Plymouth Personal Trainer Has Peculiar Fitness Tip: Lower Your Standards to Win With Your Health!

I’m hired by people who live in Plymouth, Maple Grove, Wayzata, and other western suburbs in the Twin Cities who want to raise their standards. Most of the people who reach out to me via this website want to lose weight, get back to 100% after a frustrating injury, or just get accountability creating and executing a healthy plan.

I hear various versions of this statement all the time: “I’m tired of living in a body that I’m not proud of, and I’m ready to make a change. I just want to feel better and look better…like I did when I was _________ years old!”

Before we get you fitting in THOSE JEANS you’ve kept all these years “just in case…”

Let’s tackle the problem keeping many people from executing a healthier version of their life. It’s standards. Pie-in-the-sky standards (why can’t pie ever just be at mouth level? I digress.).

“I need to workout for an hour before work,” says the perpetual night owl. Not gonna happen.

"I need to find a way to avoid chocolate,” thinks the chocoholic who needs more than a 12-step program for their cravings.

I help my clients learn to lower their standards, not raise them. Here’s what I mean.

Lower Your Workout Standard! How long should you workout? 40 minutes? 60 minutes? I recommend six minutes! On some days, like the days I arrive at your door for in-home personal training, let’s crush it. Let’s get after it for 45-50 minutes and work hard. You will hate when I show up. You will love when I leave. And you will wonder why YOU paid ME to work YOU so hard! But on the other days? Workout for six minutes. Three exercises, for two minutes apiece. You will do focused work. You will work hard. And you will get yourself to actually do it.

Maybe you will do more than six minutes. Maybe you will get done with six minutes and think, “I can go for another six minutes!” Or you may say, “Now that I’m warmed up, I’m going to crush on the treadmill!” By agreeing to six minutes, you got a workout in that will probably extend past six minutes. But even if it didn’t…you reinforced a healthy habit, burned some calories, kept a promise to yourself, AND physiologically got yourself in a spot where you will crave more exercise next time AND desire healthier food! Those are huge returns on a six-minute investment!

Lower Your Food Standard! When it comes to food, let’s try to put less work in and settle for an easier path. Most of my clients don’t have time for breakfast in the morning. And fresh cooked dinners are great…but how often do we have the time AND energy for that?

My job is to help you make healthier easier. It’s time for nutrition hacks! Breakfast can be an easy grab-and-go proposition. Things like Applegate Sausage, fruit, Lara Bars, egg bake muffins, and smoothies (when built correctly…it is easy to take the healthy out of a smoothie really quickly!) make breakfast a cinch.

Lunches and dinners? Forget about it! Quick recipes that we plan and make in advance (yes, I COOK WITH and COOK FOR many of my clients) can make life easier. There’s nothing quite like getting home after a long day and reaching in the fridge to grab a perfect dinner that is already prepared! We don’t need a fresh dish each night. We don’t need you staying up all hours of the night doing food prep. Let’s lower the standard. Let’s make healthy easier to execute.

You won’t be saying, “I hate cooking!” when we build it correctly. It’s manageable. It’s not an added stress to you. I help my clients find a way to make healthy work for them. Easier execution, less pretense.

Lower Your Expectations for Yourself! I’m not worried about you executing the perfect food and fitness week. Forget the perfect week. Forget the perfect day. Let’s focus on a small win…like not letting your co-worker tempt you with her weekly batch of cookies!

Stacking up small wins is the name of the game! When we start to stack up small wins (6-minute workouts, easy and healthy dinners we eat instead of a drive-thru option), momentum starts to kick in. Small wins turn into big wins, and we look back at our week and think, “I CRUSHED IT!”

Eat a quick and healthy breakfast. Small win. Take the stairs at work. Small win. Donna (your co-worker with the cookies) throws you a curveball and offers you a cupcake? “Not today, Satan…I mean, Donna!” Because you’ve got a chocolate chip muffin (reach out to me via email to adam@myhealthyobsession.com and I’ll send you the recipe) for a mid-morning snack…and now Donna wants to know if you brought enough of your treat to share. Small win that feels like a big win!

Often times we look too far ahead at the long line of perfection we expect of ourselves and get tripped up by the small hurdle immediately in front of us. Lower your standards. Let bite-sized success become the thing you are good at. Focus on the next small win…and win you shall!