The 3 Things I Wish I Had Known - Weight Loss & Fitness Tips Beginners Need To Hear Right Now

Hey guys, so yesterday I did my Monday question box on Instagram, just saying, ask me anything. And one of the questions that I got was, what advice would you give for beginners? And I thought it was a fantastic question. It made me really reflect back to things that I wish I had known or advice that I had been given when I started out. And also it kind of tied in with some of the common things that I see coming up time and time again with beginners nowadays, and some of the advice that I would give them. And so in this video, I'm going to take you through, and I narrowed it down to just three pieces of advice that I wish I had known when I was starting out. And if you're just starting out, that I think you need to hear. Now this isn't just advice that's related to health or weight loss or fitness, but anything in life, including relationships. If you're starting a new career, or perhaps you're thinking about becoming self-employed or starting a business, or whether you just want to create a new chapter in your life. This advice has been invaluable, and it's something that I come back to time and time again. So the first one is, have goals, but don't live for the future and take it step by step. So we all know it's important to have an idea of what we want to achieve or where we're headed so that we can put in place things that are going to help us get there, to build the habits, the infrastructure that we need to work our way towards what that goal is. But the issue that I often see, not only in others, but in myself, is that we put this goal so high up on a pedestal that we think to ourselves, I won't be happy until I've achieved that goal, or I won't be satisfied until I've achieved it. And we just stop living life in the present, we stop enjoying where we are at the moment and celebrating what we've achieved so far, just in the pursuit of this goal. And here's the clincher, we work our butts off to be able to achieve the goal to unlock the happiness or unlock that satisfaction and say to ourselves, I'm finally proud of what I've achieved or I've done it. But then we realise there is no end point, there's no bunting hanging out with a big finish line and some champagne popping. And it seems like a bit of a harsh truth, but I've learnt the hard way that you get to it and you just go, okay cool, I've achieved that, now what's the next goal? Because it is never ending, this is a lifelong meandering journey that's going to be full of ups and downs, like a big long rollercoaster, and your goals are going to be constantly changing as much as your life is. I've spoken about this before in regards to when I was losing weight, I didn't have a specific goal per se, but what I realised was as time went on, and the further and further I got into my journey, I just realised that it ended up getting more complex and it felt like the path was diverging into so many different ways, rather than me feeling like I was tapering into some end point. And it was that realisation that made me realise that you have to enjoy the process, you have to be able to celebrate the little things, you have to be happy where you are right now, because if you wait to be happy in the future, you're going to be waiting forever. And this is the same for anything, whether you have a financial goal that you're trying to save towards, whether you're trying to achieve a degree so that you can go into a career that you want, whether you have relationship and family goals, if you continually wait until you've achieved what you've set out to achieve to be happy, you're going to realise very quickly when you get there, that the goalpost has just moved a little bit further and now there's more things to achieve, and if you'd put your life on hold and waited to be happy until you'd achieved that goal, that you were just going to be continually putting your life on hold for the rest of your life. Although it doesn't feel like it, the struggle and the hard work that you put into working towards a goal is often the stuff that you look back on and you feel the proudest of and you remember fondly. I'm working towards certain exercises which are taking forever to be able to achieve, and I know of course when I get that first rep I'm going to be so so excited, so happy and it's going to feel amazing, but when I reflect back, actually what I'm proud of is all the hard work that I've put in, all the effort, all the fails, all the hard work, all the fun, all the time that I've put into training towards that goal, that's the stuff that I reflect back on and go, damn I'm proud that I did that and I enjoyed that process and I learnt so much about myself in that process, not specifically achieving the goal itself because let's say I get that first rep of a muscle up, I'll immediately be going, okay I need to get the second rep now, or the third rep, or maybe I need to try a different style of muscle up, or let's just move on to the next exercise. Our lives are constantly evolving and with that so is our goals and what we're trying to achieve, so instead of focusing on the future and maybe putting your life on hold, start living your life right now and enjoy every moment to the best of your ability. A great example of this is when people are trying to lose weight, they wait to buy a new wardrobe or to buy new clothes or to treat themselves for something until they've lost the weight, and to me that's a perfect example of saying to yourself, maybe on a subconscious level that you're not worthy of that right now, but in the future, a future you will be, whereas you are worthy of it right now, you should treat yourself, you should feel good and you can feel good, and that's only going to benefit you in working towards those goals in the future. Alright, so point number two is keep it simple and try not to overthink it. This one is critical because there is, as I always say, so much noise, there is so much information, we are constantly bombarding with conflicting messages, media, photos, information, everything under the sun is thrown at us every hour of every single day and there is no wonder that we are overwhelmed, but the one problem with being overwhelmed with information and trying to overcomplicate something is what it usually tends to lead to is not doing anything, inaction, just staying still. This kind of rolls into procrastinating as well. You tend to overthink something, overcomplicate something, and I'm guilty of this too, and all you end up doing is just nothing, whereas if you simply just took that first step, even if you don't feel like you're ready, that is going to be the most beneficial thing you could do. I didn't know anything when I started losing weight, I didn't know what a calorie was, I didn't know really anything about exercise at all, I just grabbed the first thing that I found and did that again and again and again, and over time I started to learn things. I remember when I started out exercising and they said, we're going to do a plank, I didn't know what a plank was, I thought it was this thing that was going viral at the time where you just lay on any inanimate object and it was pretty dangerous, and I was like, why are they making us do that? I literally knew that little about exercise and absolutely nothing about nutrition, but over the period of just a couple of months, just by doing it, I started to learn so much more about exercise, about nutrition, and generally about health and my body. To be honest with you, when I reflect back, something that I really think did help me was the fact that I was ignorant, I didn't know anything. My lack of knowledge really helped, and the fact that social media wasn't as prevalent back then also really helped, because I wasn't constantly getting these conflicting messages and these extra things that I should be doing, or things that I hadn't thought about. And it is the same with pretty much anything, we always want to make sure we're really, really prepared, that we know everything, that we're in the best position, that we've planned everything out, that we have a really clear idea of what we're doing and when we're doing it, when we start out. For example, if you're starting a business, over planning something, trying to think exactly how everything works, and maybe focusing on things that ultimately just don't matter. What that's doing is preventing you from just getting started, and ultimately, getting started is where you're going to learn the most, that's going to be the most valuable thing that you can do. In my opinion and my experience, the one thing that is invaluable and that I would say you need when you're starting out, is a reason why. That is all you need to know, if you're starting a business, why are you starting a business, what do you want to achieve with it? If you're trying to lose weight, why do you want to lose weight? And really ask yourself why, don't just simply go, I want to lose weight because it's going to make me healthier. Why is it going to make you healthier? Why does that matter to you? Ask yourself in depth what these questions are, make sure you have a strong reason why and that it matters to you, and that is something that you can constantly come back to. When you focus on that reason why, you can block out all that noise and you can take one step at a time and you will grow so much in that process of actually doing, rather than just being paralysed into not doing anything. As they always say, a rolling stone gathers no moss, so it's like a snowball effect, the more you do, the more you'll understand and the more you'll have a clear understanding of what works for you and where you're trying to get to and how you're going to get there. The more you do this, the easier it will get, and I understand how hard it is when you're just starting out with something and you have very little knowledge. It can be really scary and you can feel really alone, so you find comfort in gathering as much information as possible and feeling like you have a good understanding. But I promise you, if you start by keeping it super, super simple and basic, and slowly start to work on adding more in as you feel like your knowledge improves and you feel more confident with what you're doing, that is going to be invaluable in terms of getting you to where you want to go. I still remember when I was in high school and one of my teachers gave me the acronym KISS, and he said, keep it simple, stupid, and I still remember that. Now that was in regards to creating a circuit board, but it's pretty much the same advice that I used throughout my life. Every time I start to get overwhelmed, I just go, keep it simple, stupid, and I take it right back to the bare bones and just get the ball rolling, and it always, always helps. It's definitely not easy to just not overthink things, but I promise you, if you can continue working on it and come back to that, keep it simple, don't overthink this, it will pay dividends. And that brings me on to the last one, and I feel like if you've watched a few of my videos, you're going to know what I'm going to say, and that is that consistency trumps everything. Consistency is key and is the one thing that you should strive for over everything else. Time and time and time and time again, I see this happening, and that is that somebody will be doing something and they just come to the conclusion that it's not working because after a certain period of time, nothing has happened or nothing has changed. And there's usually one of two things at play, one is that they're actually not seeing the progress that they're making, and that's because progress comes in many forms, and the other one is because they haven't been consistent. And when we talk about consistent, we are talking on a regular basis, we want to be doing things consistently, but the great thing about consistency is that it doesn't need to be 100%. You don't need to be there showing up and achieving at 100% capacity every single day. Consistency allows you to have a little bit of leeway, so you can sort of hang out around 60-70% of your capacity and still be consistent, which is what is so magical about it. You can make it sustainable. Good things take time, and we really need to focus on doing things in a sustainable way, which means that we can do them consistently for a long period of time. There is no point in doing something for four weeks and deciding that it just doesn't work, because it's just not a long enough period of time for you to really have given it a good hot go. And again, this is for anything. This is in a career, whether you're starting a business, whether you're starting a new relationship, whether you're starting a new career, whether you're saving money. You wouldn't put a small amount of money each day in your bank account for a month and then at the end of the month wonder why you're not a millionaire. You would accept that it's going to take consistency and a serious amount of time to be able to save the money that you want. And for some reason we can accept that with finances or if we went to university to study. We don't go in on day one and expect to be able to know everything enough to get a degree. We know it's going to take four years and we accept that and we somewhat enjoy the process of doing so. But when it comes to health, fitness, weight loss, we seem to think it's going to be really quick and it's going to be somewhat different, and it's just not. Unfortunately, it's not, it's exactly the same, so we have to approach it with this mindset of consistency, that it's going to take time, and that you can enjoy that process. You can enjoy the present. You can celebrate what you're achieving right now because I have no doubt, even if you don't think you're making progress or you don't think there's anything worth celebrating, there is. There definitely would be, and if you don't know what it is, you just message me and I will find something that you have been progressing in. If there's one thing that I strive to try and show is that progress and achievements take time. And if you can be consistent, you don't have to be perfect because I am in no way perfect in terms of my training or what I eat or anything like that. By no means. I mean, what really is perfect, but what I mean is I don't apply myself 100%. I apply myself around 60 to 70% to a lot of my training principles, yet I still make achievements, but it just takes time. And I've accepted that as I spoke about in the Bulldog Give podcast with Andrew Tracy, we're on the scenic route. Like I'm just ambling along, accepting that this is kind of fun and I can enjoy the process and eventually I will get there, but I'm not upset about the fact that I can't do a muscle up after six months. And I have no doubt that it will probably take me another year at least before I get a decent muscle up. And that's fine. I'm cool with that. I got a message the other day and someone said that they've been following progressions for handstands for the last two years and they finally managed to handstand for two or three seconds. And I was like, perfect. Yes, that is exactly what we're talking about. These things take time. And if you're just consistent at 60 to 70%, you will get there. So don't be beating yourself up and trying to rush it because that's not going to lead anywhere very quickly. The amount of messages and comments that I receive of people saying that they haven't lost weight within six to 12 weeks, I've been going for five years. And this is another thing that I always maintain is that maintenance, when you get to your goal weight or wherever you're trying to get to, it's going to be constantly fluctuating because your life's going to change. You might have periods where you don't train or where you are injured. You might have periods where you just lose all motivation. Maybe you have health complications and you're going to gain weight. You're going to lose weight. Your motivations are going to change. Your goals are going to change. What you're doing is going to change. So try to not focus so much on this goal orientated outcome and rather enjoy this rollercoaster ride of life because it is going to be a ride. So to bring it back to that final point, consistency is key. Do not be beating yourself up if you feel like you are not being perfect or exactly to the letter what you want to achieve because that is probably not sustainable. What you want to aim for is consistency and that allows you to live your life around what you're trying to achieve. Sustainability leads to consistency and consistency will lead to your goals. So work on creating sustainable habits that are going to work towards your goals and going to help you get there and try your best to enjoy where you're at and be proud of yourself because there is no point in waiting to do that in the future because you'll just find something else that you need to achieve. So that would be my three key pieces of advice for a beginner and things that I wish I had known when I started out. Some of them I blindly followed without even knowing and a lot of them I'm still affected by today. So I always have to come back to those three points and remind myself why I'm doing something as well and it always helps just keep me back on track. I hope this video has helped in some way and that I didn't come across as too harsh. It's something that I feel very passionate about because I see how many people are fighting these internal battles over such simple things that they don't need to be worrying about. So I hope this has helped. I would love to hear what your key pieces of advice were or maybe things that you wish you had known or things even that you're struggling with. So drop them down below or head over and send me a message. Otherwise I will see you guys in the next video and I hope that you have a beautiful day. And remember, don't be mean to yourself.