240 Is chasing quick results preventing progress to your long-term fitness goals? (the power of slow progress fitness)

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Let me get this straight from the start.

Today's episode is not about trying to persuade you to slow things down and go with the flow more for the sake of it, even though we could all do with a bit of that in our lives. But instead it's about using speed, or lack thereof, as a strategic tool to help you finally get closer to your long term goals.

Because in truth, way too many of us are chasing quick results and in doing so, we're actually keeping ourselves stuck and frustrated. So today I'm going to be showing you why speed is actually slowing you down. How to slow things down strategically for more success.

And I'll also be talking a little bit about my own slow progress goals this year and how it's helping me to define success on my own terms and commit fully to sustainable progress. Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to Wellbeing, the podcast for women who are done with the hustle and are ready to feel at home in their own skin.

I'm your host, Alix Life, therapeutic and fitness coach for busy women who want to do less, live more, and feel good from the inside out. Every week I'm going to help you to cut through the noise, challenge the shoulds, and find new ways to live and move that actually feel like you.

Hello. Hello. Welcome back.

This week where we are slowing things down, and like I said in the intro, this is not an episode about how we can slow things down for our own peace.

I have done plenty of episodes on that kind of thing, but actually this is about how we can use speed strategically to reach our own goals with more success. Because here's what I see more often than not, we want results quickly, we expect results quickly. And so we prioritize speed over sustainability.

And then when that doesn't happen, when we don't quite get to the goals, or when we're struggling to get to the goals, or we're struggling to keep up that pace for long enough, we get frustrated, we assume that we're doing something wrong, or the results do come quite quickly. But. But at that point we either let our guard down thinking we've cracked it, or we realize that the effort that is required just is not sustainable.

And we quickly go back to our old ways and then have to start all the way over again. And we do this because we want the pain and effort to be short lived, right? We want to do whatever we need to for the shortest possible time.

We want to get the quick win and then we want to be able to move on with our lives. We kind of want to be able to go back to normal, so to speak.

And that means that all too often we end up prioritizing intensity over something that is actually going to give us those results over the long term. And the thing is, we're sold intensity as well, aren't we? We are sold the idea that we can get something very quickly.

Give me just a few weeks of your time and I'll help you to banish the belly. Or give me just a few weeks of your time and you'll lose address, size, whatever that is.

So we've become very used to the idea that results should actually be expected quickly, that results are something that should happen quickly. And we kind of IGN the fact that that is not the case. We've been sold that because it's a much easier sell.

I mean, who doesn't want to hear that we just put in a month's worth of effort and we get the exact result we want as opposed to, hey, do you know what? It's going to take six to 12 months to really get this. We're going, I don't want it to take six to 12 months.

I want the shortest possible time frame here. And so we've been sold on intensity and we've really bought into that.

But if you have been on that particular ride more than a few times, you are likely going to know by now that it's not a long term strategy. But the problem often is that we haven't necessarily been shown another way to do it.

And modern life just doesn't encourage us to apply ourselves for long enough to really see those results. So today is all about showing you how you can slow down strategically and how doing so is actually going to get you to your goals more quickly.

It's kind of like the tortoise and the hare, isn't it? You tear off at 100 miles an hour only to find that within a few minutes your muscles are burning, you're out of breath, you need to take a break.

All the while the tortoise is just carried on plodding along and before you know it, you're watching in disbelief while it, it kind of overtakes you and you're still recovering from that first effort. So we're gonna be the tortoise here because the tortoise is winning the race, because the tortoise is not burning out quickly.

We are not in a place where we are having to restart all over again all the time because we haven't been able to sustain the effort. We're actually putting ourselves In a, the effort is sustainable and therefore the results are sustainable as well.

And I know this can be really difficult to get your head around. It took me a while to get my head around it, I'm going to be honest, because for years I always wanted the quick win, the quick result.

I wanted to start the diet and by the end of the week to see two or three pounds off, I wanted to start the diet and within three or four weeks I wanted to be having to go out and buy new jeans because those old jeans were too big for me. Now all that led to was just this constant cycle of being on it and then off it and then on it and then off it.

And what would happen is, yes, I would get some of the results that I wanted, but they never lasted. I always had to go back and I had to do it again and again and again and again. We don't want to be doing that, right? We're grown ass women.

We do not want to be messing with that ridiculous pressurized cycle that we can so easily get into. So speed or slowing down, we can use that really strategically at this point to win. Now I have been working on this this year.

So this year I'm going to turn 50 towards the end of the year. It feels like not that long ago that I turned 40, but never mind, we're there, almost there.

So I'm turning 50 at the end of this year and I really decided that this was the year to challenge myself to gain a bit of muscle, lose a bit of fat. Now I'm not looking at doing loads of either. I'm not looking for big weight loss, I'm not looking for massive muscle, massive muscle gain.

I'm really leaning into seeing what I can achieve with consistently applied effort. And in order for me to achieve that and achieve that consistently applied effort, I need to slow things down.

If I try and go for this too quickly, if I try and do it all at once, it's not going to last. And I'm going to maybe get a bit of a result quickly, but I'm not going to get the long term result that I want.

So honestly, I'm locked in, I'm absolutely locked in on this for the next 12 months.

And like I said before, I would have previously, if you'd asked me to do this or I decided to do this even a few years ago, I'd have wanted this in three months. I'd have said, right, by springtime I want to be exactly at the end goal.

But I'm giving myself an Entire year, because I want to enjoy the process and I want to get sustainable results. I don't want to get to the end of this and think, oh my God, that was a pain in the ass. That was a huge effort.

I don't want to have to carry on doing this. I want to put myself in a place where this feels truly, truly sustainable. And so slowing down is the very, very thing that I am having to do.

And I think it's important as a little side note to this, that I do honestly feel that I'm only able to do this because of the work I've done on myself over the last few years. Around self worth, body image, around my relationship with food, around my identity, around my nervous system.

Like all of those things have needed to be in place so that I am really comfortable with the idea of losing a few pounds of fat and gaining a few pounds of muscle can take me a whole year.

And that, that's not a problem because I, I'm honestly in a place right now in my life where if nothing changed, I'd actually be totally fine with that. It wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a huge thing for me. I'd be quite happy to stay exactly as I am. So I'm, I'm okay with that.

And that's one of the things that I often talk about around acceptance, around saying you who you are, you can accept the idea that if things never change, you'd be okay with that. But also say, but actually I am ready for a challenge.

And that's kind of where I am now is having done all that work, I'm thinking I'm ready for a bit of a challenge. I'm ready to push myself a little bit and to try this thing out. But I don't want it to be.

I don't want it to feel hard, I don't want it to feel pressurized. I want to enjoy the process.

Because it's in doing that that I am going to get those results and I'm going to get them a lot more quickly than I just go hell for leather for short periods of time. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about that, about what I've been doing this year throughout today's episode.

But I really want to start by talking about what happens when you are in too much of a rush and why it often leaves you feeling like your goals are unmet, that success is incomplete. And it's because rushing creates a certain response in your system. Rushing is all about urgency and it's all about pressure.

And as soon as you add that into the equation, your nervous system sees that as a threat. So your body is perceiving this pressure as danger that leads you into those all or nothing or those shutdown patterns.

So you're either doing all the things or you do none of the things. And so you end up being very, very inconsistent. So you feel really inconsistent. It's actually because you've overloaded yourself.

You've asked too much of yourself in the first place. And so you have gone into heightened state of awareness, I suppose, where everything, everything becomes a threat.

I went off the rails this weekend, oh, crap, I've ruined everything, or I missed a workout, oh, bloody hell, I've ruined the week kind of thing. We get into that state of being because every, every little failure becomes a threat to your nervous system.

And so when you're rushing, that starts to happen. It also starts to force you into that place of perfectionism because the standards have to be set high, right?

Are going to do this thing and you're going to do it quickly. You have to be pretty damn perfect about it.

Because every time you do skip that workout or you do throw the towel in and eat an extra dessert, the weekend or whatever, it is going to have an effect on the outcome that you get because you're expecting, expecting it to happen very, very quickly. And so you end up in that place where everything has to be perfect in the minute. It's not.

You are again going into shutdown, you're shutting down, you're saying, oh my God, I've ruined and now I've got to start again. You end up prioritizing intensity over consistency.

So you're doing big sessions, you're pushing yourself, you're maybe over restricting your food and things like that. And then what happens is you end up with the cravings and you end up with the burnout.

And then when those two things start to hit, you have a little binge, you crash, you start missing workouts, and then you have to restart again because you feel guilty and you know, all of those things start happening. So in other words, you just, you get tired because you're trying to do too much all at once.

So all of that push is leading to the threat response, this need for a high level of perfectionism and this prioritization really, of intensity over consistency. And of course, what that then also does is it disconnects you from your body, right?

You stop noticing your hunger patterns, you stop noticing your energy levels, you stop thinking about your need for recovery because those things, they have to be ignored in the pursuit of that goal and in pursuit of getting to that goal as quickly as possible.

And so that first pace equals pressure, the pressure equals inconsistency, inconsistency equals incomplete results and you repeating that cycle over and over and over again. So therefore what happens is me, I am taking 12 months over this. I am the tortoise.

I'm really taking my time, but I'm probably going to get that result quicker than somebody who is going to hell for leather for a few weeks and then is giving up for a couple of months and then is starting again and starting again and starting again. I am going to get there so much more quickly and with a lot more ease and a lot more pleasure along the way as well.

So I know for sure which one I am going to be choosing.

So going back to what I'm doing because I'm really using my own plan this year to really illustrate this for you and to show you how this is, how this is working, how this is going to operate, how slowing down is really going to help me. I, for the very, very first time in my life, have got myself my own pt. I have never had a PT before. I've always just done it for myself.

I've always done my own programs or I've maybe followed a program on an app. I found a good app a little while ago that I really loved using for lifting weights. But this year I was like, right, I'm up for a bit of a challenge.

I want to challenge myself to this thing. I'm going to get a PT now. He's not somebody that I see every week. I don't do training sessions with him. He's an online pt.

So he basically gives me a program, checks in every couple of. And that for me is perfect. I don't need somebody to motivate me. I don't need somebody to look over my shoulder all the time.

But I did have that feeling of I just want somebody to walk alongside me on this.

I want somebody who is just gonna, just gonna have my back and just gonna check in with me every now and again and just give me that little bit of structure and that little bit of outside accountability. So this has been actually perfect for me because it's those check ins every couple of weeks giving me a little bit of structure.

But I am getting on with and I've very specifically chosen somebody who has quite a similar outlook to me. So I certainly wouldn't be going for some like Jim Bro, who's going to tell me to go hard or go home.

So he very much has a very similar outlook to me on all things fitness and nutrition and everything. He's extremely knowledgeable. That's one of the things that drew me to him. I'm not after all of these fatty things online, as you know.

So I'm all about somebody who has really deep knowledge and who applies that knowledge in a really consistent way and applies it in terms of helping you to find a sustainable fitness routine. So I've locked in with him for an entire year. I've committed, I've laid it on the table. We're going to work together for an entire year.

And like I say, my goals are really around gaining a bit of muscle, losing a little bit of fat. Again, this is not about losing like two stone and dropping two dress sizes. I'm talking about out probably a few pounds.

I don't know, I don't weigh myself, I won't weigh myself. So it's just, it's more about how I, how I look in my clothes, how I feel in my clothes, that kind of thing. That is going to be important to me.

So I, yeah, I've locked in, I've locked into this and I am really ready for that challenge. But that challenge has to be on my own terms. And that means that I'm not rushing, I am not going to do things that I feel uncomfortable with.

I'm not weighing myself. You know, one of the, one of the things that he, my trainer does send out at the start is he asks you to weigh yourself every month.

I said to him straight off, that's not happening. I have a toxic relationship with the scales. I'm not going to weigh myself. I don't care what I weigh.

I am just going to stick with how do I feel in my clothes, how do I feel when I look in the mirror? Right, that, that is it. That is as far as I go. And he's like, yep, no problem, I'm fine with that. So there's no pressure there either.

So that is, those are what my goals are. So not massive. I'm not looking at any huge gains or anything like that, but I'm looking really at just a bit of consistency over this year.

I is going to be the thing for me. So that's what I'm working towards. And you know, in the past, I would, I would have rushed this.

I would have wanted short term results, I would have wanted to see results very quickly. I mean, I'm two months into this already.

I've Been, I've been doing this for seven or eight weeks already and I am starting to see some results which I'll talk to you about later. But they're small. They are really, really small. And like old me would not have coped very well with that. But new me's like, great, this is perfect.

This is exactly what I want because when the results come slowly, I know that they are sustainable. So yeah, that's been really important to me. So I'm not piling the stress on, I'm not piling the anxiety on.

I am really going with this, working with my nervous system, working with myself in a way that feels really sustainable and just keeping it slow and steady and, and what slowing down is really allowing me to do is firstly to stay calm and stay motivated. A lot of people talk about motivation as the be all and end all. I'll do it when I feel motivated.

Oh, I'm not doing it right now because I don't feel very motivated. The thing is, when you are in that constant intensity cycle, that's when motivation disappears. Because my nervous system is relaxed.

I'm not now depending on huge reserves of willpower or discipline or motivation. It's just there, it just feels calm, it feels doable. And I don't feel like I have to push myself unnecessarily.

So last week, for example, it was half term. I'd already done six weeks of my program and I just. Do you know what I just felt on my body?

I was like, I don't feel like going and lifting really heavy this week.

And so I just did a couple of sort of half hour spins on the bike and that was all I did last week and that was okay because I needed it to fit in with what my nervous system needs.

And I'm doing some other work on myself at the moment, which I'm going to talk about in later episodes in next week and the week after, which have meant that I, yeah, I really need to listen to my body. I need to listen to when my body says, actually I need a little week to recover here. And so that's what I'm doing.

And so in doing that, that is helping me to stay motivated because I'm not pushing myself constantly. I'm not pushing myself when my body is saying, actually I need a rest. So slowing down is definitely allowing that.

It's also helping me to just bin off those unrealistic expectations. It's allowing a little, little bit of imperfection in. I'm literally in a place where I'd be More than happy with losing a pound or two a month.

Again, I don't weigh myself so I don't know but how much exactly. But I will, I will be able to tell in my clothes, right? I will be able to tell.

I'm really just imperfection is fine, expectations can be low and that actually feels really, really good. And it means that it's, it's just feeling way more sustainable.

So the key thing that I'm doing is tracking my protein so making sure that I'm getting lots of protein in my diet because the protein is building block of muscle. And that's really what I'm doing right now in this first kind of phase is building muscle.

And so I need to ensure there's plenty of protein in there and even more so as a 49 year old perimenopausal woman, I need to make sure that that is really in there and is really locked down now. I'm not always getting that. I've got to be honest. The aim I think my goal is 140 grams a day. That's a lot of protein.

I'm often getting to maybe 110, 120 grams of protein. But, but that's fine, that's fine. I'm not feeling pressured to go loads higher. I'm like if I can, great.

If not it's, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get myself head up about it. It is what it is. I'm doing my best. And so because I've got the entire year it that that is feeling way more sustainable.

And the other thing as well is because I'm using a track, an app to track my protein. I'm actually seeing how many calories a day I'm eating, which is not something I've done for a really long time.

And I'm eating like 2,000 calories a day. So again, again, super sustainable. And I have started to notice a little bit of a difference in my clothes already on 2,000 calories a day.

how many diets out there are: 2000

I'm not going to Suddenly cut out 500 calories a day. It make me miserable and hungry and I'm not going to do it. So this has felt like you. Yeah, I absolutely, I can do this.

Tracking my protein, making that my, my, my main measure of My progress at the moment and, you know, it does require a bit of trust in that process because it can feel like, you know, you can do it for four, five, six weeks and you're like, I'm not feeling any difference in my body, but it's knowing that that will make a difference. And I've been really trusting in that process as well. It's allowed, like I say, for a bit of flexibility.

It's allowed for me not being on it and the time, like, I'm in my eighth week and I feel like, yeah, I can super easily continue like this forever. I'm not here waiting for an endpoint. I'm not here thinking, oh, just another four weeks and then I can stop.

I, I'm thinking, yeah, absolutely, I could sustain this for the rest of my life. I needed to. Not a problem. So that is also making me feel very relaxed. It's also allowed me to focus on different measures of success.

Like I said before, tracking my protein, making sure that I'm getting enough protein in, tracking my lifts and writing all of those down and seeing how I'm progressing each week, either doing more reps or lifting more weight. So that is, that is feeling really good because like I said before, I'm not weighing myself.

I'm not taking before and after pictures because I'm, I just, I can't buy into that. It's about how my clothes feel and I am starting to notice a bit of a difference.

It's eight weeks in and I'm starting to notice my, my clothes just feel that little bit looser. They're not hanging off me or anything, but they just, I can tell that a little bit change has happened.

So generally it just means that I've been able to have more joy around training.

I've been able to reconnect with my body, connect with what it needs, take a bit of time off if I need to, but actually just sustain that level of effort and to keep consistent really as well. Just keeping consistent so it doesn't feel like a battle. It feels like I can continue this for a really long time.

And it's just feeling really, really good. And I have no question that in a few months time, I'm still going to be absolutely happily doing this. So that is what slowing down has allowed me.

So I'm already starting to see the change. Yes, it's way slower than I ever would have wanted to in the past. And you might be going, oh, my God, eight weeks of work for that.

But I promise you, the work does not feel Hard. But again, like I say, I had to do work to get me to this place where the slow paces feel comfortable and enjoyable.

So definitely, if you're sitting there thinking, I get what she's saying and that sounds great for her, but for me that would feel super uncomfortable, then it's probably time to do a little bit of work around your nervous system, around your beliefs, around what you should be achieving and what you should be able to achieve.

And really bringing yourself into a place where slowing down can feel actually like the best possible thing you could do, like a really strategic thing that you can be doing to get the progress that you want to.

So if you have acknowledged maybe that your pursuit of speed has meant that you've sacrificed the results that you really want, I'm going to just share with you a few of the simple steps you can take right now to slow things down. So I think the first one is choose an identity led goal.

So obviously a lot of women will come to me saying, I just want to lose weight, I need to lose weight, I need to lose two stone. I'm really unhealthy right now because of this weight that I'm carrying around. And there's so much pressure with that.

There is so much pressure to see the results, to see them quickly, to measure that all the time, to put that pressure on yourself and to push yourself.

And we, we all know, you know, particularly if you've been chasing after a goal like that for a long time, that does not feel good and it also doesn't help you to get to the place that you need to go to. So I would encourage you, instead of that kind of goal, think about an identity based goal.

Think about something like, I'm becoming the woman who trains consistently and eats in a way that feels good. So thinking about who you are becoming rather than.

Because I think what we do is we tell ourselves, when I've lost that weight, then I can feel good about myself. But what we're actually doing is saying, what can I do right now to make myself feel good?

Because then that becomes more sustainable, there's less pressure in that we get a different measure of success and it becomes an action based goal rather than an outcome based goal.

So you get to be more in control actually as well, because you get to be in control of whether you train consistently, you get to be in control of whether you eat in a way that feels good. You don't necessarily get to be in control of the result on the other end of it all the time. So think about your Identity around this.

Think about who you're becoming, what you're stepping into so that it just takes the pressure off a little bit and helps to slow you down. The second one is think about the minimum effective dose. Ask yourself, what are the smaller steps I can take to move me forward right now, now.

And that means this is not about achieving a specific goal quickly, but it's about asking yourself what are the actions that I need to be taking to be successful? And that will really challenge you because it's going to feel like it's not enough.

You're going to look at that and you're going to go, well, that's not going to get me anywhere.

But this is ultimately the difference between trying to do a few high pressured things that you cannot maintain or lace focusing on a couple of small things which you can build into daily habits. This is about building proof of success, showing yourself what you can do at the moment.

And that's really, really important because what often happens is we spend a lifetime building evidence of failure. Building evidence of, I never quite got there building evidence of and I never felt good in my body. We don't want that anymore.

We want to start building evidence of, hey, I started that habit and I'm still doing it three months later. Hey, I am eating more healthily now because I'm focusing on that.

Hey, I am being more consistent at the gym because I've taken the pressure off, off what the scales say and I've started to measure what I'm lifting and I'm watching my progress with that happen. So it's what are the small steps that you can take?

What are the things that you can start doing now that you feel like, yeah, and I could still do that in 12 months time because you have got to build the proof of success. We've got some of us decades of evidence that we have failed over and over again.

And if you keep going in and doing things in the same way, like a bull in a china shop, you're just going to keep collecting more evidence that says I failed. So minimum effective dose means building proof of success, showing yourself what can happen, what you can do, what you are capable of.

So that's really important. The third thing is allow a bit of experimentation so when you slow down, you don't have to get everything right.

Everything doesn't have to be perfect. And that allows the process to be more fun. It frees you up from those rigid rules that you might be tempted to add into your life.

Think about the again, those small actions and Just experiment with them. Just say, hey, I'm going to add it in for a couple of weeks. I'm going to see how that feels, I'm going to see how that sits with me.

And allow yourself to be a bit playful about it, to have a go at things.

Because that couple of weeks that you spend doing that thing or trying to implement that thing is time so well spent because you are really taking the pressure off. You're telling yourself that this doesn't have to be perfect, I get to have fun with this.

And that's really important because often in this process we're missing any kind of fun whatsoever. It's just hard, it's a slog. It's pushing ourselves every single day to do things that we don't particularly want to do.

Allowing for experimentation allows it to feel lighter and to feel easier to keep going. And then the final thing is redefining your success.

So like I said before, for me at the moment, it's not about a number on the scale, it's about, am I getting to my protein goals, am I doing my three or four workouts a week, Am I increasing the reps that I'm doing on those particular lifts? Those are the things that I am tracking my success on. And no, I'm not getting overnight results, but I know that this will give me results.

This is going to give me slow, steady, sustainable results. So the success that you're achieving here is showing up.

It's not having to smash everything at every single stage, it's not having to get everything perfect. It's about, am I showing up for myself? Am I doing the things that I know will get me the results that I trust will get me the results.

And yes, there does have to be a bit of trust here because unlike the speed demon way, you're not going to go on a diet and suddenly two weeks later be looking at scales going, yeah, I've dropped five pounds. Amazing. I can see that result. There has to be a bit more trust in, okay, it's going to take a bit longer, but I trust in it.

So you do have to be able to keep going even when things don't necessarily feel differently on a day to day basis, but it just can have a much bigger reward at the end of it because the pressure drops. And once the pressure drops, consistency starts to rise, sustainability starts to rise and you are going to feel so much better in what you're doing.

So slow progress is not small progress. Slow progress just means stable, sustainable. And that is so important.

It's so important that whatever you're doing now, you feel like, yeah, and I can keep doing it in six months time. Not well, I can do it for the next few weeks and then it's going to be Easter holidays.

In Easter holidays, I'm probably going to be off it for a little while because, you know, the kids are going to be around and we're going to be. And you get into all of that thinking.

What I want you to be in the place of is I can do this now and I can do this over the Easter holidays and I can do it in six months time and I can do it when I go on my summer holidays and it's not going to feel pressured.

So really working with your nervous system, working with your life as it is, working with the responsibilities that you have, you are going to benefit from that slower approach.

You are going to transform yourself into the woman who collects evidence of success, who builds on that success, who trusts herself enough to stay the course. And by doing that, you become the version of yourself that you've been trying to fast track yourself into for such a long time.

So just imagine that, just imagine where you could be in 12 months time if you slowed down right now, if you changed your approach this year, if you allowed yourself the time and the space to do this, if you allowed yourself, or if you allowed this to actually be more enjoyable, more joyful, more slow and steady. How would you feel in 12 months time if you did that?

You're going to feel so much more successful, you're going to have so much more evidence of success and you're going to be so much closer to where you need to be than you will be. If you keep going with the intensity all the time. The intensity is never going to help. So I'd love you to think about that. Here's to slow.

Here's to putting ourselves in a place where we're really creating that sustainable success. And like I say, this isn't about just doing it for the sake of it. This, this is strategic stuff.

The strategy of slowing down is the strategy of success. That is what I know to be true.

I know to be true for myself, I know to be true for my clients, the ones who trust in the process, who allow themselves to slow down. They are the people that get the results. So I want that for you as well.

So if you're ready for more of that kind of support, where we're going to lead from, from nervous system safety, where we're going to build habits from real trust, do come and join me inside the body you'll love living in, because we'll properly set you up for success and stop you from running in the circles you're running in right now. You can find out more@lifeeditcoaching.com but for now, I'm going to love you and leave you. This is a long one, wasn't it?

So I'll love you and leave you and I'll see you back here again next time. Thank you as always for joining me.

If this episode has hit at home, share it with another woman who needs to hear it and come connect with me on Instagram @lifeeditwithalix for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.