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Biggest Challenges
Being a Warrior for almost two years now, I learned that one of the main factors of failure during the first program is, that people try to do too much too fast and all at once. Change is difficult. That’s why it is easiest to make a plan when starting something new, for example a new program. Let’s say you never worked out before, you don’t eat healthy and you do not have a good sleep routine or any routine for that matter. If you start off jumping in trying to get up at 5am, meal prep to perfection, count macros, workout every day and so on.. Chance is it will be overwhelming within the first few weeks and you will just throw in the towel. I suggest when you start off to commit to do a program for two rounds.
On the first round for the first 4 weeks focus on getting all the workouts in. Does not matter if you do them in the morning or end of day. Whatever works. If you cannot find time to do all the circuits, just commit to doing two rounds of all exercises instead of all 3. It is not about being perfect, its about making a habit .
If you already figured out how to meal prep, great. If you still struggle with that, just focus on the first few weeks to go to healthier choices. Grab the fruit instead of a chocolate bar, but don’t feel bad or punish yourself if you end up following old patterns. Those are hard to break. The first 4 weeks are to focus on working out consistently so that will be your first goal. Progress is any improvement from who you were prior to who you want to become. You are your own competition so to become a better you should be your focus.
On the following 4 weeks keep up the workouts and add more focus on nutrition. Learn a bit about food, read some articles on how to meal prep. Try new recipes. Once you become more familiar with the foods you enjoy and find new foods to add to your list, meal prep and figuring out what your body needs will become much easier. Try to plan out what you gonna eat for the month. Print a calendar and fill in ideas of what you would like to eat for each meals, focus on good quality protein, whole grain carbs and some healthy fats. Counting macros is not as difficult as people think it is (I could make a post focused on that if anyone is interested, let me know in the comments). Every food has certain amount of calories and certain macros (carbs, fat and protein). And as funny as it is, it is not that exact. Calories shown on packaging for example only has to be within 20% in accuracy. That means whatever portion size they say has 100 calories, it might be 20% more than that, or 20% less or anything in between. I need you to know that so you can stop obsessing that you are 5g away from your protein goal. It is not that big of a deal girl! 🙂 Anyways, that’s a topic for another day.
After both of those (regular workouts and healthy food choices) became more natural to you, you can play with a morning and night routine to set yourself up for success. Be mindful, have a going to bed routine can be so helpful in achieving good sleep quality and then will make you be more energized for the day. Do something just for yourself, silence the business of life for 10 minutes to just be to yourself. It can be hard with kids yelling and everyone wanting something. But remember, you are someone and just like you want to give a lot to everyone around you, you also deserve to give to yourself.
Your second round will go much smoother than the first, which is why I always recommend to finish round one instead of starting over. Starting over never does any good. Often it just discourages us and puts us in this cycle or downwards spiral. The first round can be super messy with missed workouts and weekend mess ups on the nutrition part but once you completed it you did it. And you can do it again. And again, and again.. 🙂
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