It’s exciting to be coming into the first two-week checkpoint for our newest crop of bootcampers. If you haven’t yet heard the refrain, “It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint,” then now you have!
Short-term versus long-term thinking works better for different personality types. While healthy living doesn’t have a 56-day time limit on it, very few of us can labor day after day with only the promise of lower cholesterol and blood pressure that will decrease our likelihoods of stroke and heart attack one day a few decades down the line. That’s nurse thinking and even I can’t lean on that for everyday motivation.
This is why we encourage you to have goals as well as a larger overarching WHY. You can want to rock your high school reunion next month, and also be healthy to play with your still-imaginary grandchildren, but it’s getting into that smokin’ hot dress next week that is going to have the greater likelihood of influencing doughnut refusal TODAY. Remember that having very specific goals actually has the power to make our wellness journey seem easier.
Consider also that we’re human and need to experience some immediate gratification from our actions.
There are two major contributors to health - exercise and dietary intake. What are the short term benefits for you of making good choices in each?
Exercise is something we often think about as paying off later, but rarely (at least after week one!) do we leave a class worse off than we arrived. How we feel - the sense of accomplishment, the endorphins, and the burst of energy - these are all proof that movement can be its OWN reward. When you do your first full push up, or pull up, or burpee, or box jump, the act of overcoming a mental barrier and pushing our preconceived physical limits is a rush that’s almost enough to make you understand why anyone would run 26 miles. ALMOST.
As bootcampers approach their first free day off-plan, they will soon understand that clean eating is also its own reward in the here and now, but that’s something that only the ‘carb coma’ can truly teach! Enjoy yourselves, but just take careful note of your energy level at weigh-in versus how you feel after a day of eating ‘the old way’ AND remember :).
All the best,
Marcey
Coach Marcey Tidwell started as a client with NGPT in January 2011. Joining the team as an accountability coach, she wears many hats in assisting the Meltdown Nation! Nurse Marcey by day, she brings a wealth of knowledge the program! She hates burpees but loves that her triceps don’t wiggle.
