“Health is important to everyone. It decides how we feel, act and look, but improving and maintaining your health is not easy and requires the right type and amount of exercise, nutrition and lifestyle habits.
No matter what your goal is, improving your overall health is necessary to achieve long-lasting success. If a goal is achieved without improving your health, the chances of maintaining that goal are minimal.
Most men associate good health with physical ability. How much weight they can lift, how fast they can move or by the way they look. This is only a part of what it means to be healthy.
Yes being physically fitter is a big part to being healthy, but what is also just as important is phycological health and the overall health of the body (inside and out).
To be physically healthy is down to how you think and how you feel. Low energy levels, negative mindset, constant aches and pains, unhealthy digestive and poor functioning immune systems all can contribute undermining any physical training benefits.
As a health coach for the last 20 years and being 48 years of age, I myself I have learnt that just training hard as often as I can will only get you so far. As you get older the body needs more than just a protein shake and warm bath to get rid of discomfort from training hard.
The body constantly requires the right nutrition for you (here is a secret most people don’t know. Nutrition is highly personal. There is only one correct diet out there for you and it will only work for you and no one else). It also needs the right levels of hydration and recovery.
But what I have found from health coaching 100’s of different men is that most struggle maintaining any health changes long-term. They will see initial progress but slowly stop doing what they have been recommended and revert back to old habits and behaviours.
Most men I speak to start off with good intentions, are keen to find out the best way to get healthy and in better shape, and charge in to doing the hard workouts and eating a completely new diet, only to find a few weeks later focus and motivation start to drop.
Of the male clients I coach who end up with the best results, the common theme among them all is their ability not to just change their nutrition and exercise habits, but their ability to change the way they think.
What we believe decides how we think. How we think decides our emotions. Our emotions decide our actions, and our actions decide the results we achieve.
So your beliefs are ultimately deciding the results you are getting. If you are not happy with the results you are getting, then start with changing your beliefs.
As the saying goes “What you think you become”.
For example; if you believe that exercise is boring and uncomfortable, you will focus on all the negative things when it comes to exercise, your emotion is going to be of disgust to having to do something you believe you don’t like, you will perform actions to prove your belief is right (as no-one likes being proven wrong), the result, therefore, will be performing exercise that is boring and uncomfortable. Hence you reinforce your belief that exercise is boring and uncomfortable.
It is human nature to focus more on things that prove what we think is right, then focusing on things that will prove us wrong.
This is known as a ‘fixed mindset’. Someone with a fixed mindset believes that the results they achieve are inevitable, as they know everything there is to know about what will or not work for them. “There is nothing I can do to lose weight, as I have tried everything and nothing worked. I just have the wrong genes”. The result of this mindset is always achieving what you have always achieved.
The other type of mindset is known as a ‘growth mindset’. Someone with a growth mindset will believe that there is always a solution to any problem and will persevere till they have solved it.
They also understand that they are the only ones responsible for the results they achieve. If they want a different result, then they have to change what they are doing.
The clients of mine that have achieved the best results are the clients with the strongest growth mindsets. The take self-responsibility for their actions and therefore their results.
They know that with the right mindset they will be better prepared to go through the process of change needed and to implement the new habits and behaviours required.
The most important role I have as a health coach is to help clients move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Only then are they ready to implement the changes required to build the right environment and follow the right process/plan needed to achieve a lifetime of good health.
“Where the mind goes, the body will follow”
So as you can see, the most important tool you need to develop to improve your health, become stronger and fitter, look and feel better, is to create the right mindset for long-term results.
Without, you will find it hard to stick to any nutrition or exercise plan long-term and you will keep going forward and backward with your health.
As a health coach, I work with clients on changing their mindset to one that is stronger for the changes that are needed and for the challenges that are ahead of them, and help them achieve their health goals.
To help people transform their health I first work with them to create the right mindset. As without it any nutrition and exercise plan will ultimately fail. So till the right mindset is created I do not charge for the coaching I provide as I will only work with someone if they are looking for lifelong health change and not just a quick fix.
Only when someone has created the right mindset do I then coach them on what they should eat, how they should be exercising and how to implement the right lifestyle habits and behaviours needed for long-lasting health.
If you are interested in achieving the best lifelong health results please contact me through my website www.myhealthcoach.online or contact me directly on myhealthcoachuk@gmail.com or call me on 07788651269″
Chris Deavin, myHealthCoach