As you move through life it seems that progress or success is associated with concept of addition and making your life bigger. When you’re young you add more friends, more social activities, more responsibilities. You go from a small school to a big school, from no job to a part time job, perhaps you add in a sport or hobby. Then you may add a relationship, and responsibility of a more important job, or maybe new credentials, licenses or certifications.
Maybe you just need a little less of what you already haveFrom there you might to add to your resume with more responsibility, a bigger title, a bigger family. Then it expands to more money, two cars instead of one, bigger tv, a bigger house, more vacation time, more social events and so on.
For most of your life the concept of success and progress is quite literally tied to the idea of adding something, anything, to your life.
This concept of addition = success may fall apart on you when you consider the unique situation of diet/fitness/health and weight loss.
Many people make the mistake of assuming the path to a healthier body, a better looking body, being in better shape, improving their fitness and losing weight is the result of adding yet another piece to their life that has been missing.
The addition could be a supplement, a new workout, a new cardio routine, a new yoga routine, a new functional training program, a new kettle bell, a new bosu ball, a new magazine subscription, a new trainer, a new functional food, a new diet, another new diet, another new diet, another new diet (this wasn’t a typo…I’m just trying to capture the concept of how many diets most people try), more supplements, more functional foods, more healthy food choices…more more more.
Most people never consider the concept that what they need to get in shape is simply less of what they already have. Less food, less magazines, less diet and fitness information, less supplements, less functional foods, less workouts get caught up deciding what to do with, less diet books to read, less of all of it.
Simplifying your diet and fitness life is likely the first step that most people need to do nowadays before they can make any real progress towards getting in shape. Once you start down the path of diet and fitness ‘addition’ there is no end to the amount of things you can add (and money you can spend) without making any progress.
In direct contradiction to the rest of your life, diet and fitness progress is almost always made when you take the path of less not more.
Your job is to find the sweet spot and add only what is necessary to make progress in diet and fitness without overloading on too much of everything. In most cases you and I and everyone else has already added way more than what we need. This means your main order of business is downsizing what you consume (both food and information) to get in shape and stay there.
John
