that mindset, but they don’t. Yes, losing some weight can usually lead to a healthier life, but not always and not for all people. A better way to think of weight is in terms of body composition. You want more of your body to be lean tissue such as muscle and less of your body to be fat.

The second thing wrong with the “diet only” mindset is that it focuses on one side of the equation only. Even if your only concern is losing weight, you should still be looking at more than just your food. Remember, weight is a simple result of calories in versus calories out. So why are you only looking at your calories in? Why aren’t you also examining your calories out? Eating 100 calories less a day is the exact same thing as spending 100 calories more a day. Either way, the net result is a 100 calories less that day. However, the 100 calories you spent in exercise also helps your body in other ways such as improving muscle tone and cardio vascular fitness.

Women and Exercise

Women seem to be the ones who usually shy away from exercise and focus on diets. My personal belief is that this is due to our culture’s ridiculous need to pressure women away from anything remotely masculine. For some reason we’ve gotten it in our heads that gyms, weights and exercise in general are meant for men and women should stay away for fear of becoming butch body builders. However, that’s just plain idiocy.

Exercise will not make you into a body builder, even if you go to the gym to do it. Body building requires an incredible amount of time, dedication and specialized training. Going to the gym three times a week or working out at home for 20 minutes a day is not enough. It’s like believing that driving to the supermarket will make you into a race car driver, it’s just not true. Exercise will also not make your muscles all bulged out and veiny. That too takes a lot of time, dedication and specialized training. What exercise will do is help you lose weight by spending calories and speeding up your metabolism. It will make you healthier by improving cardio vascular fitness. Plus the healthy and athletic look is sooooo much more attractive than the thin and boney look.

Personal Experience

And just when I’ve told you that focusing on diet only was primarily an issue with women, I’m going to add that primarily does not mean only. Many men have this problem too. Years ago, when I first started gaining weight, I tried various diets. I tried eating less, eating better and just plain not eating, but for some reason, I never thought of exercise. I had an odd mental block which told me weight was all about food. I knew intellectually that exercise played an important role in my health and weight, but I never made the connection intuitively. When I saw my weight I blamed the food I ate that day, not the ten hours I spent sitting on the couch and not moving.

Moving past

The solution to all this is to understand two things. First, your goal is not to lose weight, your goal is to be healthy. Part of that may be to lose weight. In fact, losing weight is almost always a part of getting healthy, but losing weight is not the end goal, it’s just one part of it. Second, you need to understand that what you eat is only 50% of the problem. What you do is the other 50%. So get past your irrational fears of the gym. Stop believing the myth that picking up a dumbbell will make you into a steroid chugging body builder and start being active. Exercise, workout, move your body any way you can.

Summary

Think about it this way, what’s a better way of losing 100 calories from your daily total? Worrying about how to eat more broccoli and less cheese or going dancing, hiking or walking? Exercise and physical activity is a vital part of any effort to lose weight and become healthier. Never forget that.

7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #3, do no research.

The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail. Today’s topic is item 3, do no research.

Yesterday we talked about a common mistake which women make, thinking that health is all about food and not exercise. Today we talk about a common mistake men make, not bothering to research or plan ahead. By the way, just because I say this is common among men doesn’t mean women never do this. I’ve seen more than my fair share of women rushing headlong into some crazy health plan without any research. However, the most common culprit here is us guys.

My friend is a physical trainer. She tells some amusing stories about her male clients. According to her, if you tell the average man that he’s overweight and out of shape, his first response will be to deny it. He’ll then remind you of those years he spent playing sports in college. He’ll might even strike a few poses to show you how in shape he is. He’s also likely to do something stupid like trying to lift the sofa to “look for change” just to prove how strong he is. When he finally realizes he’s out of shape, he’ll spend $5,000 on a home gym machine and then stop using it after a month.

Funny as this may seem, it’s not that far from the truth. Most men, faced with an unpleasant truth that they’re out of shape, will overreact. They’ll latch on to one thing and immediately overdo it. It could be a home gym set or that SEAL team workout someone at the office told them about. Either way, they’ll fixate on that as their road to health and ignore everything else.

Personal Experience

And before anyone gets insulted, let me just add that I’m no different. Two years before my health meltdown, I actually noticed how out of shape I was. I saw my growing belly and my shortening of breath and said “I need to fix this now!” The most in shape person I knew at the time was a coworker who was also an amateur body builder. So of course if this worked for him it must also work for me, right? I had him take me to the gym to show me some basics and immediately started working out with weights five times a week. Nevermind that this isn’t the best way to lose weight. Nevermind that this isn’t the best way to increase stamina. I saw it working for someone and by god it was going to work for me too! One month later I quit because I was seeing no results.

What are you looking to improve?

If you want to avoid this kind of mistake, you’re going to need to do some research and planning. The first thing you’ll need to do is decide what exactly is it that you’re trying to improve. Are you tired of being out of breath on the stairs? Are you trying to lose weight? Do you want to build up your strength? How about your stamina? Do you want better defined muscles? These are all separate goals with separate requirements. Losing weight is not the same thing as building strength or muscle tone. Increasing muscle stamina is not quite the same thing as building cardio endurance. You need to decide what it is that you’re trying to improve. Hopefully, you’re going to be working on all of these things, but you might not do them all at once. You might start with one and then slowly work in another and another. Regardless, decide what it is that you’re going to be working on and in what order.

How are you going to improve?

Once you finish with step 1, the real research starts. So you decided to improve your cardio stamina while also working on losing weight as the first part of your total health makeover. That’s great. Do you know the best ways to do this? Do you know the difference between running and biking? Do you know what a healthy meal is or what your daily caloric intake should be? You don’t have to know all of these things to get started. For example, you don’t have to do much research to know that eating a piece of fruit is probably better than eating a piece of candy. You also don’t need research to know that going on a walk is better for you than sitting on the sofa. However, you should start educating yourself as soon as possible. If you’re going to try jogging, then read up on jogging. If you’re worried about your nutrition then read about nutrition. You can do all of this while you start implementing some small changes, but you should start as soon as possible.

Confirm with multiple resources

Health advice can be confusing. Different sources will give you different advice. So check multiple sources when you can. That applies to the advice you see here as well. I don’t expect you to step away from your computer and say “well, Gal on 60 in 3 said this so it must be true,” You should examine the information for yourself. Talk to others, read other blogs and books. The more sources of information you use, the more complete of a picture you will have.

Don’t be afraid to change your plan

A lot of times you’ll read something that changes your perception of what you’re doing. Don’t be afraid of this. Instead, use this new information to modify what you’re doing. For example, I always thought of jogging as the best cardio activity out there. Then I read a bit more about the stress that jogging can put on your knees and feet. I confirmed this information with multiple sources and then changed my workout routine a bit. There’s nothing wrong with change, especially if it’s based on good, solid information.

Set up well researched goals

Based on all your research, start setting yourself realistic goals. Telling yourself “I’m going to be in shape” is nice, but it’s essentially meaningless. Writing down “By January, I would like to run 5 miles in under an 45 minutes, weigh less than 180lbs and be able to do 40 sit ups in a row” is much better. It’s still not as detailed as it could be, but at least it gives you something solid to strive towards. By the way, notice how these goals relate to the first step mentioned above.

Remember how you were supposed to figure out the things you wanted to improve? Well now you’re writing down specific goals for those improvement areas. If you said you wanted to improve strength and cardio endurance first, then your initial goals should apply to those two areas.

End result

The point of all this is for you to have two things. First is a plan, a solid set of goals and methods to achieve them. The second point is for you to get educated about your body, to understand how things work and why. Once you do that, you’ll be able to easily modify and change your plan as you see fit. Rather than relying on other people to tell you what to do, you’ll be able to decide for yourself what’s good and bad for your health and fitness needs.

7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #4, too much cardio.

The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail. Today’s topic is item 4, cardio too soon.

Cardio has an odd place in our minds. We all know what it is but we don’t really know much about it. If you ask ten people what cardio is, I’m betting you’ll mostly hear “it’s jogging”. For some strange reason, jogging has become enshrined in our culture as “cardio!” Most people can’t even articulate the benefits of cardio exercise or what specifically makes an exercise into cardio, but they know jogging. So I suppose it’s no surprise that most people, faced with a growing belly and constant health problems, see jogging as the magic bullet that will cure all their ills. massively overweight and badly out of shape, they lace on those new running shoes, put on the new running shorts, hit play on the cardio playlist they just downloaded on to their iPod and take off running. Five minutes later you can find these same people stopped, desperately trying to catch their breath and in a lot of pain.

What is cardio

Just a quick refresher, cardio is any kind of sustained exercise where your heart beat remains at 60% to 80% of max for more than 10 to 15 minutes. The benefits of cardio are burning calories, faster metabolism and increased cardio vascular health (which means your heart and circulatory system will work better). Cardio is not necessarily running. There are many other options which I have in detailed in the past. If you want more information on them, please see this previous 60 in 3 post.  Cardio is a vital part of any healthy lifestyle.

So why not cardio?

So if cardio is so good, why am I saying it can be a mistake?  Well, because most beginners try to do too much of it too soon.  I tried to find a polite way of saying this but I couldn’t so I’m just going to say it.  If you’re just now trying to improve your health then it’s too early for you to try high end cardio, especially jogging.  You’re too fat and out of shape for it and it will just make you doubt yourself to the point of quitting.

And before you get insulted, allow me to share my personal experience.  Like many people, I thought of jogging as the be all and end all of exercises.  After all, I never saw a fat jogger so if I jogged that meant I wouldn’t be fat anymore.  Makes sense, right?  I got on the treadmill, set it for 6mph (I figured 10 minute miles was a slow pace) and off I went.  Five minutes later I was in excruciating pain and I thought I was going to have a heart attack.  My legs hurt for days and I felt so demoralized that I almost quit this whole good health thing right there and then.

The problem

The first and main problem was plain bad health.  I was so out of shape that I just couldn’t run.  I was out of breath five minutes into my “jog”.  Remember, I had spent five years on the couch at this point.  My heart and lungs were NOT ready for running and my guess is, yours aren’t either.  Jogging, and most other cardio exercise, is actually really really tough.  There’s a reason it burns so many calories, because your body is doing a lot of work.  If your body isn’t used to that work then you’re going to fail and fail hard.

The second issue was one of physics.  Simply put, I was too fat, the ground was too hard and gravity was too strong.  Remember, I was about 280lbs back then.  If you want to get an idea of what that feels like, lie down on your back, lift your legs so that your feet are pointed up and now have a friend hit the bottom of your feet with a 280lb weight over and over.  Have him do it about once a second for five minutes and see how you feel.  Sounds like a joke but it really isn’t.  Every time you take a running step, your whole body’s weight lands down on one foot.  Now your legs can act as a bit of a shock absorber, but there’s a limit.  So when I say I was too fat, the ground was too hard and the gravity was too strong, I mean it.  Fix any one of these things and I probably would have been ok, but my ass wasn’t getting slimmer very fast, the ground wasn’t getting softer and I still can’t figure out how to turn down gravity.

Cardio, and jogging specifically, isn’t something you should try to do when you’re out of shape.  You’ll end up hurting yourself both physically and emotionally.  Yes, I said emotionally.  Do you know how demoralizing it was to stand there huffing and puffing and trying desperately to catch my breath?  I felt like an idiot.  I felt like everyone was watching me and laughing at the poor fat guy who couldn’t even run.  I know now that this was incorrect but it felt awful back then.  I never wanted to set foot in a gym again.

How to avoid this mistake

So when is soon too soon?  When is the right time to start with cardio?  Well, that’s a hard question to answer since it varies from person to person, but I can give you some pointers.

Start slow - My worst mistake was starting at 6mph.  When I went back to jogging, I started at 4.5mph (that’s barely more than a fast walk) and gradually improved from there.  Try to do the same thing.  Start at a speed, incline and time you know you can do.  Then slowly increase.

Try something other than jogging - While jogging is the activity most people connect with cardio exercise, there are actually numerous other possibilities.  Try a stationary bike, try a stair climber or get on an elliptical and see if you like it.  All of these are cardio options that limit the impact on your knees and feet.  That’s something you should be very concerned with, especially when you’re starting out.  All that extra weight you’re carrying around is hitting your feet over and over and over and over when you run.  So maybe you should spare your feet a little and try something other than jogging.

Exercise at a reasonable level - Don’t be the idiot who falls off the treadmill, out of breath and unable to stand.  You really shouldn’t push your body that hard, especially when you’re out of shape.  You want to make your heart stronger, not give yourself a heart attack.  That said, don’t give up and slow down just because you’re breathing a bit harder than usual.  Cardio isn’t supposed to be easy and if you find yourself with the breath to easily hold a conversation than you’re doing something wrong.  When you’re doing a cardio exercise, an easy test to see if you’re working too hard or too easy is to try and say a simple sentence out loud.  If you did it easily then you’re not working hard enough.  If you couldn’t do it at all, then you’re working out too hard.  You should be able to speak a sentence out loud but then need to pause and catch your breath.

Don’t over do it - You don’t need to run for every day for 60 minutes.  In fact, you’re just hurting yourself when you do this.  Aim for three to four cardio sessions a week with about 20 to 40 minutes of exercise each.

Summary

Done well, cardio is one of the most important parts of a healthy lifestyle.  Done poorly, it can demoralize you and damage your body.  So use your brain and exercise smart.

7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #5, weight training too hard and too early.

The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail, with #5, weight training too hard and too early.

I’m a big fan of weight training as part of a healthy lifestyle. In fact, I think it’s just as if not more important than cardio, and I mean that for both men and women. However, there’s healthy weight training and then there’s overdoing it. Specifically, there’s something men will tend to do, especially men who are brand new to the gym, which should be avoided if at all possible. The experienced weight trainers reading this are probably chuckling right now. If they’re like me, they’ve either gone through this themselves or seen other people do it. They’ve seen the “the two day pain” and what it can do. What I’m referring to is the pain you’ll experience two days after a particularly intense workout, especially if your body is not used to weight workouts.

Men who are new to the gym always assume they must lift as much weight as people who have been there for years. So they rack on more and more weight and then they huff and puff and grunt their way through ten repetitions of everything. They’ll do every machine, every free weight station and every possible pose with a dumbbell. Then they’ll go home thinking to themselves “hey, that wasn’t so bad.” The next day, they’ll still feel good so they might repeat the whole thing again. This time they’ll do multiple sets of everything. Then comes the morning of the second day after their initial workout. This is the point where the pain sets in.

The Two Day Pain

If you’ve never experienced the two day pain, then you’re lucky. It’s a horrible situation. Your whole body hurts and nothing you do will make it go away. It feels like your muscles are locked up and burning and the slightest movement makes it worse. The typical two day pain is in the biceps, probably because most guys tend to overwork this area. It’s easy to spot someone who’s done this. They’ll be walking very slowly and very gently because every step is miserable. Their arms will be slightly bent because the muscles ache so much that they cannot be fully extended. In general, they’ll look pretty silly.

Consequences

If looking silly was the only side effect then I’d write this off as a minor problem and move on. However, the two day pain has other problems associated with it, primarily on the motivation side. In terms of health, this condition is actually not so bad. The muscles go back to normal within a day and there are no permanent effects that I am aware of. The blow to self esteem though, can be more serious.

Just like failure on the treadmill, this sort of experience can drive someone away from exercise. Believe me, it’s one of the more miserable things to go through because of the pain and because of the embarassment. This thing called exercise that you just tried and felt so good about has unexpectedly betrayed you. It’s caused you incredible pain and made you look like an idiot. Would you want to try it again? What if you didn’t know this was temporary? What if you didn’t realize that this only happens if you haven’t worked out in a while and goes away if you workout on a regular basis? For a newcomer to the world of fitness and exercise, this experience can be reason enough to quit.

The Solution

Luckily, the solution is relatively easy. Your first week of weight workouts should be very easy. Use the bare bar if you have to and a minimal number of repetitions and sets. Don’t push the weight or number of reps to the point where you’re barely able to lift it. It may feel good then but it won’t two days later. Take it easy, your body is not used to exercise and you should start it off slowly. Then, as the weeks go by, start increasing the reps, weight and sets to a more challenging level.

Summary

The two day pain can be a health killer if it drives away from weight training. Avoid it, by starting out easy and working your way up from there.

7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #6, treating setbacks as failures.

The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail, with #6, treating setbacks as failures.

Before I get into the rest of this post, I want to call out a specific comment that was left on the original list that was article 1 of this series.

Hey Gal … followed you here from Simple Dollar. Great blog (and great post on SD).

I actually have most of my issues with #6. I’m knowledgeable, I eat healthy Monday through Friday, but weekends are tough. I even have lean grow protein powder and flaxseed oil for shakes when absolutely needed.

I am of the “meal every three to four hours” mindset, but being a consultant with two jobs doesn’t make this easy.

If I miss a day at the gym or a meal, I pretty much mark the day as failure. After all, if you eat 6 small meals a day and miss one, it’s REALLY hard to get back on track for the day because you’re so hungry.

I guess motivation to continually eat healthy is my issue. When I’m out on the road, it’s too easy (and cheaper) to get a hoagie (sub) from a hoagie shop or some fast food instead of driving all over trying to find something healthy (especially for breakfast).

I would be very interested in your thoughts for meals on the go or meals on the road as this is my biggest hurdle … that and finding healthy food that I can crave!

-eROCK

First, I’m planning to talk about health on the go and how can you stay healthy while traveling as soon as this specific series of articles is done. That means you should see a post about this topic on Thursday or Friday. However, I also wanted to highlight eROCK’s comment because it’s a great example of what I’m trying to illustrate here.

What I advocate here on 60 in 3 is making long term changes to your life. Actually, let me be more accurate. I want you to make changes that are life long, not just long term. Now if I was asking you to do a single thing for the span of a week, then I would expect you to do it perfectly. I have this same expectation of myself and I think it’s perfectly reasonable for something as simple a as a 1 week project. Well, I suppose that depends on the project but still, being perfect on a short term project is not unreasonable. Being perfect for your entire life, well, that is unreasonable, especially when it comes to things like eating and daily activities.

Let’s face facts. As much as we want to be perfect in our workouts and eating, life is life and something will come up. For example, I always workout every weekday. However, Friday of last week, something came up. This particular something was my wedding so it was a little more important than my workout. No problem I say, I’ll make it up by going to the gym tomorrow. Of course, Saturday and Sunday roll by and we’re so busy with parents, arrangements and the reception that I never really got to the gym. So I missed my workout completely and didn’t do my chest and shoulders day this week plus one cardio session. And now the important question, so what?

The difference between setback and failure

So I missed one workout. The question is, what do I do about it? Do I even need to worry about it? Is this a sign of failure somewhere in my plan for health? Should I despair and feel as though I will never accomplish my goals? Well, for me, there is a difference between a setback and a failure.

A setback is something unexpected and unavoidable that happens once in a while. There’s no point in worrying about a setback, it just happens and you move on with your life. I don’t expect to get married every weekend so I don’t think this will recur. In other words, there’s no reason for me to worry. It was a one time occurrence that won’t happen again. I tried to adjust for it but couldn’t. Besides, it was one of the happiest days in my life so there was good reason for this happen. So I just move on with my day to day life, knowing that I didn’t fail and there’s no reason for me to worry, I’m still on a healthy course. This could apply to a wedding, it could apply to the one time you decided to have ice cream or the one day you missed your scheduled bike ride because your kid was sick or needed help with her homework. Basically, a setback is life acting up momentarily, but it’s nothing to worry about because it’s a one time or rare enough thing to be a non issue.

A failure is different. A failure is a major flaw in your plan. You know you should workout but you keep failing to make it to the gym. There could be a very good reason for you to not make it to the gym, but it’s still a failure because your plan itself is failing. A failure is the inability to stop eating candy even though you know you shouldn’t. A failure is the inability to stop eating junk food.

Do you see the difference? A setback was a one time occurrence that really couldn’t be planned for. A failure is a flaw in your plan or your inability to live up to those plans. Not making it to the gym one time because something came up is a setback. Not making it to the gym over and over because you just can’t wake up that early is a failure. Your plans are not working. In fact, they’re failing.

So You Failed, What Now?

The first thing to consider is, was it a setback or a failure? If was just a minor setback then relax and move on. There’s no need to worry about these. If you were really in a hurry and you ate a hoagie, then so be it. One hoagie is not going to kill you. However, if this is something that’s happening a lot, then perhaps you should treat it as a failure, as a sign that the health plans you made are not working. So then what?

Even a failure is not reason to give up. A failure just means your current plans are not working. Ok, so rather than giving up, change those plans. Maybe you need to try working out in the evening rather than in the morning. Maybe you need to try 4 meals instead of 6. Yes, you might need to accept a less than ideal plan, but a less than ideal plan that works for you is much better than an ideal plan you fail at over and over.

Don’t Make A Setback Into a Failure

What you need to avoid is making a setback into something bigger. If it’s a setback then relax and move on. There’s no need to redo all your plan just because of one setback. I’m certainly not going to redo my entire workout plan because I missed on Friday due to my wedding.

Don’t Make A Small Setback Into a Large One

Another thing to avoid is the feeling that one small setback means your entire day is shot. I see this frequently in people who are trying to lose weight. One small mistake at breakfast is marked as a failure for the entire day. That failure is then an excuse to binge. After all, the day is already a failure so it doesn’t matter. I talked about this attitude in a previous post called The Endless Cycle of Binge and Guilt and I recommend you read that.  It’s one of the most destructive things you can do to yourself and there’s simply no reason for it.  So you made a mistake or something came up, so what?  Assess if it’s a setback or a failure, change your plans accordingly if it was a failure and then move on.

Summary

Life is life.  Things will always come up.  Things will always happen when you least expect them to.  Don’t see them as failures if they’re not.  Even if they are then just adjust and move on.  The worst mistake you can make is to blow them up into something they’re not.

Next Page »