One of the toughest things you can do in life is to objectively look at where you are at in your life and then decide you are going to make a change. Whether this is in your career, your role as a husband or wife, as a mother or father, or what I consider one of the toughest places to objectively measure and that is the habits surrounding your health.
If we focus on where we are at right now by objectively looking at a number of factors such as our body fat percentage, our blood pressure, our lipid levels, our sensitivity to insulin related to diabetes, or how we perform in basic physical tests like running 1 mile or deadlifting our body weight. What does this tell us about our health? Where would you fall in terms of the continuum of sickness and disease to health and performance?
Bringing awareness to what you eat, how much you eat, why you are eating and the habits you have developed that have put you at this point in your life is all addressed in what we call “Awareness Week”. Awareness week is tough but also very eye opening because you are taking a deep look at your behaviors, good and bad, and getting an objective starting point of where you are at. This means seeing what a lifetime of bad habits, neglecting your health, and putting your needs last has done to your body...that’s tough.
This can be done in a variety of different ways from getting body composition measurements, having you take photos, tracking everything you eat and drink, and answering questions about your behaviors to bring awareness to your daily habits. There is no hiding from awareness week but that is the point. This is you, this is how you got here and now we know where you're at. What comes after awareness week is where the real fun begins because now we know where to go next and we can start working on a plan to progress to your goals.
One of my favorite questions to ask a new client at the end of awareness week is, “What did you learn about yourself in the last week?” The sheer amount of realizations about the habits they have developed always blows them away. Can you think of any bad habits you have and want to change? Now 2x that number and this is what you have learned at the end of awareness week. These habits happen so slowly over months if not years but the effects will forever change your quality of life and longevity.
So why is awareness the first step? Awareness is the first step because once you know something you can make changes to it. It’s really that simple, once you have a baseline from everything you do in awareness week, change can start to happen...and it’s predictable because we have all the facts. Have you ever heard the phrase what gets measured can be changed? Well it couldn’t apply any more perfectly than in this situation.
As experienced coaches, we can give you things to work on and hold you accountable to making those behavior changes. That slow behavior change that got you to this unhealthy and unhappy point in your life, has to be replaced with slow behavior change of healthy habits that will progress you towards your goals.
Knowing your current habits and situation is the first step in our coaching process and it always starts the accountability process. Having an open mind about who you are and what defines you, will allow you to become who you want to be and how you want to live your life. The first step is always awareness then you can start to make a change!
Live Well, Eat Well
~Coach Brant
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