I took a poetry workshop class in my senior year of college. Each week, two different students submitted a piece of work for the class to critique, and by the end of the semester, we submitted a collection of poetry for the final grade.*

This is what I look like when I've procrastinated. Yet again. 

The class cemented what had become my growing suspicion that I was terrible at poetry. One of my submissions for the class included these brilliant stanzas:

The sun is shining, the grass is green
Last time I checked I still had a spleen
I am happy.

I saw two lovers kiss on my way to class
A kid on school bus flashed me his ass
I am happy.

A fellow classmate suggested that this poem was exactly why people didn’t write about happiness. 

I grew so uncomfortable with the class that I put off the assignments at every opportunity. By the time my portfolio submission was due, I had little to work with, and no cover poem. So I opted for honesty and wrote the following piece:

Procrastinating Poet

Meant to write a poem. 
But the weather hasn’t been
quite
right
for writing poetry. 

I thought it was witty and maybe a tad clever, but my professor saw it for what it really was. A shoddy last-minute effort at my portfolio. She was kind to give me a B. 

Willpower and procrastination

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spend a lot of time reading about willpower - about decision fatigue and ego depletion and how willpower is a finite resource. We know that making a ton of decisions and resisting urges throughout the day can directly impact our self-control by the end of the day. So what is the solution to making better and healthier decisions when your willpower is depleted?

Here is a quote from the book I've been referencing (Willpower):

“Successful people don’t use their willpower as a last ditch defense to stop themselves from disaster, at least not as a regular strategy.” 

The writers of the book suggest that folks who use their self-control to avoid a crisis as opposed to surviving a crisis, have more success (defining success is another matter altogether). Taking your car to the mechanic for regular maintenance before it breaks down, seeing the dentist before the toothache, giving yourself enough time to finish a project - are all examples of playing offense instead of defense. 

When I got to this part of the book, I laughed out loud. Mostly because I'm on defense so often it's almost absurd.  

I’m such a procrastinator that years ago when I wrote a weekly newspaper column for the local paper in Pennsylvania, I titled the column “At the Last Minute.”

The column was due every Monday and each week I’d start an idea on Thursday, only to leave it unfinished until Monday night when I'd bang my head against a wall wondering how I could possibly have put off my column until the last minute, yet again. 

My chronic procrastination is a constant source of stress and depletes much of my willpower throughout the day.

So what to do? Well, the authors of the book make these suggestions to help me, and you, play offense instead of defense. 

1. Know your limits

Willpower is a limited resource and it’s depleted and used in more ways than we realize throughout the day. Walking past your co-worker's candy dish 25 times throughout the day and never indulging - dealing with computer or technology issues- going to the gym when you don’t want to - getting out of bed when your body needs more sleep - these all affect your willpower. Recognizing that you are going to be out of willpower by the time you go out with friends for dinner that night might help you better prepare to make a nutrition choice that is on par with your goals. (One suggestion in these situations is to order first, so as not to be influenced by the decisions of those around you.)

2. Make a to-do-list

This is one habit I've always done, mostly in an effort to brain dump and clear my head. When I don't make a list to get things out of my mind and onto a piece of paper, you can find me pacing the gym and muttering things under my breath. The gym is a stimulating environment, and I use a lot of willpower to just focus. Making a list helps me to get my tasks on paper and out of my mind, freeing up my unconscious, at least a little bit. 

3. Don't forget the basics 

As it turns out, our unconscious is also affected by subtle cues such as a clean desk and a made bed.** Although we might not care about whether our bed is made or the desk is clean, these environmental cues subtly influence your brain and your behavior, making it less of a strain to maintain self-discipline. 

4. Pick your battles

We can't control or predict the stresses in our life - the loss of a job - a breakup - a sick family member, but we can use the calm periods to play offense. We can use the less crazy times in our lives to make new changes, to start a new exercise program or make some nutrition changes or learn how to macrame. Because macrame is fun. I think.

If you are dealing with a major job change, move, or other significant life event, now is not that time to make big changes. 

5. The nothing alternative

I've used this strategy quite a bit in recent weeks, especially with writing. When I commit an hour to writing, I don't allow myself to do anything else with that hour. I'm allowed to not write - I can pace the room, pet my dog, scream at him in horror for eating a cricket - but I'm not allowed to do anything else - like check social media or email or Amazon.

I love the authors' suggestion of playing offense, even though it's not something I always do very well. We often try to make a ton of changes at once - recently I was trying to train for a marathon, write a page per day, while we packed up and moved our house. 

Eventually, I had to acknowledge that packing up and moving the house was too much of a strain to add the other pieces, and so I let them go for a few weeks. Now that we're moved, I've got more space in my life to commit myself to writing one page a day.  

All of these above recommendations are habit-based. The focus is not on trying a new diet or new exercise program, but in making a habit change to nutrition or exercise. You focus on one habit per week or per month to help keep the process less overwhelming.  

As the authors suggest, the most lasting technique for conserving willpower is building a habit. 

Learning to plan ahead, whether that's stocking your refrigerator with healthy foods, removing the tempting food from your house, or putting your gym bag on your front seat in the morning on your way to work, can help you conserve willpower and make the changes you want to make.

And sometimes you're going to come up short. Be kind to yourself in those moments though, ok?

* It's also fair to admit that the only time I was drunk before noon was the day that my friend and I had our poems presented for criticism at the workshop. 

** Right now my partner Sheila is reading this and wondering whether or not I'll adopt these habits...stay tuned...

Over the weekend, as I watched my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates tank in the waining days of July, I decided to shift my focus to making a pie chart about fat loss.

Yes, the Pirates played that poorly. 

But I also think that journey to fitness and fat loss can be so overwhelming and confusing, that there is merit to keeping the focus as simple as possible. 

20% Training

In terms of flat out fat loss, some might argue that 20% is a high number. It doesn’t matter what avenue you choose when you begin training. It could be Crossfit, Insanity, yoga, or running. Where we tend to get lost is wondering which method is going to burn the most calories and get us the best results. It’s so easy to hyper focus on the method of training that you can almost paralyze yourself with indecision about which approach is right.

There's a lot of ways to break down fitness. This is just one way to look at it. 

The best approach is the one with which you can build the most consistency. Yes, I'm a fan of strength training for all of the many benefits (increased bone density, muscle mass and independence to name a few), but you need to find one you and enjoy and stick with it. Which brings me to my next slice of pie. 

10% Patience

This number also might be a little low. Patience is the part of the process where you stay the course. Choose one method of training and stick to it. Choose one nutrition approach and stick to it. It’s tempting, even for fitness professionals, to jump from program to program when someone else releases a new product or we find something new. It's tempting for non-fitness professionals when you start a new bootcamp program and then find out a friend lost 50 pounds doing insanity and another lost 30 pounds by joining the new gym down the street. The next thing you know, you've jumped to so many different programs that nothing has worked. 

Choose an approach - choose a gym, choose a coach to work with, choose a nutrition approach and stick with it for six months. 

30% Nutrition

You’ve heard this before and you’ll hear it again - you can’t out-train a bad diet. It doesn’t matter if you burn 1,000 calories in a workout, fat loss won't happen if you aren't keeping your eating habits in check. Nutrition is so important that you don’t even need to train to lose weight. If you are on point with your nutrition, and on point is different for everyone, then you will lose weight regardless of what you do in the gym. 

40% Kindness to yourself

I think I need to be clear about something here:

Kindness to yourself is not apathy. It’s not a free pass to say I’ll eat what I want, drink what I want, and throw in the towel on this whole process because it’s just not working anyway.

That’s apathy and I can promise you from experience, that’s a dangerous place to be. (Click here for a post on apathy.)

Kindness is caring enough about yourself to make the best choices for you on a given day. Kindness is where you take into account your stress level, mood, and life demands and make the decision, especially in regards to the intensity of your workout, that is best for you.

Some days your body might feel so wrecked by a lack of sleep and life stress that you need to make careful choices about your self-care. Maybe it's a nap, maybe it's a massage, maybe it's 30 minutes in a Starbucks with your headphones on and a good book. Maybe it is a kick ass workout. You need to be the judge of that. 

Kindness is most certainly not beating yourself up more when life is already taking its punches at you. Because beating yourself up for what you did or didn't do the day before serves you no purpose. 

There are a number of different pieces to figuring out which approach to fitness and fat loss is best for you. But I firmly believe that if you focus on nutrition, are patient with your approach, self-aware of your own needs and kind to yourself about those needs, and do some type of training, good things will happen for you.

And that is my hope for you. 

I was given a t-shirt two weeks ago that said:

Stop Exercising. Start Training.

I don’t often agree with slogans on Nike t-shirts. With the exception of the Bo Knows series from the 90’s. I was always pretty sure that Bo knew everything.

Chasing a chicken to help you beat Apollo Creed is a version of training. 

Are you exercising? Or are you training? And what’s the difference? And why do I ask so many questions?

Good question. 

Before we talk about exercise or training, let's start with physical activity, which is described by the Center for Disease control as any activity that gets your body moving. Also according to the CDC, adults need at least two and a half hours every week of physical activity. So doing things like brisk walking everyday (to understand what brisk walking means, check out an earlier post I wrote here), hitting your Fitbit step goals, playing with your kids and grandkids - this is physical activity. 

If you are sedentary in your job then finding ways to be physically active after work and on weekends (or even during the workday with walking meetings or walks on lunch breaks) is an important place to start. But it's just that - a starting point. 

The next step is to add some type of exercise in to your weekly routine. 

Exercise is a physical activity performed for the effect that it produces today - right now. Mark Rippetoe describes it as “punching the physical clock.” When I take my basset hound out for a walk, we’re exercising. Or, lying on the sidewalk because it’s hot and he protests and then I carry him back to the house. So I’m exercising. As a kid, I went outside and threw a ball off of the wall over and over again. My adorable parents go to their local gym three times per week and use the elliptical and weight machines and bands. 

When you start to exercise with a particular performance goal in mind, your physical activity transforms from exercise to training. This is why we train for a 5K or a marathon - we train for a power lifting meet - we train to catch a chicken because it will help us defeat Apollo Creed....

Last night at the gym, I had a long conversation with a client who’s been with us for over a year. She’s lost a lot of weight, kept it off, and is starting to get antsy. I would argue that she has outgrown exercise - now she’s ready to train. She likes the idea of taking her fitness to the next level and is bored with exercise for the sake of exercise. She has built a strong base and is ready for more. That more might be a mud run or an obstacle race - it might be a push/pull meet (powerlifting meets that have only a bench and deadlift, no squat), or maybe running a 5K or 10K.

She doesn't have to sign up for an event like a run or power lifting meet to start training though. She might start training for a 1.5 times bodyweight deadlift. Once she sets a performance goal and gears her workouts towards hitting that goal, she is now training.

There is no one right place to be, depending on where you are in your personal journey. Physical activity might be the goal - and that’s ok - we all need to start somewhere. But if you have been exercising for a long time - going to the gym three times per week and riding the recumbent bike while watching t.v. and are frustrated that you aren't seeing any changes in terms of fat loss, then it perhaps it's time to stop just exercising and start training with a purpose.