Many people started this challenge with a bang, and achieved great things in the first month, and some have started well, then fallen off a bit, and now are bang on course to achieve big things of course. Whatever your situation, I don’t think it is realistic at all to expect you to be perfect all the time, that simply isn’t possible!
It’s always good to take the pressure off at times, and you will realise by now that 12 weeks is quite a long period of time to give your very best effort.
This is why I give everyone a 80% target on eating good natural food. I gave you a target of 8 out of 10 in each workout you do, because 10 out of 10 is highly unlikely each time.
If you manage to get these kinds of averages in, you’re going to be classed as working amongst the top percentage, and pretty much guaranteed to reach your goals in your programme in a relatively quick period of time.
Putting undue pressure on individuals to do well has never been a tactic I’ve considered successful. I remember in my teens, we had a captain in our cricket team who would berate you if you bowled slightly off the mark, or it wasn’t your day when you batted you would have a verbal outburst directed at you.
Hammering someone because they weren’t performing at their best proved to be a potentially damaging tactic to myself and destroyed my confidence.
I remember another captain years later who would always give me a reassuring pat on the back if I was having a bad day, and told me that he was sticking with me no matter what. The result? My game and confidence came back sooner than I thought, and that meant my performance was up to its normal standard very quickly and that reassuring pat on the back helped me an enormous amount, and put a spring back in my step.
All of us need someone to show confidence in us from time to time, and you have seen it on this site with some members seemingly be at all time low’s recovering to be at all time high’s in just over a week sometimes!
I tend to use the tried and tested method of showing great encouragement when someone is a bit down, and having a harder time than usual. I’m in the business of getting the very best out of people, and less is more sometimes!
So when you are looking to assess your progress so far, try and look at the big picture.
If you are getting it right most of the time, then there’s no problem and your condition will be improving naturally.
If your food and training is all over the place, and you’ve gone back to your old ways, then you need to reassess your priorities, and ask yourself if you really want to be in the best shape of your life, or not?
Answering this question honestly will help motivate you to take immediate action, and make you realise if you have put too much pressure on yourself, or too little even?
The focus should not only be on this 12 weeks, but creating the trends and patterns that will serve you well for the rest of your life.
Nobody’s perfect all the time, so if your lifestyle is healthier now than when you started, you are still making steady progress, then that’s perfectly acceptable to me and keep having confidence in your abilities, that is the vital element you always need!
