Don't Let These Hurdles Stop You

Once you have set your fitness goals and a game plan on how to reach them, you must now walk the talk. A lot of people are very good at setting goals, the number of people that actually reach them in the desired time frame is much smaller.

Here are some typical hurdles and how to overcome them.

1. Lack of patience:

I like to believe we all know what realistic goals are. After 5 years as a trainer, I have rarely heard someone set unrealistic goals.

What I have seen over and over is people getting impatient and caving into bad habits to soon. If your goal is to look a certain way, whether it’s putting on muscle or loosing unwanted body fat, it will take you AT LEAST 3 weeks to start noticing a difference. You may feel different sooner, but the physical aspect takes a bit longer.

And when you do see those difference, that is not a cue to relax the diet and training. It's a cue that you are doing everything right, so keep going that way.

2. Your plan is too strict:

Going on a super restrictive diet is counter productive yet a lot of people do it. Yes it yields some results, but on the long haul it is not good at all. A lot of people on these types of very intense regimens will see results as an excuse to relax their diet and training “just for a week”.

This usually leads to over eating, a brutal stop in working out because they need to “give their body a break after working so much” and eventually they end up right where they started, prompting them to start the cycle again.

The right plan for you is one that is manageable on the long term. It should allow you to enjoy occasional cheats and have enough rest days.

3. You aren’t honest with yourself:

I have had many people who tell me they are doing everything properly for weeks, even months yet nothing changes. Unless you have a medical condition, this should prompt you to ask yourself if you are in fact doing everything you say.

The simplest way to do so is to keep a food/training diary just for two weeks. Two weeks is enough to get a good idea of what’s going on.

A lot of times I notice a big difference between what people tell me and what’s on their training diary.