Why being perfect with your training & nutrition isn't a disaster..

I hope you have had a cracking start to 2011.

If you have set yourself some health, fitness or weight loss goals for this year I hope you are well on your way to achieving them.

If you have had a few slip-ups don’t be discouraged and try to remember that this is all part of the process.

In all of the time I have been doing this I don’t think I have ever come across anyone who followed the plan perfectly 100% of the time and yet time after time the results have been amazing.

Simply put I don’t expect 100% adherence and neither should you, whatever plan you are following.

A good rule of thumb is to aim for 90% and give yourself permission to slack off 10% of the time for your sanity and the sanity of the people around you J

Everyone has their own challenges when it comes to following a healthy lifestyle; for some it is the training required, for others it is the nutrition.

Allowing yourself some down time goes a long way towards extending the longevity of your focus.

It helps do away with our arch-enemy, the all or nothing attitude.

If we look at the 90% rule for a healthy lifestyle what does this mean?

It means that we can miss one in every 10 workouts without doing a lot of damage to our end result.

If we are eating 6 meals a day, 7 days a week this means we are sitting on around 40 meals per week – the 10% rule means we can eat treat foods (in moderation) 4 times a week and still get where we want to go as far as our goals go.

Expecting perfection is a recipe for disaster because it is rarely attainable.

Building some downtime into your healthy lifestyle means no more starting again on Monday, no more all or nothing.

It means missing the odd workout or having the odd treat food doesn’t mean you failed miserably, it simply means you are human J

What you do the majority of the time is what counts rather than the odd slip up.

EXERCISE

Hopefully you have kept a food and exercise log since the beginning of the year so you have a record of what you ate along with your training sessions.

Count the meals you ate over the course of each week and then circle the meals that don’t align with your goals.

If you are sitting on 10% or above you are doing well. If you aren’t then you know what you need to do from here.

Do the same thing with your training – on average we should be looking at doing 3 cardio & 3 resistance workouts each week.

How many sessions did you plan and how many did you miss?

Again; if you are at 10% or above well done and if not you know what you need to do.

Whatever the outcome this is just information; you can’t go back and undo the past so use the information to help you plan the following weeks and months.

Use the 10% rule (5% if you are super disciplined) and enjoy that 10% when the time comes because you earned it!