You can do anything you set your mind to. We’ve all heard about the greatness of the power of the brain, how it will push us further than our body ever could. Many of you will have seen this first hand if you’ve done challenging training sessions or been through any extreme physical challenges.
In this first instalment, let’s look at how our brains can hold us back.
The brain is all-powerful, unfortunately this means that, as with anything all-powerful, it can lead to evil (kinda).
I hear it all of the time with friends, clients and my own brain:
“I ate perfectly during the week, but I just had to have a pizza/Chinese/dessert/, I couldn’t help it (or something very similar).”
So why is it always so hard to steer clear of these temptations?
We are all led astray by one thing – instant gratification.
It is the same reason that we skip the last few sets of a session when we’re tired, the same reason I have a pile of washing up in my sink that I’m putting off doing, the same reason it’s taken me a long while to get round to writing this article and probably the same reason that you may be reading in the first place.
We want to feel good now, right now … all the time!
This could easily be applied to fitness, every year when the summer rolls around.
Whether feeling good comes from having fun, knowing an easy trick to get in shape or eating a slice of pizza and a Krispy Kreme. We look for what is going to satisfy us right now rather than what will be best in the long-term.
If you could, most people would not show up to work tomorrow, but then what? You could get fired! This immediate result means that you will go in tomorrow, in spite of probably not wanting to.
When it comes to dieting though, the result of your actions are not immediate, you do not see the fat instantly disappear from your belly, which is why it’s easy to justify: “Oh I’ll just stick to the diet from tomorrow.”
If this is your way of thinking, it needs to change. All these foods add up.
