Fitness and health is so much more than eating well and going for the occasional jog. In fact, fitness and health start with the mind. If your head is in the wrong space then it is very difficult to achieve any long term fitness, weight loss or health goals. In this post I am going to talk about 8 attitudes that cripple your long term health and well being. They might even be making you fat!
1. Jealousy
If you go to the gym you will probably know what I am talking about. The green eyed monster is extremely bad for our health and well being because we are constantly comparing ourselves to other women at the gym. Sometimes I actually feel like the gym is a lot like high school; everyone checking out what the other girls are wearing, talking about and how they look when they do certain things. It can be quite stressful. If you go to the gym worried about how all the other women look better than you do then you are going to set yourself up for disaster. You will end up quitting out of frustration.
2. Playing the victim
I hate to say it but most of my friends play the victim. Every time I see them for coffee or dinner they talk about how hard done by they are and create a thousand excuses for why they haven’t been going to the gym or eating healthy. The sad fact is that none of them know they are doing it. They all think it is normal. And to some extent being the victim is very normal in our society. The fact of the matter is you have a choice. You can choose to be a victim of your own circumstances or you can choose to make a change. And if you want to look and feel good, live a long healthy life and be happy with your own situation you are going to need to stop playing the victim.
Here is an interesting article about playing the victim in Psychology Today that has some excellent insights about where the victim game leaves you in the end.
3. Laziness
If you took a look back at the last 10 times that you skipped a work out or got take away instead of cooking a meal I would wager that at least eight of those times it was because you couldn’t be bothered. Laziness is probably the most damaging attitude there is when it comes to health and fitness because, unfortunately, health and fitness are so damn hard to maintain. Working out at the gym is not easy, shopping for the right foods each week is even more annoying. However, laziness is even more annoying because it will cause you to have future regrets. One of the most painful things you can ever imagine is getting to your 50s, 60s and 70s and realizing that you wasted your life being lazy. Stop today.
4. Stress
Stress is an interesting one because a lot of you will disagree with me that it is an attitude. Most people think it is just something that occurs that we have no control over. And while I believe that is true some of the time, I also understand that a lot of women out there use stress as an excuse. They say that they are too stressed to go to the gym or cook a meal. The funny thing about that attitude, however, is that going to the gym and eating healthy are two of the most powerful cures for stress!
I also think that part of the reason women get stressed is because they are not achieving their weight loss goals. But if you made exercise a priority you would find that less stress occurs.
5. Insatiability
As a regular gym goer I constantly see women come and go. Some of them stick at it for a few months, other only last a week or so. And while there might be a whole host of reasons for this lack of consistency I understand that a lot of women are completely insatiable when it comes to exercise. In fact, I would go so far as to say that every single person (male and female) has experienced this when it comes to their exercise programs.
Insatiability means that you are impossible to satisfy. You become bored easily and as such you struggle to finish your goals. The fitness world is rife with this problem because fitness and weight loss goals take so long to achieve. After a week of the same workout you get bored and either move on or give up. I think this has a lot to do with our modern world of iPhones and Twitter and Facebook where we need to be constantly entertained. You can change your workout a few times but after a while you need to tackle the boredom otherwise you will end up giving up like everyone else.
6. Procrastination
We all do it and we all know its bad. Procrastination is an attitude that will send you to an early grave and an obese waist line because you simply never get around to it. Strongly linked to laziness, procrastination is much more sneaky. Why? Because it happens one omission at a time. Laziness is a general attitude that is very easy to spot but procrastination might only occur once or twice a week – just enough to sabotage your progress. You can bet your bottom dollar; the second you hear your mind saying “I’ll just finish this first” or “I’ll make up for it later” you are on your way to a lifetime of putting things off. Nip it in the bud as soon as you can.
7. Impetuousness
I have to admit being a very impetuous person. When I first started becoming interested in working out at the gym I just dived in as if I was an expert. Bad idea. Within a month I had obtained a pretty serious injury that plagues me to this day. Being impetuous means that you rush into things without really thinking them through first. This is a crippling attitude because, when it comes to health and fitness, you need to know a lot of information in order to do it correctly. If you go back and read our article on why you can’t lose weight you will see that it is extremely important to read and study and talk to experts before you try to play around with your body. Information is power and a lack of information is often crippling.
8. Impatience
Impatience is the final attitude that I want to talk about today. It is closely linked with almost all of the other attitudes and, like the other, it is extremely harmful for women who are trying to lose weight, get healthy and change their lives. The thing you need to realize really early on is that weight loss and fitness take a long time. They take years to really pull off in a long term way. And not only that, they take a long time on a daily scale. You need to exercise and eat healthy every single day if you want to make long lasting progress. If you are impatient you kill your progress at the very root because you just won’t stick it out.
If you want to learn to become more patient you need to really work on yourself because it is a long held habit. The article in the link is a great starting point for everyone out there.
Conclusion
Everything that you do in life starts in the mind. If you have a healthy attitude with a good motivation you will find that you can achieve all sorts of successes. If, however, you live your life choked by poisonous attitudes you will end up failing at everything you touch. Really examine yourself and see whether you are harboring any of these 8 attitudes that cripple your health and well being. Recognizing them is the hardest part.