How to stick to a diet or fitness plan

Do you easily stick with your nutrition plan or do you give in to unplanned cheating and frequent excesses? Do you have near-perfect gym attendance or do you often skip workouts? When you do workout, are your sessions a 10 out of 10, or do you have a lot of 6's and 7's (or lower)? Have you ever weighed the results of people missed or sub-par workouts?

Did you ever add up the calories from all individual indulgences or see how one weekend can erase an overall week of work? Here’s a big question to ponder: What would happen to your consequences – the increased extent of fat you would burn, the muscle you would build, the strength you would gain - if you finally mastered this whole "fitness motivation" thing and at last STUCK WITH YOUR PROGRAM without falling off the wagon again...

There are countless factors that increase motivation, but I experience a strong opinion in regards to what I believe is the most significant cog of alll – the final key to sticking in on it, all the way to a full-fledged physique transformation.

After 20 years of using this method, I’m a believer

I’ve used this motivational force with deed for many years. I’ve always taken it monumentally and built it into all my training and coaching programs. Here are some of the ways:

When my clients knew they were being given to be weighed and measured most any week, they worked harder during the week in anticipation of the big Monday... weigh-in day!

I also created a 12 week progress chart that kept in mind person weight, skinfolds, body fat percentage, lean person mass, fat body mass, waist measurement, and the change in each measurement from week to week. Naturally, of course, we took "before" photographs as well.

My local coaching clients met in on me in past customer at which properties would step on the scale and I took their body fat measurement with calipers. We recorded these results on paper and next took a look at the progress and talked about the results. Based on results, we will decide whether any adjustments needed to be made and we set new goals for the following week... in writing. We wrote low the goal on a imitate of the progress chart in red ink – it was filled-in in advance as if it got already achieved. My clients could post this chart with the possible outcome up to date and the weekly objective on their refrigerator at which they would experience to seem at it at least few times a day. Many of them as well wrote a new intention card any week providing such a 12 week goal and such a 1 week aspiration written on it.

For my web or phone clients, every Monday morning, my clients would email or fax me their progress chart and sometimes even their general eating and training diary for the previous 7 days. If they appreciated I was going to be becoming through their journal like a professor at a head out paper, I knew they would be sticking with the service better. The progress chart was had sacred. Seeing those levels on paper was incredibly enlightening due to the way you could see progress in a linear fashion over time. Everything became tangible too. You would hold the piece of paper. It was your report card. It was real. Did you constantly notice how if you had straight A’s on a report card it just drove you mad if you had a good deal a single B on it? Well, I always noticed how my clientele never wanted to have a "blemish" on this weekly progress chart. They something like always worked harder knowing such a measuring, charting and tracking was going to happen. On the occasions that people cancelled a session, I always probed into the reason why. Some were legit, a good number of were excuses, but one thing I continually noticed is that if someone had a bad week, properties wanted to "dodge me" and cancel the weekly measure & weigh-in meeting. Like I said, they hated having a blemish on that chart or a great deal worse, facing this coach in person without having results to show for the week’s efforts. This is why I liked to continue in touch with them by phone and email throughout the week and confirm my appointments in advance. This keeping tabs on them down cancellations and kept them motivated and on track during the week. Simple motivational concepts, yes, but the results were amazing and the power behind these kinds of psychological principles is undeniable.

If you haven’t guessed already, the word for such motivational press I’ve been describing - the weighing, measuring, tracking, keeping tabs and so on - is of course, ACCOUNTABILITY.

This maybe resonates in you because you ought to remember times when you put accountability to action in your life and you were highly successful and produced results at a high level.

Now, I have two questions:

1) Are you by now using accountability to windfall you stick with your program?
2) If you are currently using accountability, did you ever think about the power of experiencing a multi-level "accountability SYSTEM"?

If you’re not using accountability right now in your nutrition, training and healthy lifestyle plan or if you are and you’d like to learn how to multiply accountability by a component of 4X, please read over on.


Level One: Self accountability

Accountability is a MASSIVE leverage factor in achieving any kind of success, whether in business or in a fitness tool and here’s where it starts: with yourself. Self accountability, also renowned as internal accountability is very simple: It means you set a goal, map out a plan, make a commitment to it and then KEEP SCORE. You can become accountable to yourself by:

1. setting written goals
2. weighing yourself
3. measuring body composition
4. taking body (circumference) measurements
5. making photographs
6. Creating menu plans or tracking nutritional intake in a journal
7. Creating workout schedules and tracking training performance in a journal

Basically, anything you covet to improve if be measured and everything related to your nutrition, training and significantly lifestyle (hours and worthy of sleep, etc) should be tracked in writing (or electronically). If you aren’t keeping track and staying accountable by utilizing at lowest 6 out of 7 items in the list above, then such is where you begin.


Level Two: Accountability to another

No one is originating to your rescue. Change starts with you. "If it is to be, it’s up to me." You have to make that important self commitment. But after you’ve accepted custom responsibility, you can literally double your motivation with currently second step. All you have to do is take those journals and written progress reports and show them to an accountability partner on a weekly or even daily basis.

Your substantiation partners could be anyone – friends, family, siblings, neighbors, co-workers or even your internet friends from forums and social networking sites. You can too recruit a specialized – a coach, trainer or mentor of some kind. Get your partner’s agreement so he or she will hold you accountable for the daily action steps you must take and the weekly goals you need to achieve. They have to hold you to it or they’re not real accountability partners. No "Yes men" for this job.

If you have access to your validation partner in person, you can substantiate the positive pressure a bit by suffering your partner take your picture, weight, body fat and measurements rather as opposed to you taking your own. Why is this moment so effective? Well, have you as of yet heard the saying, "Performance is improved when performance is measured?" It’s a popular maxim in arena management circles. Good managers suffer found that personal productivity can be increased many times through by measuring and tracking anything and everything, sometimes to the extent of having employees use numerous checklists, alleges and even a diary of how they spend their time.

Rest assured, it functions in fitness even proper than in business.


Level three: Accountability to a group

Social psychologists have studied group behavior for the right half of a century. Crowd behavior has some interesting dark sides, many of which are far worse than the problem of conformity. But I believe the bright sides of a positive commission are more steady and more powerful. Not clearly do all human beings own a deep seated seek to belong and to socialize amongst like-minded people, there’s a committe dynamic that creates a powerful positive pressure such a can be applied toward higher price level of achievement. You can take advantage of this positive pressure and social substantiation by joining the right groups. When discipline is imposed externally and exorbitant expectations are set over a group, conditions get wrapped up at a prohibative level. There is also an ego component involved, (or simply call it an extra "motivational factor"), that makes you want to push harder when others are watching. It’s even a greater number of powerful if there are real consequences, either emotional or physical, for not fulfilling the expectations. You could necessity it the "Drill sergeant" effect. Speaking of military metaphors, give the impression at how Boot camp classes and assembly personal training are more popular than ever before. Consider the leverage that’s created when you take home yourself accountable to a entire group instead of just one person. Not only is your "drill sergeant" instructor watching you, you furthermore know which your peers in your collection are watching you. What happens if you stop short or quit in front of everyone? Does the prospect of pushing your self harder seem more likely? Think around validation groups where participants gather around a table or in a circle and ought to share to the entire team how their week went. What are the emotional results of falling behind? Amazingly, this works as good as as well online in virtual groups as it does in person and ongoing research has been heard to confirm that. Accountability partners and support groups will always pull more out of you. A coach, partner or board will boost you raise your standards and see the potential in you that you didn’t even know you had. After endeavoring with any outstandingly effective coach or support group, you serves to realize that you have been thinking too compact and selling yourself short. A team will lift up such a positive pressure to a level you never imagined before you immersed yourself in that environment. But it’s achievable to take this that much further. How?


Level four: Public accountability

GO PUBLIC! By announcing your intentions and posting your results for all the world to see, you add a fourth tier of accountability, that for some people, cinches the deal to the level of FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. Why? Because check at the alternative. Losing face. The greatest ideal I own seen of going public has been Australian fitness blogger Adam Waters.

After several frustrating attempts to thorough various physique transformation contests, Adam was sick and tired of being, sick and tired... and fat. He determined that as motivational as these transformation contests were, he knew there was another level.

He decided to put the power of accountability to Hello How Are you? not only by using ALL uni levels of accountability, but moreover by taking his photograph every day and posting it on the web for all the world to see.

The results formed him famous. His story has been featured on TV, in Men’s Fitness (Australian and US editions) and his real time physique time lapse video has had a larger number of as opposed to 4,000,000 views on you tube – along with the #1 you tube search ranking for "weight loss."

To Adam though, all the attention was just a side benefit. The real godsend was which he beat body fat in the wake of and for all. He went based on (in his own words) sick, fat and stupid, to six pack abs, happy and successful. And now he’s helping other people do the same He credits his success to accountability. In his case, REAL TIME web 2.0 accountability.

I hope you are now seeing the possibility in this force for helping you get the body you deserve and you could print out this report, saw and re-read it, soak in the information on the four levels of accountability and start to ask it in your life. I’ve given you a LOT of ideas for how to put these types of ideas to work, immdediately.