I fundamentally believe the most important key to success in a weight loss / fitness / health journey is the ability to focus on process over perfection. If you have a good process that you trust and you follow, all will work out.
That got me thinking - what really is my process and how do I know if I’m following it? So I decided to physically write down what my process is and track it. Wanted to share it here in case it can be helpful to others. Here’s how I did it.
90-day commitment. I don’t have a long-term weight or fitness goal. My process is to break it down into 90-day windows and then reevaluate. Things change so trying to be specific about something a year away seems crazy to me. Plus, 90-days just feels manageable. I can do anything for 90-days.
Objective. Make it clear, measurable, achievable and something that would make you feel good if you accomplished it. You’ll see mine was to drop 5% of my body weight. I ended up dropping 10% after 90 days. I probably low-balled my goal too much but since this was my first time trying this system, it was important to me that I set myself up for success.
Process: I knew I could achieve my objective if I did 3 things: worked the strong lifts program (my fitness step), keep active calories (measure by Apple watch) elevated, and did intermittent fasting at a deficit.
Measures: With a process in place, it is time to create measures so you can know how well you’re following. I picked 5:
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Do Stronglifts 3x per week. I want to be fit when I lose weight. Plus if I do this, half the battle for #2 is taken care of. Set yourself up for success.
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Go above 7000 active calories per week. This was my constant reminder to stay active in some way. If faced with a choice of walking half a mile or taking the bus, this one encouraged me to walk. Also fully aware that tracking calories burned is basically a crap shoot so while I didn’t use this number to factor into my weight loss, I did treat it as a bit of a buffer for any imprecision in how I tracked calories from food. Plus, it was about trusting the process - if I was more active, I trusted the results would be good.
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Eat less than 14000 calories per week. It is easy to get hung up on daily calories. I found it far better to look at this on a weekly timeframe. One day where you go out with friends or just really need that cheese burger? It probably has no impact if you’re doing what you need to do on the other days. With a weekly mindset, there are no cheat days and I never denied myself anything I really wanted.
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Eat out less than 4x per week. This one served two purposes. It made me focus on meal planning. If I made my lunch for the week on Sunday and planned out dinners, this one became easy. When I meal plan, the calories in becomes super easy. It was all about setting myself up for success. Plus, I wanted to save some money and this really helps.
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Average 7 hours of sleep per night. I think it is important to have a mental goal as well as physical ones. Sleep is so important to achieving all of those other things. Plus, it felt like a gift I was giving to myself.
Learnings: I loved tracking things this way. This notebook sits on my coffee table so I see it constantly. The process (and accountability) is always top of mind for me. Putting a check mark down is super satisfying and seeing a bunch of them start to show up makes you feel like you can do anything.
I also loved the 90-day window. Now is a perfect time to reassess goals and the process needed to get there.
Not hitting the mark on something did not equal failure. The process wasn’t to be perfect - it was to focus on these steps each week. If I failed to achieve something one week, it had no bearing on what I did the next. In week 10, I had friends in town. I consciously took a break from the gym. We went out to eat a lot. That was ok - I had been really successful up until that point and I knew the following week, I’d be back to normal. In the end, I knew if I had way more checks than Xs, I would succeed.
That being said, I probably wasn’t ambitious enough. As you can see, there wasn’t a lot of failure. That was partly by design - like I said, on my first time I really wanted to set myself up for success. The working out and active energy goals really didn’t require much effort beyond the discipline to go to the gym in the morning. The meal prep required some commitment and effort but once I did that, the calories in basically took care of themselves. I actually ended up averaging around 12,000 per week.
Reward yourself. Since I hit 80% success, I will be rewarding myself with something nice that will be a constant reminder of success.
Now it is time for the next 90 days. I think my objectives and process will stay largely the same, but the specific targets will be a bit more ambitious based on what I learned from this first 90 days. I think I will add another “mental” target - something like a weekly reading target that will also benefit me in some important ways and force me to make choices like scrolling less.
Anyone else have a similar way to manage their journey? Would love to learn from others.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/1bs54cg/process_over_perfection/
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