Get Your Mind Right

Often, when I ask women what their fitness goals are, a funny thing happens and for a few seconds they're stumped.  "My exercise goals?" they'll say.  Then these women tell me what they want to lose: weight, saddlebags, bra bulge, and cellulite.  Rarely, though, am I told what they want to gain.

The Problem

Blame it on our culture.  Women as young as high school teenagers begin so see perceived body flaws.  It is practically an initiation rite into womanhood, yet many of these perceived body flaws don't even exist.  For example, Carol Kennedy, M.S., now Program Director of Fitness/Wellness at Indiana University in Bloomington, offered free body fat screening to students in an attempt to promote weight-control courses she taught at the university.  Shockingly, 70 percent of the women that participated were in the normal range (20-30 percent body fat) and 56 percent perceived themselves as overweight!

One reason so many women have negative self-images is that we're surrounded by unrealistic images of beauty.  They want to look like televisions stars and supermodels, have the waist size they had in high school, or get six-pack abs.  According to James Loehr, Ed.D., President of LGE Performance Systems in Orlando, Fla., "many women may hold themselves up to an imagined ideal that their genetics can't accommodate, and set themselves up for failure.”  

Another reason is that, for most women, their road to a better self-image involves losing something (like weight or belly fat) in order to look a certain way.  “If you went to any street corner in any city in the country and asked 100 women, 'how do you feel about your body?' how many women will say 'I love it?'” asks Dan Baker, Ph.D., Program Director of Life Enhancement at Canyon Ranch in Tuscon, Arizona.  “Our language is deficit-based, and many women live in tyranny of that.”

A number of celebrities have juicy stories of being 20 pounds “overweight”—just like you or me—until they whittled their waists through diet and determination until they fit into size 2 jeans.  We think if they can do it, so can we.  The problem is that most people think that once the weight is gone it will be gone forever and, as a result, put themselves on diet and exercise regimens they don't enjoy.  As a result, they either don’t reach their goals or what they lost comes back.  “If you go on a diet that you know you can't sustain for a long time or an exercise program you don't like, eventually that's going to break you down,” says Loehr.  “The journey to a goal is as important as anything.”

The Solution

It may seem futile to tell a women who wants to shed pounds to forget about weight loss,  but ironically it may just be what she needs to succeed.  Loehr notes that "Professional athletes approach goals from a performance angle, focusing on what they need to do.  They don't judge effectiveness by standing in front of a mirror.  They set long-term goals, but also set intermediate goals: what they're going to do by the end of the month, this week or even today."  For example, you can have a goal of running a 10k but today you just need to finish a mile.  When you do this weight loss will take care of itself.  

During this time, you will learn to give your body the nutrition it needs to attain your goals (a skimpy green salad won't do!).  "Health and nutrition are very much connected to performance," says Loehr. "If you do anything that jeopardizes your health, the whole thing comes apart."

Define your personal exercise and fitness goals, keeping the lessons learned from this article in mind. Achieving what you want with your body begins with the first simple act of respecting it.

Physical Success at a Glance

Here are Body Effx tips to stay on track toward your fitness goals:

• Change your mindset.  Don't see yourself as a sitting person, but rather as a moving and active individual.  Keep moving.
• Set small performance goals that are measurable and realistic.  It can be something as simple as increasing the time you spend on a cardio machine.
•  Define success by what you accomplish and can do.  Can you run a mile?  Are the stairs easier to climb?
• Stay off the scale, especially if you've started weight training.  It may lie about your weight.
• Instead of measuring success by looking in a mirror, go by how your clothes fit.
• Allow for setbacks; they are inevitable.  Remember, you're in this for the long haul.