In the last article I talked about the importance of consistency in your fat loss approach. In addition to being consistent with your fat loss efforts you also need to be consistent with the tracking of your fat loss efforts. As I mentioned previously for ultimate success with your weight loss, there needs to be a marriage of consistency and methodical movement towards your goal. We’ll look at the later now.
Kaizen – Your Secret Weapon
While is seems like an obvious trait, methodical movement towards your fat loss goal is often a lacking component especially when your fat loss goal is a long term goal (i.e. 4+ months). But constantly making an effort to methodically move forward, get better, be more precise, constantly making little corrections to your plan and execution will get you to your goal faster than you originally planned.
The Japanese call this kaizen. Small improvements summed over a longer period of time yield huge results. The reason that I say that you need to make these changes/improvement in a methodical fashion is because making improvements in this fashion will allow your to maximize your efforts. This is goes in line with one of my ‘diet rules’ which says
‘…you should spend the least amount of time and effort on your diet as possible because you have better things in your life…’
Methodical changes will allow for the least wasted effort and time spent. How do you do this?
First, you need to identify areas in which you would like to improve. Areas which improvement would give you better and faster results.
Some areas you might choose from area:
-Compliance
-Food/Meal Prep
-Resistance Training
-Metabolic Training
-Nutrition Taste/Flavor
Let’s look at two.
Metabolic Training
Metabolic training as this is an easy one. Continually making small improvements to your metabolic training (i.e. doing more work in less time) will make sure that not only your fitness level will improve but you will cause more ‘metabolic disruption’ yielding more fat and calories burned.
My friend and partner in fat loss crime Alwyn Cosgrove loves to do metabolic countdown ladders with burpees and kettlebell swings. Here’s how you do it:
15 reps of burpees
15 reps of kettlebell swings
14 reps of burpees
14 reps of kettlebell swings
…etc…etc..etc..until you get down to 1 rep of each.
When you do this time yourself. Each time you complete the workout strive to improve your time.
Focus on continually improving this over the course of 12 weeks – you’ll be amazed.
Compliance & Cravings
Let’s briefly look at another area in which you can apply methodical improvements – compliance. If you are currently in the 2nd Stage of Nutrition (see this article for more), then your main goal is improving your compliance. How can you do this?
After tracking your compliance to your diet for 2 weeks. Take a look at where you veer from your dietary plan. Were these planned occasions or spur of the moment decisions? Take all the spur of the moment decisions and try to figure out what was going on in those situations. A common problem people have to deal with is cravings. If your compliance is suffering from your struggles with warding off cravings then this is an area to target.
How can you get better?
Step 1 – Identify the cravings.
Step 2 – Idenfity what is causing the cravings (i.e. triggers).
Step 3 – If possible, remove the focus of your carvings. For example, if you crave doritos make sure there aren’t any doritos in your house).
Step 4 – Vow to ‘wait out’ your craving. Usually food cravings are psychological. When you are ‘in the moment’ with your craving, acknowledge this fact and make a decision to wait 20 minutes before acting on your urge. Usually after 20 minutes the craving will have passed.
Put this process into action. The first time you do it, you might not do it all successfully. That is fine. Just vow to improve each and every time. Soon enough these cravings won’t be an issue.
Wrapping it Up
It is okay if you only pick one area at a time to focus on but pick one. Get better each workout. Each day become compliant, do more work in less time. Often when we set longer term goals, it is easy to get stuck in maintenance mode without knowing it. Maintenance mode is another word for slow death By focusing on small improvements each day in one or more areas you will ensure that you avoid a slow fitness death and lose the weight faster.
-Mike
P.S. If you want more practical weight loss and health boosting tips as well as strategies to help you stick to your plan become a Naked Nutrition Insider today. Learn more about the membership and the Strong, Fit & Healthy Newsletter Click Here. It only costs less than 2 cups of coffee at Starbucks (but membership rates are doubling next week).
