Articles

Changing Attitudes, Beliefs, and Ideas

In my years of experience, I will honestly tell you that I have seen clients come and go over time. Since being an owner/trainer at Fitness Together, this is no less true. What I have discovered as to why you may not succeed with our program is your attitude, beliefs, and ideas. With time and conviction, my staff and I have become more proficient in helping people change their attitudes, beliefs, and ideas of what it takes to have life long success toward weight loss, fitness, and health.

That does not mean that we are always successful in changing your attitude, beliefs, or ideas. What it is does mean is that we recognize the importance of those things and the impact that it will have own your own success. Sometimes, we cannot successfully change one's thoughts no matter how hard we try.

In case your wondering as to what thoughts I am talking about, let me expand. You may say things like:

• I don't need to write down what I am eating. I'm eating well anyway.
• Maybe I can skip cardio today and I'll just make up for it tomorrow.
• I'm going to go back on (fill in the blank) diet.
• I'm tired. I think I'm just going to go cancel and rest.
• I'm going to go on a run instead of coming in to use my training session.
• "Do I have to do that? I want to do something else."

Have you ever had these thoughts? If you're human, I'm sure you have. The difference is whether you let them actually affect you. You can still be successful at your weight loss and fitness goals, if you actually implement what works and give it time.

When I ask successful clients, "why do you think things worked so well?" These are some actual responses I get:

• "Kelly, I simply did what you guys told me to do and did it."
• "Well, I came in and lifted weight three times per week, did my cardio within a certain heart rate and followed your guidelines on how to eat."
• "I scheduled my time to come in and adhered to all of your advice. The accountability kept me in check."
• "Your program instilled patience and educated me on the long-term goals. Weight wasn't so much a factor anymore. I was more concerned about being fit and healthy."

If you are a client of FT, I direct this message to you to remind you that trust is needed in order to ultimately reach your goals. Whether you use the services of FT or not, you will always have to incorporate the basic components of physical wellness which are resistance training, cardiovascular exercise, and nutrition. In order to be more successful at reaching your goals and completing the tasks of these components, you must write things down to hold yourself accountable. By the way, none of what I said is an opinion. It has been proven, time and time again through studies. In other words, it's scientific fact, not anecdotal evidence. Ultimately, you may have to change the way you think in order to reach your goals, no matter where you decide to get it done.

Client or not, maybe you just don't believe in this eating right and exercise stuff. Conventional ideology is to go on a diet (starve yourself), just go run it off, using certain exercise contraptions will get you in shape, or just go get a pill. You fear exercise will "bulk" you up and make you "fatter." Yet, this defies all the laws of thermodynamics.

To end, my message is this- Only you can change your conventional ideas, attitudes, and beliefs. Only you can allow others that know (not quick fix quacks) what they are talking about and practice what they preach help you change those things. Only you have the ability to choose what direction you want to go. You can pay the money, read the books, and listen to what is being said, and so on. However, only you can incorporate it. The choice IS yours. The good news is, you have the capability to make changes. Even better, is when you begin to make changes in one area of your life, other changes become easier to make.