“Guardrails” For Getting In Shape
On a dangerous highway, guardrails can be the difference between a small fender-bender and a death-plunge off the edge of a cliff. When trying to stick a diet and fitness plan, using small habit safeguards can be equally valuable at keeping you on course and avoiding unforeseen disaster.
Throughout most of my 20's and 30's I was quite overweight and unhappy with the way I looked and felt. I tried losing weight many times and changing my lifestyle many times to no avail. One thing which finally turned things around, allowing me to make progress, was to focus on the daily process which consisted on structure and habits instead of the final outcome.
That old cliche often directed towards various types of recovering addicts, "take it one day with a time", also applies to habit transformation and lifestyle change.
Here are a few automatic habit-redirections, or "guardrails", as I like to call them, term that I borrowed from the book Principles, by Ray Dalio; which can help keep you on track towards your goal.
1. Intermittent fasting
Having dietary structure removes a lot of small decision-making from your day, allowing you to focus on more important decisions, like bill-payments and business meetings; while putting your essential habits such as what to eat for lunch, on auto-pilot.
Many people seem to have an easier time dieting on an intermittent fasting regime. In short, this consists of a "fasting window", normally a period of 14-20 hours, followed by a "feeding window", a period 4-10 hours in length, when you consume between 1-3 meals that make up your entire day of eating. This sounds like a long time without eating, but if you count the 8-10 hours between dinner and the time you wake up, it can be as easy as skipping breakfast and pushing your first meal to noon.
The major advantage of the approach is that once your hunger hormones become adapted to that feeding schedule (which on-average can take about a week), you can enjoy larger, more satisfying meals and it also provides greater flexibility for allowing some less-filling "fun-foods" into your daily calorie budget.
There is a long-running myth in the health and fitness industry that you need to eat every few hours in order order to “stoke your metabolism” but this is not supported by science. How many total calories you eat matters far more than how often you eat, so it you prefer to have two 1000 calorie meals instead of five 400 calorie meals across a 24-hour period then intermittent fasting might be worth considering, since a structured meal-timing plan can be really useful for controlling how much total food you eat.
With all that being said, this approach is not for everybody. Especially people with a history of disordered eating and a tendency to binge and restrict.
2. Control your environment
Have you ever started off the day, highly-motivated while convincing yourself "today I'm sticking to my diet plan", only to find yourself face-diving into a pint of Ben & Jerry's by 9pm like a stoned teenager with a severe case of the munchies
Trust me, you aren't alone. When temptation is in plain sight and calling out to you in your moment of weakness (like after a long stressful day at work), you're far more likely to give in.
Simple rule: If you can see it, you’ll want to eat it.
Instead of keeping high-calorie snack foods like cookies and potato chips on your kitchen counter, keep them out of sight in a hard-to-reach place like the back of a top shelf in your cupboard so they aren’t constantly calling out at you to eat them. Instead, keep healthier snack options like a bowl of fruit in plain sight on your kitchen counter and you’ll be far more likely to opt for the healthier option. Having a bowl of chopped up veggies in the fridge makes it a easier, faster, and less daunting to cook a healthy, nutritious meal after a long, stressful day.
Pro tip : completely removing all tempting junk food from your fridge and cupboards is far easier, and way less stressful, than relying on willpower (which becomes weaker as the day progresses and life throws small things at you). Make it so that if you want to indulge once in a while, you're forced to leave the house and buy that food item in a single-serving size. It also provides you with enough time to decide if giving in to a craving is really worth it.
3. Plant habit triggers all around you
Planting small reminders to complete new habits around your environment will more likely make you do what needs to get done, amid the distractions and unforeseen events that can turn even the most well-planned day upside-down.
Pro Tip: Leave your packed gym bag in front of your door every evening. This forces you to literally, trip over it on your way out of house. It also removes your reliance on willpower and motivation to do it early on a hectic morning, when you're probably more concerned about making it to work on time. Another idea would be to always have a clean change of gym clothes, sneakers and a few of pieces of fruit in your car trunk, so you can go straight to the gym on your way home from work, instead of allowing yourself the chance to sit on the couch, get lazy, and self-justify skipping your workout. Joining a gym that’s on your route to and from work is also very helpful since it becomes harder to make excuses to skip your workouts.
4. Top-down planning
Top down, or zero-sum nutritional planning means that at the start of your day or week, every calorie in your diet is planned ahead and accounted for. While some people do well playing it by ear, using a more flexible diet plan, going through a period of assembling and executing a plan can be a valuable educational tool and help to better keep you on track, especially when you're a beginner and just learning how to structure your diet.
With top-down exercise planning, every gym session is planned and scheduled ahead of time, just like any medical or dental appointment, meaning that you block out that time on your calendar and make it a priority. That removes your dependence on motivation. When you have a doctor's appointment you don't talk yourself out of going because you're "not motivated”. Along with that, each time you walk into the gym you should have a clear plan for that session. If you're not sure how to put a training together, you can hire a personal trainer or a good coach to design one for you.
5. Seek social accountability
A while back I ran a Tough Mudder race, and for everyone else that has done one you'll know what I'm talking about when I tell you it's literally impossible to scale some of those obstacles like the high walls, without the help of others.
On a health and fitness journey, having a team that gives you a supportive boost over the many hurdles you'll encounter is also really valuable, and for some, the difference between failure and success.
Share your goals with as many other people as possible, including friends, family, co-workers, etc. Post your goal, along with the deadline, and why it's important to you, on social media. Join or create a Facebook group for people with similar goals.
Being accountable to others can make a huge difference in how well you stick to a plan.
6. Protein first
This one is hit or miss, depending on the person, but drinking a whey or casein shake before, or with your meal, might help you get fuller on much less food (and fewer calories) than you would otherwise consume.
After all, protein is the most satiating macronutrient and the water in the shake takes up plenty of volume in your stomach, stretching it out and proving added satiety.
You can also just get into the habit of drinking a full glass of water before each meal, both to prevent you from overeating and to eliminate the chances that you're perceiving thirst as hunger.
Summing it all up
I’m a big proponent of focusing on the daily process rather than the final outcome. Fitness attainment is not an A-to-B journey, it’s an ongoing, living and breathing process. In my experience, people who teach themselves to automate certain behaviors are the ones who tend to succeed at getting the best results.
I recommend trying out a few of these habit-steering “guardrails” in your daily life and seeing which ones help most at keeping you on track towards your goals. I would also love to hear from you hear if you found this helpful (or not).