I previously gave a seminar in Allentown, PA. The seminar was entitled “How to Lose Weight At Will” and for 2.5 hours I went through in great detail the foundational principles of using Naked Nutrition for fat loss. The attendees were great and the seminar went off really well. As I was driving home that night (it is about 3 hours from Allentown to State College) I thought a lot about the seminar, the attendees’ questions, and the core message.

I kept coming back to two main concepts/areas. Consistency and methodical changes. If you shaved down the entire 2.5 hour presentation, those two concepts would be what was left. Let’s look at consistency first and in a later article we’ll examine methodical changes.

Consistency

Consistently sticking to your diet and exercise plan is the number one determining factor of your success. If you stick to a bad plan, you will have better results than if you sort of stuck to a good plan. Sticking to your plan is far from a glorious behavior. You don’t get a rush of adrenaline from it and you don’t get any recognition for doing it.

But as success coach and author Brian Tracy says:

“The key is to resolve to do what you said you would do.”

Sticking to your plan is by far the limiting success factor for most people.

It isn’t protein to carbohydrate ratios.
It isn’t nutrient timing.
It isn’t whether or not you have properly activated your semispinalis.

The key is sticking to your plan day after day, month after month. This is NOT a sexy concept (nor an original one). But it will make all the difference. Sticking to your plan is a daily battle that is won via proper goal setting. I recommend that you set long term and short term goals.

Long term goals are things that would take you weeks or months to achieve – losing 30lbs would be an example of a long term goal. Let’s say it will take you 3 months to achieve this goal. How are you going to stay focused for all 90 of those days?

This is where small goals come into play. Small goals are more about keeping yourself honest and ensuring that you do what you set out to do. Small goals include the 90% rule. Each week you should set the goal to adhere to your nutritional plan 90% of the time. You should track this on a daily basis. Other small goals may include – completing all your workouts, getting up at a certain time to ensure that you will have time to workout, taking 2-3 small breaks during the day to get up from your desk and stretch/move around, taking 10,000 steps each day to maximize your non-exercise physical activity levels and calorie burning. These small goals when achieved day after day will lead to you reaching your long term goals – almost automatically.

Every day I carry with me 4 pieces of paper:

1. My Meal Compliance Grid.
2. Daily To-do List.
3. Goals for the Week.
4. Daily Habit Tracker.

The daily habit tracker is a list of actions (similar to what I listed above when talking about short goals) that I set out to do every day. After I complete each item I just check it off. So, just like with my meal compliance grid, at the end of the week I can see if I followed through and was consistent about achieving the small goals that will make the accomplishment of my long term goal automatic.

In the next article we’ll talk about methodical changes and its importance in successful fat loss but between now and then look at your long term weight loss/health goals (hopefully you have them) and see what actions your need to take every day to ensure that this long term goal happens. Make a list and check the items on that list off every day to ensure that you are doing what you vowed to do.

-Mike