Taking Action To Build Muscle and Lose Fat

Building muscle and losing fat is 80% behavior and only 20% know-how. So by taking the steps of accepting responsibility, identifying specifically what you want to achieve, and choosing to make the commitment to go after it, our natural progression of movement leads us to the point of taking action to achieve your dreams. In fact, procrastination is the killer of your dreams. After you identify what you want, you must start heading towards those goals in well-thought out and planned action steps. When I chose to go full steam ahead with competing in a bodybuilding show, I still had to take action and move towards my goal. After putting all of my goals and a schedule on paper, I still had to put one foot in front of the other and actually start the physical process of getting ready for the show. I had to do the shopping for what little food I could eat. (Dieting for a bodybuilding show is extremely different than dieting for long lasting and permanent weight loss. I actually advise people to eat MORE if they want to lose weight for the long term. It just has to be more of the good stuff, more often. Not more of the junk food. So if I scare you with my talk of eating very little, I am simply making reference to my bodybuilding competition, which, unless you are a glutton for punishment, I wouldn't recommend :-) I had to get to the gym each and every day. I had to perform my weight training routine. I had to perform my cardio routine. I had to practice posing. I had to shave my body hair and start tanning. I had to take consistent action each and every day towards the goal I had set for myself. All the planning in the world is useless if you fail to act upon those plans you have. I am sure you've heard the saying "Good things come to those that wait," but I'm sure that those things are just the leftovers from those that hustle. To get what you want, you have to go after it. Procrastinating and not taking action will destroy any chance you have of attaining your best body ever. But there is also another reason why people do not reach their fitness goals. It's because the act of doing something at this moment is more painful than the pleasure of doing nothing. Getting up early to go jogging is more painful at that moment than being a bit overweight in the future. That's why it is so important to find the specific reasons you want to lose weight. They have to be so wanted, that you will put up with short-term pain to receive long term pleasure. Soon, by linking up all that pleasure to what you are going to look like, feel like, and be like when you lose weight will begin to have an influence on those things you have to do right now to lose weight. Meaning, every time you have to do a cardio session, or a weight lifting session, you will begin to link pleasure with doing it and pain with not getting it done. We've all had the experience of linking pleasure with doing something and pain with not, or vice versa. It will be painful to finish up that report for work when we could just sit back and watch the game on TV. Have you ever gotten an advanced notice from a teacher about a research paper that would be due in three weeks? Did you go home that night and start the paper? Of course not. Did you do it over the first weekend? Nope. If you were like me, you probably started it three days before it was due. Why? Because it was more painful doing it early and more pleasurable putting it off. But what happens now that the deadline looms and gets closer? It is more painful putting it off and more pleasurable (passing the class) finishing it. The role has reversed, what once was pleasurable procrastinating has become painful. So to attain your best body ever, you must realize that procrastination can mean the difference between success and failure. The Law of Momentum is one of the most powerful laws you can use to achieve your goals. On the other hand, the Law of Inertia is one that can sabotage any likelihood of you achieving your best body. Simply put the Law of Momentum states that a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by some outside force. The Law of Inertia states that a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by some outside force. You can have and achieve anything you want in life if you are willing to take action to go after it. This is what I did in my own life, I set out on a journey to discover how and why certain people were able to achieve great physiques. I knew that I too could achieve similar success if I just copied some or all of what they did. I spent close to 2 years reading book after book on nutrition, exercise physiology, success, goal setting, and anything else remotely related to achieving physical health as well as success. But all of those books would have been useless if I hadn't taken action and used what I read. When you begin to take action, you will start the process of picking up momentum, like a snowball that gathers more snow as it rolls down the mountain. Failure or success in building muscle or losing fat is not an overnight occurrence. It is an accumulation of small successes that add up. It happens one step at a time and one workout at a time. If you are persistent, you will be successful. The Law of Momentum will keep you moving forward as long as the drive and determination are still there. Of course, the Law of Inertia is lurking in the background, coaxing you and telling you how easy and satisfying it would be to just stay on the couch and not move. This is why taking the first step towards weight loss is so hard, the Law of Inertia is holding you back. Fear can paralyze you and prevent you from taking any action at all. That's why it's important to have a well thought out plan that you can take simple, small steps to build some momentum. Once you get going, the Law of Momentum makes it easier to keep going. When you start seeing "proof positive" results with your own body, the internal motivation to continue becomes almost unstoppable. So get clear about what you want and start taking action TODAY!