Overcoming Those Self Sabotage Demons To Achieve Your Health & Fitness Goals

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Last week I wrote about how stress is making you fat.  This week, I’m going to tie that in with a favourite term being thrown about Social Media at the moment, “Self Sabotage”.

I know this person who constantly struggles with her weight.  After years of trying, I finally managed to get her into the studio for a workout.  Within 10 mins and struggling for breath and feeling dizzy, she sat out the rest of the class.  A few days later she severely injured herself at her work and never returned to the studio again.  She probably doesn’t realise it but this is a classic case of “Self Sabotage”.

So, what is self sabotage? Why do we do it to ourselves and how can you overcome this demon?  Last week, I talked about our fight or flight response.  If you need to refresh your memory, click here.

We haven’t always been at the top of the food chain.  50,000 years ago when we were hunter gatherers, we were way down on the list.  Tigers had bigger teeth and ran faster than us.  Infection was a big enemy.  There was no such thing as antibiotics.  Spiders and snakes could kill us.  In fact almost 99% of plant matter could kill us.  So our self defence protection mechanism that I’ve talked about has ingrained in our DNA the following words: “KEEP SAFE” and as a result our sub-conscious mind is keeping us safe 24/7 365 days of the year.

Here’s an example and this is a true story retold to me today by a client.  Imagine you are with a group of peers at a work function and suddenly your manager has informed you that you have to give a presentation to 700 people in your workplace.  That deathly feeling at the pit of your stomach is your sub-conscious mind trying to keep you safe.  You’d rather walk out in front of a bus than stand up in front of 700 people and give a presentation.  Ultimately you decline the request and sit back down with your peers safe and comfortable in the knowledge that you won’t have to talk to the entire audience.

Why did he do this?  Because the fear of being ridiculed is as bad as being eaten by a sabre toothed tiger and your subconscious mind did what evolution has instructed you to do, “KEEP SAFE”.

But really, where was the danger in giving a talk?  Logic tells me that the act of public speaking wouldn’t have killed my client.  Nor would the act of attending a group training exercise in order to shed a few kilos.  But in both instances, these two people subconsciously believed that they needed protection from imminent danger and their lizard brain did exactly that.  It protected them by dragging them to a safe and secure place in their lives.

So, how do we break down these fears?  How do we prove to ourselves that the thing we are striving for is not going to harm us?  How do we stop from sabotaging our attempts to achieve a healthy lifestyle?

When Japan rebuilt itself out of the ruins of World War II, it’s executives adopted a philosophy so powerful that the apprentice eventually became the master.  The Americans taught the Japanese how to build cars and they eventually did it so well, Detroit (the American home of the automotive industry) became a ghost town.  How?  They adopted the “Kaizen Way”.

Whether you are getting up in front of an audience, or commencing an exercise regime, you are in fact making a change and it’s this change that the subconscious mind sees as danger.  Change is good but it can be misread by the subconscious mind as danger.  Take our hunter gatherer ancestors.  If you were outcast from the tribe and forced to live in isolation, chances are you’d die, so conformity became a safe way of staying alive.

And herein lies the answer.  How do you make a change to your lifestyle so that your subconscious mind does not perceive “the change” as a danger?  You do what the Japanese did.  They made one small change every day and repeated the process over and over again.  The theory being that the change was so small, so insignificant that no one having to undergo the change would feel uncomfortable about it and so they would adopt it without resistance.  Once they were comfortable with that small change they’d make another and another and another.  All of a sudden, over the space of a few years, you’ve completely revolutionised the way in which cars are manufactured to the extent that you now export more cars back to the land that taught you and you decimate an automotive industry in the land that conquered you.

Now relate this back to exercise.  How do you implement a lifestyle change like take up an exercise program without self sabotaging it?  You make the change slowly, in small amounts, but do it consistently over and over again.  In practical terms if you’ve never exercised before, jumping in to a five day spilt routine lasting 90 mins a session is probably a little too much too soon.  Your lizard brain will drag you kicking and screaming back to your comfort zone before you’ve had a chance to wipe the sweat from your brow.  So start off slowly.  A little bit here and then slowly increase it.

Need to change the way you eat?  Don’t jump in and go the whole hog right away.  Again your subconscious will sabotage your attempts and have you reaching for that sugary snack quicker than you can say, “pass the chips”.

Here are my five top tips for overcoming self sabotage

1. Admit You Have An Issue.  Alcoholics Anonymous start every meeting with the introduction, “Hi, I’m John and I’m an alcoholic.”  By admitting your issue, you are in a position to take responsibility.  Remember, it may not be your fault you are overweight, but it’s certainly your responsibility to resolve your weight issues.
2. Set yourself a smartie goal and write it down.  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound, Inspirational & Emotional.
3. Read it OUT LOUD twice a day and commit it to your subconscious mind.  Once it’s firmly implanted in your subconsciousness, it becomes the truth and once it becomes the truth, you remove the need to be protected from it.
4. Change Your Self Talk from, “I can’t” to “I can”.  Your subconscious mind will set out to prove you right, no matter what you say, so you may as well say the right things.
5. Do little bits daily & repeat.  Once you’ve set yourself a goal, chunk it down to bite sized pieces.  An example could be to give up smoking.  Calculate how many cigarettes you smoke in a day and the timeframe you’ve given yourself to give up.  Then work out how many cigarettes you need to reduce your daily consumption so that by the time you get to your goal date, you’re not smoking at all.

Pat Rae

ABOUT: Pat Rae is a personal trainer, lifestyle coach, massage therapist, motivational speaker, author and presenter.  He is the owner of a boutique PT studio in Brisbane  and an online health and wellness program both of which have been established to help people live healthier, happier and more energetic life through exercise, eating whole real foods and stressing less.  See more at http://www.prpt.com.au & http://www.patrae.com