Change From The Inside To Achieve Your Goals

A few months ago I was talking to a friend about his eating habits. He wanted to lose weight and had tried many different things over the years.

He listed all the things that didn’t work for him: weight watchers, counting calories, macros, low fat, supplements, keto… This time he had started intermittent fasting.

He'd already been doing it for a few weeks and had lost some weight. I was happy for him.

What Doesn’t Work For Behavior Change

Unfortunately, I had a feeling that my friend's intermittent fasting wouldn’t stick. And it didn’t. Recently, I asked him how it was going he told me he wasn’t doing it anymore. It turned out not to have worked for him.

There’s a reason why I suspected that this would happen. In all of his attempts to lose weight, he had only focused on external things. The weight he wanted to lose, the specific foods he could or couldn’t eat, the timing or combinations of those foods.

Like most people, he was focusing on changing from the outside.

But he had never tried to change from the inside. He'd never done the hard work of examining his values and self-identity and how they related to his lifestyle choices. He'd never thought about his emotional relationship with food or exercise.

It's understandable. Those are not easy things to do, and many people don't realize how important they are.

Long-Term Change Starts From Within

Think about behavior change like the layers of an onion.

The outside layers are the results you want to get. Most people focus there, and they get only short-term results, if any.

The middle layers are your habits and environment. Building healthy habits and changing your environment is important, and it’s something I recommend to all my personal training clients. You’ll get better results this way, but on their own they’re hard to sustain. A lot of people end up eventually back-sliding.

The deepest layers are your self-identity. That’s the kind of person you believe you are. If you’re an active person, you’ll naturally do active things. If you’re the kind of person that enjoys and values healthy foods, you’ll make healthy eating choices even when it’s not easy.   

You need to peel back the layers and uncover the issues underneath before you can become the kind of person that has the results you want. Only then will you be successful in making significant changes and get results that last.

I’ve written before about strategies to work on your self-identity, like taking small steps to prove your new identity, overcoming excuses, and leveraging your strengths.

This is where the magic happens.

Why Changing From The Inside Is So Important

If you only try to change from the outside, you’ll end up with a long list of programs that don’t work.

You’ll keep thinking that the problem is the program itself. You'll get stuck in a frustrating cycle, searching forever for the one thing that will finally get you the results you want.

But if you change from the inside, if you become the kind of person who makes daily healthy eating choices and chooses to move as much as possible every day, you’ll be able to stick with your program consistently and make it a sustainable lifestyle. When you can do that, almost any diet or exercise program will work.

If You Need Help

I have a few resources to help you finally get the results you want from your healthy lifestyle efforts.

For a step-by-step guide to finding your deep and meaningful motivation and setting effective goals, here is my FREE Goal-Setting Guide.

To get started with changing your eating habits for the better, here is my FREE Guide to Healthy Eating. This eBook will teach you the most important aspects of creating a sustainable healthy eating program.

To improve your strength and build muscle, here is my FREE Strength Training 101 eBook. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to get started with strength training, including which exercises to do and how to progress your workouts so you get results.

If you’re interested in self improvement and want a structured exercise program that can help you build physical strength as well as mental resilience, check out my Strength Training For Anxiety program.

For personalized help and accountability, contact me to find out about my in-person and online personal training programs.