People are always looking for the best or easiest…
With a lot of things in life, especially fitness, people are always looking for either the easiest route or the best one. Even though it may not make sense to work harder than you have to, many times there is no way to get around the fact that some goals are just going to be hard to reach. Fitness goals are often sabotaged by misguided expectations. Unfortunately the only way to reach any sort of sustainable fitness level it’s going to take hard work, consistency, and time. Whether you want to lose and keep off some weight or build a jacked physique, it's not something that can be achieved overnight, in a few weeks, or even a few months in most cases. Rather than looking solely ahead at your end goal trying to find a shortcut, people should focus more on how far they have come and how much they have changed.
One of the biggest things I have found to help people with completing goals is determining what they will adhere to. Yes there are optimum ways to reach your fitness goal, but that doesn’t mean it's going to be the best for you. People will often make much more progress developing a plan that they can adhere to, rather than half-ass following the perfect plan. Now this may mean it takes you a little longer to reach your goal, but I think that the tradeoff is worth it. Taking a little extra time to fully complete a goal is better than not completing it at all because you burned yourself out.
10 years of consistent training VS off and on
A great example of this would be to look at two individuals who have the same goal of building a muscular physique. The first person trains for 10 years consistently. Sometimes they try new things like powerlifting opposed to bodybuilding. Or take some crossfit classes for a few months here and there to get a new experience. Sometimes them changing things up so often will cause them to seem like they aren’t making any progress at all.
Then the second individual trains really hard and burns themselves out so they stop training for a few months. Then they get back in the gym and try to follow a crazy plan that gets them injured so they are out for 6 months. Then they come back to the gym and can only stay motivated to come for a few months and take another 3 month hiatus. They then continue this vicious cycle of coming and not coming until 10 years is up.
It’s almost paints a clear picture of who is going to have the better developed physique at the end. Yeah the first person may not have always done what is “optimal”, but they dedicated the time to always working at what they could do. And throughout those years has learned what does and doesn’t work for them. They've developed habits that can carry them through another 20 years of lifting, and still continue to chase new goals. The second person unfortunately will probably feel bitter and think the only way to grow in the gym is use steroids. Or make excuses like “they just don’t have time train to actually get big”. When the problem really is they were always just chasing the most optimal program and not the best one for them. Rather than putting in the time, they took time off and expected to still make progress. Now I’m not saying we all don’t have our own failures. I myself took 8 months off of the gym in my early lifting career, but the key point is I didn’t make a habit out of it. Once I came back from that small hiatus, I’ve always prided myself on knowing that I do what I can to make myself better every day. Sometimes I may follow what I believe is an optimum plan, but other times I tweak what I am doing so it’s sustainable and something I know I’ll adhere to.
You have to be honest with yourself in choosing what you will adhere to…
When deciding how you want to tackle your goals you just have to be honest with yourself. I don’t think any goal is too big, I just think people try to accomplish them too quickly. Losing weight, building muscle, or fulfilling any goal for that matter just takes time. Some people may need to start really slowly, creating habits along the way that will help them adhere to plan, others will already have the habits they need in place that allow them to follow a more optimal plan. Most people won't be able to go from 0-100 without burning out. People should focus on building upon small habits that over time will create the lifestyle they want to live. The biggest thing to remember is to just keep moving forward. As long as you don’t totally give up, you're still making progress. And if you do happen to fall off the wagon, don’t beat yourself, just get back up and go at again.