How can you have plans for your persistence, when you don’t have a clue what tomorrow holds? Funny enough, experience has shown that in times of such drastic changes and enormous stress, which we are living in the last 15-18 months, it is exactly what you believed to be impossible in the first place that comes to the rescue – that is your own personal plan about yourself, your next 24 hours.

It is not by accident for Bestefficient Challenge 2021 of Actualno At Home, we chose four very interesting, but “common” people, subjected to the daily routine trials that we all experience – keeping deadlines, taking care of kids, handle all sorts of changes – at work, in personal life, everywhere.

Before we start talking about their specific meal plans and training routines, let’s talk about all of us, in general – about our behavior when (not) being able to cope with the daily challenges.

I don’t have a plan and I don’t know where to start at all to be persistence

Through the years I’ve developed hundreds of meal schedules and training plans and it is exactly my tracking them that has helped me to improve and enhance them. That’s exactly what I want from the people I work with – to be willing to track their behavior.

It all starts with taking a couple of measurements – how much do you weigh, how many steps a day do you do, how many calories a day do you consume with your food?

All it takes is a bit of self-observation and self-analysis, in order to be more self-aware. If you don’t know which point you are at, you have no way to determine which way you are going.

I don’t have a daily routine and habits

Every day you wake up at a different time and go to bed the same way, you nibble something when you get the chance, you move when you can, and every time you try to go workout you get such a monster of a muscle fever that you feel like something chewed and spitted you out.

This type of behavior seems to have become even more common with the rise of working at home – the ubiquitous home office, which on one hand give you more freedom, but on the other – tangles you in its webs of timelessness without you even noticing, and you find yourself “working a bit” at any time of the day until finally, it gets to be a day in – day out.

The lack of daily routine jeopardizes every new activity of being interrupted, missed, or even completely ignored. It is difficult to be consistent in unforeseen circumstances. If you feel that you need a new beginning you need to create habits that will help you keep your order and being consistent.  

Here is how: Use the lemons that life has given you. If you use part of the extra time you spend at home – for working out – this extra movement can only lead to something better.

If you want to transform your body – you cannot do it without having a plan for that! It is not possible!

But where to start if you’re feeling completely lost? My answer is: Ask the help of a specialist. Not a friend that you think is knowledgeable, but a specialist indeed – a professional coach and an experienced nutritionist.

The workouts are not among your priorities

We only have 24 hours within a day. The good news is that they are always there. You only need to rank your priorities within them.

There is some time that you need to necessarily take for sleeping, eating, and working and these should be relatively constant so take them out of the 24 hours and in the remaining time do add workouts but rank them first in priority. Do that for at least a month in a row to build a habit.

It is important to understand that if you want a tight body, and feel strong, toned, and energetic, you need to free up enough of your time to turn this into reality.

Try to stop the avalanche of excuses why it is impossible to do it (the younger kid, the older kid, your boss, the deadlines, the weather, magnetic storms…), turn off the excuses mode, and just do it.

Only think about how you can do it: how you will prepare you gym bag, will book you training appointment, will get to the gym and will work out. That’s it.

Insert link to: https://www.facebook.com/bestefficient/posts/501103437987951

I don’t fully realize the problem.

You think that what I said above is some sort of a whim or a luxury. “There are more important things”! No, there are not.

Health issues related to obesity  – and especially to sedentary way of life, which of late is considered of even greater harm than obesity – do exist, they do refer to you too and you will not be able be gone of that in 60 seconds.

And if today you are not consistent in the gym or in some other physical activity, I assure you that you are putting your health at risk in the future. That future when all the deadlines at work will be gone, kids will have grown up, the climate will have changed…

Your body, though, will still be your body. Take care of it as though it will need to serve you all your life.

Stress is Too Much

According to a study, published at the Men’s Health magazine, in the last year of lockdowns and social distancing, a considerable amount of people are subjected to such stress that their emotional resources are simply depleted to such an extent they just can’t bring themselves to going to the gym.

The solution to this problem is again called „movement“. Move any which way you feel like. Just walk! Walk, until you feel like running. Or going to the gym and training purposefully, with professional help.

From my experience as a fitness instructor:

After we establish some realistic goals, for the purpose of which we need to meet and talk:

• I calculate the relevant daily caloric intake with Bestefficient calculator here  
• We break down the goal into several stages and start going after them one by one, one step at a time
• I create a Meal Plan that needs to abided by simultaneously with the Training Plan

This helps us focus on the process, which leads us to the goal, to break the goal into smaller ones and aim at achieving those daily or weekly on our way to the big goal.

This gives you two benefits – on one hand achieving the smaller goals gives you additional motivation – and on the other – this way I also help you achieve your big goal faster.

When you focus on the goal, instead of the process, you risk falling into a rather common trap!The goal by itself leads to nothing. This, however – in itself – does not mean you need to lower your goal. No! You just need to increase the power/ intensity with which you attack the goal. The purpose of achieving that takes constant, deliberate, planned efforts. Every day.