Change Gradually to Get the Great Body You Want

I know you want to get a better body. I know you're tired of being embarrassed to wear summer clothes. But you can't go from where you are to looking like a fitness model or bodybuilder instantly. As frustrating as it might be, gradual change is the only way to go, no matter how frustrated you are.

This is an especially difficult concept for guys to deal with. It's our nature to dive head first into something new, without much thought of the consequences and all that. Many of us sit on our butts all week at the office, then confidently expect to outdo our kids at their favorite sports when we get home. We have a hard time accepting that we're not high school athletes anymore.

That said, we should look at this realistically. You don't look the way you want, or you wouldn't be here right now. And as much as it stinks, the reason you don't have the fitness you want is because of your lifestyle. If you want to make major changes in your appearance, you're going to have to make some pretty significant changes in your life. It's going to take a lot to go from where you are now to looking like you could be on the cover of a fitness magazine. But there are two problems with making the transition all at once.

The first is killing yourself. I mean that figuratively, but if you're really out of shape, it could be literally. If you try to go from your sedentary lifestyle & unhealthy eating habits to major workouts and eating like a body builder in one leap, your body is going to rebel. It's too much change all at once. Your body needs a chance to adjust to changing demands and nutrition. Go too fast and you'll get ill or injure yourself.

If you jump at the same time, your mind is going to freak out too. You won't be able to do the full exercise program, and your stomach will cry out for its daily extra-cheese pizza. You won't see any significant results right away, and you'll give up in disgust.

Finally, if you make all the changes at once and succeed in avoiding a physical or mental breakdown, you'll be missing something else. You won't know what works for you. Are the dietary changes working, or was your new diet useless with great results from the workouts? Are you better off making more dietary changes or lifting more weights? If you change everything at once, there's no way to know.

This wouldn't matter too much if you could jump right into a program that let you build muscle and lose fat without having to make any mid-course corrections. But that seldom happens. Most of the time, you need to make adjustments as you go along to keep moving in the right direction. You wouldn't know how to tweak things since you dived right into the deep end and changed everything at one.

Gradual change is a better way. By changing one thing at a time, say skipping the second double-cheeseburger at lunch, you'll start moving in the right direction without too much stress. Your body can adapt fairly easily when the changes are small. You won't hurt yourself and quit because it is too hard. Instead, you will have one success under your belt and be physically and mentally ready to move on to greater fitness.

So there you have it. Change gradually to succeed. You won't get there as fast as you would if you could dive in head first and change everything at once, but if that worked, you would already have the body you want, right?