There are a few major myths that almost everyone, including you, probably believes. This is because you have been lied to about it year upon year. The combination of this misinformation results in you putting your focus into the wrong areas, with wrong emphasis and in a way not at all tailored for your body. As a result you fail over and over and end up thinking it is impossible to achieve the results you want. With these out of the way it clears the path for you to make progress. The three major lies are –
NOT TRUE – Transformations Are About Knowledge
Getting in shape or changing your body is NOT about knowledge. This is where the weight loss and health & fitness industry are stuck. They keep selling you plans with knowledge on it under the misconception that it is a lack of knowledge that prevents you being successful. Year after year of this you are now so confused that you do not know what to believe, this conveniently allows another person to sell you a solution with yet more knowledge.
FORGET knowledge, you know too much! What you are lacking is not facts or plans…. It is Skills!
A skill is an applied, practiced and rehearsed behaviour that you do in the real world. Almost everything around being successful in creating a new body is based on your skill levels NOT your knowledge.
You know you should go and exercise this evening (knowledge), but it takes something else to go out and actually do it (skill to get yourself to exercise). You know that you should stop eating that packet of biscuits (knowledge) but it takes a clever approach to avoid giving in to the craving (skills around eating). The characterization of a body transformation as being about knowledge instead of skills is a a problem for everyone involved.
You understand learning a skill, you would not pick up a guitar and expect to be able to play like a rock star within an hour. I could tell you how to drive a car in about 3 minutes but it takes many hours of practice until you can do it. It then takes many more hours to be able to do it on the roads under the pressure of a driving test.
NOT TRUE – Transformations Are About Effort & Motivation
All anyone mentions when it comes to getting in shape is how they wish they had more motivation, more willpower or could try a little bit harder. On the surface it appears this is preventing you from achieving results. However it is a lie.
Motivation does not vary as much as you would think between those who are successful towards their goals and those who are not. What separates people are their automatic behaviours (how they respond without thinking) and their skill levels (how many times they have practised a behaviour). It is more important to think of duration not effort or motivation.
It is duration and persistence that separates those who are successful not motivation and effort. If the weight loss industry talked about how you could sustain behaviours instead of how hard to go while on a plan there would better results but also a very different approach to doing it.
Do you need motivation to develop persistence? Yes and no, the traditional approach of motivation as promoted in the weight loss industry is not much help, you get energised and jump into action, this is great! However, you put all that energy into effort based actions, doing a hard exercise session, cutting out all bad foods, losing weight quickly etc. Taking this approach is discarding the role of duration. How long can you keep doing these behaviours for?
An approach on duration means any surge in motivation you would direct it into things that would significantly enhance your chances of longer term behaviour changes.
Instead of training really hard in a workout, you commit to trying five new types of exercise types over the next month. This increases your chances of finding some exercise you may enjoy and persist with. A better avenue than cutting out all bad foods would be learning to become a better chef. A seven day challenge to cooking a new healthy recipe every day would be more successful than going hard on a tuna and broccoli diet for a week.
It is no surprise that few people do this. You have been sold a plan on effort and the thought of doing that for anything more than a few days to weeks is a hard sell. However this is a lie, when you do things focused on duration it is much more fun than you thought. Almost all of the worst bits of getting in shape stem from the emphasis on effort.
NOT TRUE – Transformations Are The Same For Everyone
The difficulty of any transformation and the approach needed for you to change your body compared to another is a unique challenge. Yet the underlying lie that body transformations are effectively the same for everyone has not just taken over the industry and your thought processes, it has done it in such a way that you do not think that you believe it.
This is seen across the industry where everyone flocks to the guy or girl in great shape because they must be the right person to lead you to the promised land of great results. However, this thought process negates your whole personal history and crushes any individual considerations around your own body.
There are so many factors that can vary between you and the next person. One of the most obvious is simply the differences in current natural habits. To achieve your goal you need to do certain behaviours, if you are not doing them now then you need to develop them, however, if you already do them then you will not need to think about it at all.
You see this example all the time with personal trainers, if you exercise once a week if lucky and your trainer exercises every day without fail you are not in the same situation. You need a plan to improve your exercise consistency. If you follow their plan based on already liking exercise you will probably fail. A good personal trainer understands this, many do not.
This is why so many people who are trying to get in shape are following some form of a plan that professional body builders use. The methods they use have flooded the industry because they have the most muscle and least body fat. However, this has little to no application to 95% of people out there. If you drink yet I do not, your transformation plan will need to consider this factor. If you want to drop a dress size yet I want to be on the front of a fitness magazine the difficulty, dedication and duration needed for both of us is not the same.
Individuality stems not just from you changing your current habits to the necessary ones for success but also encompasses your prior history. How you used to act still will have an influence upon the changes you make today. If you used to be an athlete and did sport in your twenties you will be able to get back into a fitness routine quicker than if you have never done exercise at all in your life. In both scenarios you can achieve results but you will need a slightly different approach to get there. The same applies to food, drink and how you socialise. Doing something for second time is different to doing something for the first time. Neither is better or worse but rather it takes a different approach. All body transformations are not the same.
This is also true in the difficulty of a transformation. The more natural behaviours you need to develop the longer it will take, the bigger your goals are, the longer and more focus it will take. It is simply more difficulty for some people to get results over others due to biochemistry and a host of other factors. This means you cannot just follow some advice from some guy who happens to be in shape. You need a plan that covers what is blocking you from succeeding with the patience and the specificity to develop you over time.
In reality, few want to do this…. But then again… only a few succeed in changing their body.
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Photo – The Fundamental Lies of Body Transformations
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