How to turn challenges into success?
“Lose 5 kilos in 30 days!” “Detox your body with juice and start your metabolism in 9 days!”
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I understand your excitement, who wouldn’t want such fast results? These are promises you see often and you might want to think if that would be the right solution for you because your friend did it also and got even great results.
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It is not a bad thing to try something and get started as ultimately results will give you motivation to keep going.
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As a coach it is painful to see “The Challenge Cycle”: First you are excited to get started – it follows up period of restrictive eating – once you complete “The Challenge” you have short time success – After you return to normal and end up where you started. If not worse.
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How to turn challenges into success?
Even I am not huge friend of quick fix Challenges, it might be an interesting option to start your journey. In this article I will show you 5 ways how to change things and turn challenges for long term success and sustainable change.
5 Strategies wow to turn challenges into success?
Strategy 1: Celebrate your success.
If you are able to start something new and stick to it for a certain period, there is a hope for long term success. First step is to take action and that you have done. Positive attitude is everything.
Strategy 2: Understanding the real reasons why you are doing this.
Ask yourself:
How diet Challenges worked for you in the past?
Was it going too slow and you ended up quitting and gained weight again?
Why you are doing this Challenge?
What do you hope to get out of it?
Why is that important to you?
And why is THAT important to you?
Turn Challenges into success
Strategy 3: Create a plan.
All short term Challenges are usually all in or nothing. These challenges are not meant to last. Or are you starting to Detox and expect that you are drinking juice the rest of your life?
You need to have a plan. Behavior based plan. (Lose 5 kg is an outcome, not behavior!)
Here are some examples of how you can start doing your plan:
- Plan a social activity once or twice a week that is not around food and drink. It is underrated strategy and if you look your weekly schedule, can you say that you have it in place?
- Take 15 minutes each day to walk, stretch or do some light exercises. It can be a start new daily habit.
- If you are struggling with emotional eating, start writing down your feelings when these urges occur. Are you sad? Bored? Stressed? You start to learn that “hunger is not an emergency”. It is going away if you wait 20 minutes and if not, you can always eat later.
Strategy 4: Use “failures” as feedback
Imagine you made yourself a 30 day Challenge to not eat something. If you wanted to be without sweets but there was that birthday party where you “failed” and ate cake.
Ask yourself: What led to your decision to eat cake? Was it social pressure? Did you skip breakfast and were hungry? Or you didn’t prepare lunch?
If you feel like you have failed and now it doesn’t matter anymore. Imagine how you would treat your best friend in a similar situation. Your loved one is feeling guilty doing something not perfectly, would you advise her to give up after one “failure” or would you courage to keep going?
Be honest with yourself. What was going on when “failure” happened? Were you stressed? Did you feel that you “deserved” that food? Or you just wanted to eat food you love?
Use “failure” as feedback. Maybe you could prepare your lunch better that you make more optimal food choices next time. Maybe trying to eliminate completely foods you love is not the best idea. Would better goal be to eat less and really enjoy the foods you love?
Strategy 5: Results will tell you what is worth keep going
Once you have completed the challenge, you got most likely results you love. Naturally you would like to keep these results but that rarely happens.
Problem with thinking all-in or nothing attitude. Either you are doing everything you possibly can for your health or you are doing nothing at all and slowly going back to your old habits.
Truth is that you don’t have to keep all habits you practiced during the challenge – just the ones that worked for you. Even if you are not able to keep them all the time, it is a huge improvement to to them almost all the time.
Because the middle ground is usually where all the magic happens and you get life lasting results.
For example you were doing challenge to not drink alcohol and you have discovered that you do feel and sleep a lot better without it. But you miss to have a few drinks with your partner.
The middle ground would be to limit your alcohol-intake to just one or two nights a week.
I love to use sentence something is always better than nothing. When you aim to do always something, not perfectly but better that you would normally do, you are on your way to greatness.
Here some idea from my Instragram account. Make sure you follow me there 😉
How to turn challenges into success: Final words:
You might still want to do short-term challenges and with these strategies you can turn them into long term success. They are always better than nothing and can be really helpful. Once your goal is long term success, make sure that you have the right mindset and remember that without the right support it is really hard. If you have the right support around you, use it to be stronger on bad days. If you have ever considered to hire a professional support, Online Coaching could be the last piece in a puzzle what you need. With my Online Coaching you get personalized workout program designed to your goals, schedule and equipment you have. You have support on all questions you have on your way and when someone is controlling you, you will stay on track.
If you are interested to know more, write me an email to turo.virta@hotmail.com or fill out contact formula at https://personaltrainerturo.it/online-training-english/ and I will contact you.
