DOES YOUR BEHAVIOR MATCH YOUR GOALS?

"Look at your goals.  Look at your behavior.  Does your behavior match your goals?"  I first heard this quote while reading Never Let Go, by Dan John.  It's one that stays in the back of my mind all the time, especially if I need some motivation.  Not only can it be used in health and exercise, but it can be carried over into whatever you are doing in life.  Since this is a fitness blog and I'm not a counselor, I'll keep this post about fitness.

One of the most common fitness goals for people (especially this time of year) seems to be weight loss. In late spring and early summer (oh....and January 1st), everyone seems to blow up the Facebook/Twitter/whatever other social networking site you are a part of's news feed with statuses about their fitness goals relating to losing weight.  Then, a few months later, these people appear the same as when they started.

I've been there.

In college, I wanted to be HUGE, like the pictures of guys you see on the muscle magazines at Wal Mart.  Well.....obviously....that never happened.  Could it be partly because my genome or my lack of performance enhancers?  Possibly.  Or could it be that I didn't want it bad enough? Yea...more than likely.  In order to gain weight for a mostly ectomorphic (typically classified with long, thin bones) body type like mine, it usually takes a gross amount of calories and the right type of training....aka HARD WORK.  Did I want to be huge?  Of course.  Did I want to do the things that needed to be done in order to be huge?  Apparently not bad enough.

This failure of achieving what we want seems to happen way too often in fitness.  Could it be that our goals are too high or unrealistic? Possibly, but it's likely because the goals we desire don't match our behaviors.  Below are a few common fitness goals paired with one way to help meet them.

1) If your goal is to lose weight....learn how to close your mouth.  Of course, there could be more to it than this, but I guarantee it will benefit the majority of us.
2) If your goal is to gain muscle mass....don't spend all your time in the gym doing bench press and bicep curls. There are roughly 600-800 muscles in the human body, so why do we spend 75% of our time in the gym focusing on less than 10% of them?

3) If your goal is to be healthy....eat more fruits and vegetables.  Common sense.
4) If your goal is for your kids to be healthy....don't feed them Lucky Charms or Frosted Flakes for breakfast every morning.  Look on the ingredients list for Frosted Flakes and you'll see that sugar is the second most prominent ingredient.  If we want our kids to have a longer lifespan than us, then find another alternative.

5) If your goal is to move well into old age....move well now.  In the world of computers, television sitcoms and video games, we are often stuck in one position for too much time.  This causes tight/weak muscles, which leads to bad posture, which leads to bad movement.

Setting goals is easy.  Meeting goals takes discipline, perseverance, and persistency.

Here's a guy who had one goal and did everything he could to reach it.....

So......how bad do you REALLY want to reach your goals?