Summer Swimsuit Season Goals and Patience
I see so many people set summer health or fitness goals and then get frustrated with progress (or lack thereof) then give up. I also often see people making lots of progress as the season heats up, but then as the swimsuits get put away and the season ends they have switched back into patterns in their life that land them back near square one and their pre-goal status. Most often this occurs with weight loss goals as that is the most common this time of year for many that we work with in our nutrition coaching and holistic health coaching. As a behavior change specialist I hate seeing the fast lived short-term progress only, knowing that with some small tweaks things could be different.
There is no judgement or anything wrong with the seasonal approach or summer time goal-setting in general. Sometimes there are reasons to train for a specific season like in sports or a time sensitive goal that only needs to be achieved for a short period like running a race. After all, using times of year to spur changes and stir up some motivation can be very helpful at the beginning when you’re trying to make a challenging change in your life. However, I also have personally fallen into the trap of shortsighted summer transformations that were meant to be more. There are definitely some common issues that lead to shortsightedness with wellness goals; and I’d like to help you make those changes stick a little better with some things I have learned making mistakes myself (see personal photos below) and also coaching people over the years that have really helped them. We still have some summer left and also some valuable time to get things to stick a little better so they gel… hopefully for life (at least that’s what we are aiming for).
A Helpful Analogy
Progress can be like slow drops of water into a glass. Each day of very consistent changes made is like one drop in a big glass. It takes a long time to see any real change it water level!
Noticeable progress can take a REALLY long time (read: way longer than you can imagine for most people). Like so long that it’s easy to not even notice that it’s happening. Like a tall glass being filled one drop at a time, the process can feel like it drags on eternally without noticing changes especially the more often you check with expectations. Imagine one day of nearly 80-100% adherence to your goals equaling one drop of water and then how long that would take to literally fill a glass, let alone notice ANY water in it.
As menioned, that can be a huge reason people give up on their goals even though the were making progress. It was hard to see! Sometimes weeks and even months can go by while very little is noticeable (especially if you are checking or expecting quick changes constantly). It’s just not how it works.
One of the biggest issues with transformations or seasonal changes is that they can be performance-based goals with unrealistic expectations. Most of the time people have the goal of losing 10lbs or gaining a specific body composition goal like a “6-pack”, running 12 miles a week, or sleeping 8 hours. The issue with a measurable performance goal here can be that if you don’t get to your EXACT goal on the EXACT date you wanted, you lose steam and feel deflated, and that can lead to just giving up altogether. Or perhaps you don’t get there fast enough and you are just disappointed. Either way, this can really make continual progress hard to sustain if the expectations and timeline are out of whack. I can tell you that I have seen this with most all people looking to “transform” before or during peak summer time.
Two things:
Patience…This is BIG and cannot be overstated. You really need to have a lot of patience when it comes to making changes in your life. This goes for most people. I see this as one of the main forces in people giving up early if they have a performance-based goal that wasn’t met as they envisionied. And this can happen a lot since progress is most always non-linear, meaning that there are just as manmy downs as ups on the way up. To make matters more challenging, we as a species are pretty hard wired to pay lots of attention to negative things. Combine that with the increasing desire for most people to also want things to happen very quickly and it’s no wonder it becomes hard to sustain big lifestyle changes.
When it comes to changing behavior and your health or fitness level, this can take an incredibly long time. Like the analogy of a glass gradually getting filled one drop (day) at a time. It may be months until you notice any substantial amount of water in there.
Swap out your performance goal for a progress goal…Change how you expect to see your goals manifest. How often do you expect a very specific outcome versus one you can look for progress for each day? Instead of looking for a concrete number on the scale or the barbell for instance, can you focus on the progress you are making with the daily practices you need to be focusing on to reach your specific goal? What if the scale doesn’t move but you are now cooking most all of your meals at home when just a few months ago you were eating out at restaurants or fast food 5 days a week? After all, the goal isn’t really the goal, since it is the changes you make that become a daily automatic routine that get you and keep you where you want to be. This way of looking at progress through the behaviors or actions that get you there can not only be more sustainable when you don’t have performance indicators exactly where you expect, but it also further solidifies celebrating and strengthening the actual areas you need to be focusing on the most to progress and maintain your goals.
A Problem
Sometimes we can follow the advice of patience and adherence to the important behaviors rather than outcomes and still end up in a not so great place. In these photos I was not happy (neither one!). In one I am significantly overweight and struggling with some deeper issues in my life at 24 years old and in the other I am in my early 30s and had dieted down so low that I am feeling pretty deprived and also VERY low energy with my current activity level. I had been patient and done it right but it was missing something…
Simply being patient and focusing in on daily progress actions versus pining for an ideal endpoint can be very helpful , but it doesn’t always guide you in the best way or provide for changes that last. Those actions and changes need to connect to something deeper or perhaps most meaningful to you. Sometimes there are things that may be in the way of you finding what that is. Sometimes that can even be your past, your present environment, or even your very own self.
In both photos above of two different points in my life, I hadn’t found that exactly yet, though I did have certain key elements in place more so in the second than the first. However, neither were what I needed to really connect to a greater purpose for being my healthiest self. After some serious soul searching (read: therapy, better daily healthy living skills and practices, meeting my wife, and now having our son) I can definitely connect to and define my purpose for all my personal wellness goals.
Connect your goals to the rest of your life and what means the most to you
It takes time to make progress…LOTS OF TIME. Sometimes it requires shifting paths a little and that can be done with seasonal summer goals as well. We still have some amazing summer weather and energy to continue to enjoy for months to come. It’s still okay to harness the long sunny days that creep late into the night; but see what you can do to connect your current summer goals to more long-term ones. Connect what you are doing now to make changes to something that you really value for the rest of your life. Is it long term health? Is it being more physically able at work or with your kids? Is it maintaining healthier eating habits so you feel better and more energized each day? Are you trying to improve your metabolism so you avoid health issues that run in your past or your family? Are you trying to be less stressed so you can improve your focus and overall well-being?
Whatever it is that gets you going to begin with, make sure it’s a meaningful expectation you have for what drives you in your greater purpose or desires in life. Not a 3-month period alone.
A Caveat and opportunity: 1X Goals-- There are always situations where you may only want to achieve some goal 1X or for a short period. Maybe you want to fit into a specific pair of pants for a wedding, run a race that only happens once a year, etc.
However, you may first want to ask yourself if there is something about this one time goal that really is a life or lifelong goal. Are you trying to fit better in your clothes for an event because of the clothes and the event itself, or because you really want this to be how you fit into them year-round? Why do you want to fit better into a specific pair of paints to begin with? Is this something that aligns with something that you want to improve about your health for other reasons in your life? This can be an opportunity to reframe that goal right there as you are getting going or already at it.
You can also distill practices from your 1X goal that translate to lifelong wellness goals that not only make the work you put in for your 1X goal more powerful, but it can then impact other areas of your life and other goals. Encouraging yourself to keep leaning in and forward for longer periods with your legs as they begin to fatigue improves your endurance and gets you closer to running longer for distances. That same lesson of leaning in and pressing may also help you with some tougher work you may need to do with family, friends, or at work. You can use some of the very physical lessons and apply them to ones that may be more introspective and contemplative or perhaps deal with how you relate to those around you outsides yourself. For a deeper dive into goal setting strategies and to learn about some other helpful techniques to make habits stick and reset new ones as well have a read here
My dad and I have been doing side by side flex photos for years. It’s another photo with a similar theme to above, but in this one I am much happier and also solidly connected to what makes me plug away daily toward the healthiest version of myself. Part of that is also my dad and hoping to be as physically able as him to throw around my grandchild if I’m lucky enough one day. It’s not about looking as lean as possible, winning races, or lifting as much weight as I can.
Summary & Tips
Whether you are looking to make a 1X transformation or really are in it for the long haul, patience, reframing goals outside of performance and then connecting them to greater purpose can be instrumental in not only achieving something once, but for many years to come.
Seasons like summer can spur the desire and motivation for change and this is a natural thing to harness to create your own changes.
Patience is incredibly important in lasting change and can be practiced by not only creating more realistic expectations, but acknowledging that what you may be after is something that is indeed a lifelong pursuit and focusing on the daily actions that will help you maintain.
Having only performance goals that need to be measured at a certain time with specific outcomes can be helpful in tracking but when solely focused on can make you feel deflated when not perfect and lose sight of your bigger picture and meaning.
Try this instead
Dig deep questions: What about my current goal connects to what is most important to me with my greater wellness goals for the next 5 years? 10years? 25 years? What will matter to me most at those times? How do I want to age? How can I best hold on to or gain function in the areas of life that mean the most to me and my overall wellness?
Expectations vs Reality: Are my expectations realistic for what I am hoping to achieve currently and beyond. Is this something I am at least 9/10 POSITIVE I can, want, and will do for the short term and does this go beyond to long term? If it ain’t a 9 it’s gotta shift in some way to become one for all 3 questions.
Big Ups- Celebrate!: One of the biggest missing pieces is when you don’t stop to acknowledge your wins. Whether it is something incredibly small you notice you are now doing regularly most days toward your goal but glance over, or a big win you didn’t acknowledge because it’s not “perfect”, you need to take time to reflect and celebrate progress. No matter how big or small. Hard work needs to be acknowledged and celebrated to be sustained long term.
By embracing the understanding that behavior change takes time, you can better cultivate resilience, maintain motivation, and approach your journey with compassion and self-acceptance. Eventually you can get to a place where you are then just maintaining. What’s important to you?
Interested in unlocking your own inner coach and learning how to set an maintain goals for yourself? That is something we really enjoy helping people do and watching them transform their health and fitness. Check out our 48 week Holistic Health Coaching Program or schedule a Complimentary Consult with us and let us know what you are hoping to achieve by the end of this Summer and beyond…