Fitness is a lifestyle. You can do crash diets and temporary programs, but if you don’t make changes part of your norm, you will likely revert to where you were.
Consistent is about helping you build habits to get in shape and maintain it as a lifestyle. We encourage you to do the following for the next 90 days / 13 weeks / 3 months.
- Weigh yourself daily
- Log your food daily
- Log your exercise daily
- Write a reflection once a week
- Take a progress picture once a week
The daily habits are for observability. You can see how your diet and exercise affect your weight. Daily logging and weigh-ins increase your mindfulness too. If you already have advanced fitness, you may not need to do this. But as a beginner/intermediate, having data in front of you will keep you honest and enables you to iterate towards achieving your goals.
The weekly habits visually measure progress week over week and provide qualitative context. Amazing before and after pictures are concrete proof of progress. Weekly reflections can be a chore, but they are invaluable for giving context behind your weight, calories, and exercise numbers. The weekly review also has the benefit of keeping you mindful.
You may not always adhere 100% to these five habits. Perhaps you skip a weigh-in or declare logging bankruptcy while on vacation. As long as those instances are exceptions and not the norm, you will be fine. The more consistent you are, the more likely behavior change will occur. After three months, if you feel certain habits are no longer useful, feel free to drop them.
We built the Consistent app to make it easy to keep up with the five core habits. We also developed an in-app curriculum to discuss additional concepts for achieving and maintaining fitness as a lifestyle.
- Hitting your weekly average calorie goal and trying to stay within a "target-zone" every day is +/- 20% of your calorie goal. You may find this especially difficult when it comes to social eating. We don't want you to be anxious about social eating and holidays. You should relish these experiences. Instead, we encourage you to get in the habit of planning your calories, looking up what's available at a restaurant, plating food, and just accepting that your weight may go up, but this is due to an exception and not the norm.
- Hitting your protein target. We emphasize this as the most important macro. Most people struggle with this. Our readings recommend a series of high-protein foods and discuss the benefits of getting more protein.
- Setting and hitting exercise goals. We encourage you to be proactive each week and set exercise goals that are realistic given your schedule. Ideally, you are hitting these goals week over week and iteratively progressing over time.
- Moving at least 1 hour a day. We encourage you to find ways to move at least one hour a day. If you exercise on certain days, then great, but we also want you to move on your off days. Walking counts. Building the habit of moving every day is an incredible hack to keep metabolism up, endorphins flowing, and stay connected to fitness.
- Breaking through plateaus using eating windows, fasts, increasing movement, evaluating sleep/stress, and temporarily increasing calories. You may be tempted to decrease calories when your weight is stalling, but we think this is a race to the bottom. We recommend reduced calories as a last resort after other options have been exhausted.
- Staying motivated. Fitness is a journey, but motivation can wane after a month or so of being on a fitness program. Especially when social events and holidays come up, it can be challenging to stick with your goals. It's also de-motivating to see the scale go against you. Don't lose hope, stick with your habits, trust the process, and results will come,
- Getting an average of 7+ hours of sleep each day over the week. Poor sleep will lead to more cortisol, poor recovery, and bad eating habits. It's easy to overlook the importance of sleep, but sleep has a significant effect on your hormones, metabolism, health, and goals.
- Managing stress. Life is tough, and when we're stressed, we often eat poorly. Being aware that you may be eating out of boredom or stress can help curb poor choices. You can then conquer stress eating via de-stressing activities (e.g., talk to a friend, meditate, do yoga, or go on a walk)
- Drinking 8 cups of water a day. Hacks like getting a water bottle can help a long way. More water will help with satiety, flush toxins, and keep you overall happy.
- Developing a long-term mindset. You don't need to count calories for the rest of your life. After a few months, you'll be used to eating a certain way, portion sizing, and estimating calories. We still encourage you to keep up with the core habits (we keep up with them ourselves), but more importantly, lean into your newfound intuition.
Try our philosophy for three months and we guarantee your relationship with fitness will change.
Get in the best shape of your life and learn how to maintain it as a
lifestyle
