Welcome back, everybody. Hey, guys, we’re back on the motivation kick. Today is accountability and I think there’s enough to unpack here to keep you interested in busy.
So what’s the angle here? How to be accountable?
There are two things. First of all, in order to be accountable, you have to set goals, to begin with, right? Like, I want to lose 20 pounds by Easter. No, but I do want to get healthier. But part of that is there’s got to be some defined metrics in getting healthier, otherwise, it’s not really a goal. And then you’re setting your parameters and they’re like, alright, in order to do this, I believe I have to exercise four days out of the seven days and I have to watch what I eat. And then you have to measure, right? So measuring is pretty important with regard to accountability.
So if I’m hearing you, right, the first thing to accountability is actually having a plan, reaching some type of plan, a written plan. In prayer and Bible study, they teach you to do prayer cards. And the reason for that is so that you can go back and look at things that have been accomplished in your life. And the same thing holds true for weight, diet, and weight loss as well as exercise.
It’s a plan and diary. So you got to have a plan, which I agree with, shameless plug we have one of those in the store. Really shameless. So, so have a plan. And it doesn’t have to be fancy writing. No, it literally can be on these three days a week, I’m going to do ABC. Yes. If I do a to-do and see, these are the results that I should see from A, B, and C. And if you want to set up a weekly goal, along with what you think should be the weekly result, that’s fine. I would be careful. We talked about this a little bit, but I’d be careful about daily recording of weight. Don’t take out a tape measure and weigh on a daily basis or measure on a daily basis, those things can be negative. I actually do hydro analysis where I sink into the water. Yeah, but I think those things can be negative to your emotions as well, right? Not just positive, as I was mentioning earlier, my son is trying to gain weight. He moves up and the world is his oyster and he moves down and it’s the world’s coming to an end. That’s the thing, right you don’t look at the day or the number you look at the trend and the behavior and the commitment. If you’re doing all the right things, and the scale gives you a bad number one day. You just record it in your diary, because you need to like your prayer card, you need to have that history. But don’t get hung up on day focus on the behavior and the trend.
That’s so interesting. Did I ever tell you back when I was at Raymond James as a financial advisor, I think you just hit on something, the activity is what’s important. I remember my branch manager when back in the days of cold calling, I’d cold call people for stocks and bonds and everything he threw out at me. He did a little contest. For every No that you get, we’re going to have a party or whatever else for the person who gets the most No’s and I would consistently get the most No’s and when I got Yes, I was right. And I was like, Oh man, I gotta stop what I’m doing. But he was driving home a point. That is, it’s the activity that matters you cannot control the outcomes. Right? Right. So when looking at this and setting up your plan, have that in mind. It’s almost like cholesterol if the doctor said to you Scott, you gotta get healthy, start eating right, exercising, we want your cholesterol to go down would you measure your cholesterol in a week? No. Accountability again can really kind of get your emotions going positively or negatively if you’re looking at them too closely.
I think also important to accountability is, you highlighted on this but we didn’t really talk about it, is establishing benchmarks and these can be as minimal as how far can I lean over and grab my toes. Maybe it’s the scale and maybe to your point the tape measure. I’ve never had much luck with the tape measure because I get my wife to do it. And I swear she does it differently every time there’s an overlap, or it’s not an overlap. I tend to like the scale but again choose your benchmarks. Choose it based on what are you really trying to accomplish. Is it general health? Is it flexibility?
Short-term, long-term goals. I do it here. I sit here and I write down my daily day, what do I want to accomplish today? And at the end of the day did I get that done? I wouldn’t do that on a daily basis from a physical fitness perspective, but I would certainly look at that on a weekly basis. Yeah, I get on the scale twice a day. Literally. My wife probably gets on the scale twice a year. There’s somewhere in between, right? That’s probably good.
All right. I think we’re out of time. Ideas, comments, criticism, or compliments send them to Snackcast@yes.fit or to our Facebook group. We thank you for tuning in. Stay moving soon.