I’m in the process of writing a book and below is a brief snippet of one of the most important chapters. It focuses on your mindset and outlook when it comes to what and how you eat, your diet and your training. The first thing to mention is that I’m not advocating bad eating habits, being lazy or continually blowing the positive steps you are taking out of the water. What i am saying is that by being consistent over a long period you can gain some freedom to enjoy yourselves now and then. See what you think and I welcome your comments. It is slightly out of context as it is sliced out of a bigger chapter so I hope it still makes sense. If it doesn’t just tell me I’m a berk…

Consistency.

This is the single most important concept in the whole book. Remember I just said that you are not going “on” a diet, that what you are doing is changing your life. Well consistency lies at the heart of that. You need to be consistent in all that you do. I can picture you wincing as I say that. “urrgggh, that’s my big problem, I can’t be consistent, I can’t stick to things” you say. Wrong, wrong, wrong. As I keep saying your mindset is everything. Consistency makes things easy, consistency gives you freedom, consistency allows you to drink beer and have fun. How? Why?

Well as we already discussed this is not a diet. If you are on a diet and with a fixed timescale and rigid eating regime you feel locked into that. If you fall off the wagon for whatever reason you feel terrible, find it difficult to get started again and more often than not everything grinds to a halt and you go back to your old guilty habits.

This is different. This is the new you. This is not a 3 month plan, this is forever. What that means in real terms is that if you have a bad weekend (Stag or Hen do, big birthday celebrations etc), go on a 2 week holiday to Thailand and can’t resist the food, or always go for beers with the boys after football every couple of weeks…….so what. A few days, the odd night, even a week or two of being bad mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. 14 days or even 28 days in 365 days a year won’t cause too much damage in the overall long term process you are adopting. If you are being consistent in your new good habits over the weeks, months and all the following years then you can allow yourself to really enjoy the odd blow out. It won’t matter, its mathematics. If you are being good 80/85% of the time then the other 15/20% won’t harm you too much and not only that you can really enjoy yourself. Can you see? By being consistent and by aiming for the long term you actually give yourself the freedom to cut loose and misbehave now and then.

That’s why this concept is key and is so powerful. If you can really embrace that this is your new life and you are going to be totally consistent in adopting it, then it allows you to do what the title says. You CAN drink Beer AND get fit.

However a small word of warning. You can’t abuse this thought. Consistency is what it is. You MUST be consistent. Having a week on and a week off doesn’t count and definitely will not work. You need to be aiming for an absolute minimum of 70% good behavior and ideally 80% plus to see real and outstanding results.

Take Care,

John