5 Effective Habits for Highly Successful Physique Transformation

[SouthernLord]

This is great. I hope this article helps some of you get moving in the right direction with your commitment to fitness

5 Effective Habits for Highly Successful Physique Transformation
By Jen heath​

So you want to transform your physique? You are ready for massive change - what kind and how? Take it from
a mother of four, including twins, whose top weight was 195 that now competes as a professional bodybuilder -
YOU CAN DO IT! There is a vast pool of advice out there on how to accomplish physique transformation.
Get online and you will find hundreds of articles on how to achieve your specific goals - gain muscle, lose fat,
tighten and tone. You can find out how to gain 10 pounds in 10 days or lose 10 pounds in 10 days. Everyone will
have some different trick or secret that will “lead you to success.” When it comes to actually making a plan
to change your physique, real life MUST come into play. Your goal is worth achieving, be it becoming a champion
bodybuilder or losing those pounds of ‘mom’ weight to get back the attractive physique you used to have!
Tricks and secrets are nice, but one thing is for sure…

Regardless of your goals, there are 5 common habits that will help you get solid results:

1. Commitment to yourself

2. Keeping a record of your training

3. Keeping a record of your nutrition

4. Smart grocery shopping

5. Preparing specific foods and supplements ahead of time

Commitment to yourself

Most people would categorize “commitment to self” as a feeling rather than a habit. I firmly believe it to be
habit. It is commonly said that it takes 21 days to develop a habit. When you make a lofty goal like transforming
your body, it takes a lot of dedication. When I decided to get back in shape after I had my twins, I didn’t succeed
the first go around. Life got awfully busy, and I found myself putting my little ones before my desires to get fit
again. I would start, and then some crisis would happen and I would quit. It wasn’t until I started employing a
few tactics that I was able to succeed, the first of which was being committed to myself. Those first three
weeks were truly the hardest. There were days when I really struggled, thinking it would just be easier to cheat
or let things slide than to stay on track. Thoughts of all the time it would take to continue, other things I had
going on in my life, the people in my family who needed my time and attention, other commitments I had…and
the very real need I had to rest would all be major contributors to discouragement. However, there
came a point when I figured out how to combine my ‘real life’ with ‘real habits’ that helped my goals fall into
place a whole lot easier. Once I started keeping commitments to myself, I began to see success.
It came to a point where little things wouldn’t discourage me anymore, and on those days it literally takes a
near crisis in order to slip up in my health and fitness goals. In other words, your commitment to yourself
becomes a “habit.” There can be no shortage of enthusiasm or commitment in achieving your goals;
it is something you create for yourself! I have had years formulating training and nutrition plans for myself
and others, and know for a fact that with proper planning, you, as an individual can have a specific program
to execute that will lead you straight to your goals. Getting started and sticking to it for that initial timeframe
is crucial. If you are able to maintain commitment to yourself for 21 days, I guarantee that “feeling” will become
a habit. There may be times during that initial phase (which repeats itself as your goals change) where it seems
difficult, however as you remain committed to YOU, difficulty will be soon replaced with enthusiasm and
even a sort of NEED to carry out program details as you begin to see and feel the changes your body is
making to get you closer to where you want to be. Your commitment translates into being committed to
details and common sense planning, which translates into success for YOU!

Keeping a record of your training

I cannot emphasize the honesty enough with which I tell you that I have made the most progress in achieving
my fitness goals when I keep track of my training program. In weight training, the importance of keeping track
of what you are doing cannot be stressed enough. You can literally spin your wheels, going in circles, finding
yourself up against training plateaus more often than not if you leave your workouts to chance. In order to
make significant progress over time, you have to find way to add to, vary and improve your training. The first
and foremost important thing is to have someone who is educated about how to accomplish fitness goals and
who is willing to get to know you as an individual to get you started on the right path. You can start
accomplishing loftier goals now by recording what you do! This information is invaluable. If you do not keep
track of what you do, over time you will most assuredly lose track of where you started and what did or did
not work for you. You may have even made progress in building muscle or fat loss, however, when you hit
that wall it is awesome to be able to look back at your training records and not have to guess about what to do
next. I even see bodybuilders who are training hard, however, if they are not tracking, the chances that they
are gaining all they can from any given workout they are doing is slim. Many of my lady friends just come to the
gym and lift a few weights here and there and do cardio for hours. Several of my male counterparts come in
and beat themselves into the ground with the same exercises time after time after time, never deviating from
there basic “I gotta lift all the weight I can” workouts. They all need to train smarter, and keep track of it.
They wouldn’t have to go out and kill themselves for what they wanted…it would come knocking on their door!
When I lift weights, I train with several things in mind over any given time frame. I focus on muscle strength, size
and density, core body strength and more. For weight training, I create specific set and rep schemes with
specific exercises. I plan out weeks and even months at a time to ensure maximal results in the shortest period
of time possible. When I do cardio, I formulate schemes that include high and low intensity with varied
resistances. I also vary how much cardio and when I am doing cardio to enhance and compliment what I am
doing with my weight training. My programs hit every angle of training to achieve the most out of any given
goal I might have. I keep track of what I do, get my desired results, and then go back and look at how I can
modify it to get the best results from what I am about to do next. If you keep track of what you accomplish in
the gym, the guess work is taken out. You will always have a reference point for effective workout composition.
You will never ask yourself “what weight did I use last time” when you are trying to beat an old record or say
“I’m not sure how I should I vary my set and rep scheme in order to get gains from this point forward”…
When you keep track, your goals are not only more easily achieved, but they are maximized!!! Start tracking
and create invaluable information for your success.

Keeping a record of your nutrition

This next one tends to be a real doozy for most people. I often hear things like “keeping track of what I eat is
too much trouble” or “I know I should do it, but it is so confusing.” I have good news - it doesn’t have to be
either way! Keeping track of your nutrition in my opinion is one of the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT
THINGS YOU CAN DO!!!! No matter how smart you are or how much you think you can keep in your
head, I guarantee that you will make more progress faster if you write it down. Keeping track of your
diet is no more than everyday mathematics. You would not attempt to figure out the solution to most
mathematical equations that have 4 or 5 components in your head...You would use a piece of paper and
calculate it! Likewise, the best way to ensure exact nutrition that will ENSURE you goals are achieved is by
writing things down and calculating things like calories and protein grams. When you do this, you can create
macronutrient ratios that work in complete harmony, and at the end of the day, you are just that much closer to
your goal! There are two things you can do with your diet. The first is eat to gain weight and the second is eat
to lose weight. If you are eating to gain weight you should not have to eat like a pig devouring everything in sight
until you have put on a significant amount of muscle. Why? Because this will also result in a more than significant
amount of fat in most cases (not necessary). This method, as I have found does not often require much
documentation! If you are trying to lose weight, it does not involve eating a miniscule amount of food so that
you are starving all of the time, rather a carefully calculated amount of real food, with realistic, targeted calorie
deficits. Regardless of what your goal is with eating, the most important thing is figuring out how many calories,
grams of carbs, proteins and fats you need in order to accomplish your body transformation goals. I personally
have formulated numerous nutrition plans that are not only effective but realistic! Figuring out what will work
for you as an individual should not only be simple, but exciting and motivational. Once you know what your
requirements are, you can load on muscle, or lose fat with maximum efficiency and in the healthiest way
possible! Reading labels is not too difficult and one can easily look up values that are not readily available on a
label in foods such as fruit, vegetable and meat by looking up their values online or obtaining a nutrition book
of which there are hundreds available. My suggestion would be to start out with a chart that has columns for
foods, calories, carbs, proteins, and fats. There are many ways to get very detailed about how many grams of
what you should eat, but a simple place to start is to figure out your calorie needs, and eat 40of them in
carbs, 40in protein and 20in healthy fats. This scheme will generally work well for most athletes and for
people trying to lose weight alike (you may find that an exact individualized plan is what you want, however,
this framework is healthy, safe and effective) Whether you gain weight with these nutrient levels will depend
entirely on how many calories you consume (whether you are at a calorie deficit, maintenance or over
maintenance). You can keep track of only protein and calorie intake for the day if you prefer a more general
approach. This though vague, will suffice in a lot of cases. Why? Because protein and caloric intake for the
day are for the most part, the two most important factors in achieving your body goals. Protein must be high
enough and calories must be accurate! You can also get very detailed, keeping track of everything
(this is what I do). Your ability to actualize your goals through proper nutrition will more than triple if you keep
track of what you eat. What could be better than KNOWING what kind of weight are going to gain or lose for
the day? Transform you body by keeping track of what goes in that mouth!!

Smart grocery shopping

Believe it or not, smart grocery shopping is one of the simplest habits you can get into that will help you
transform your body. Just think, if you have determined for the most part what you can and cannot eat, it
makes sense to have the foods you are going to eat in your house and the foods you are not going to eat…not
in your house. I have found at times that if there is something in my house that doesn’t support my goals, that
I may eat it regardless (though I have had to overcome the “want to eat whatever is there” to some extent
because I have four children). I have had to learn and exercise more self control at times, but it is good for
me and anyone who wants to achieve goals to stay dedicated in this way. The main foods people with body
transformation goals eat are relatively the similar. These foods include, lean meat, poultry, fish and other
seafood (particularly tuna or shrimp), lots of veggies, some fruit, oatmeal, rice, and other whole grains.
Other foods that I highly enjoy and are staples for my kitchen are eggs, cottage cheese, low carb tortillas,
peanut butter (yes peanut butter!) nuts, and legumes. Bringing these foods home from the grocery store
makes food sources for protein readily available and adds variety to the things you can prepare. I also have
what most of my friends and family members who are on personalized plans formulated by me call “sanity
snacks”. I’ll tell you what…being the mother of four small children while executing goal specific nutrition
plans is NOT easy at all. I have found lots of things in my grocery store to snack on allowing me to feel normal
and get a fix for some tasty foods or meals that I love, as any normal human being would. No one wants to diet
on chicken and vegetables with NOTHING extra tasty EVER. This is a topic I could rant on for endless pages,
so feel free to rack my brain on ways to keep your sanity through grocery shopping and meal preparation
while you are dieting by sending me an email! As far as the regular foods on the list, not only are they healthy,
but very enjoyable when prepared with even the most minor amount of creativity. In addition to these most
important staples, you are of course going to purchase other foods. This is normal and to be expected, but if
you always have the main basic foods needed to achieve you goals readily available to you the likelihood of
watching your body transform into whatever you want it to goes through the roof!! So, shop smart and have
the potential for your best self at your fingertips at all times!

Preparing specific foods and supplements ahead of time

Lastly, and overlooked a lot of the time, is the habit of preparing certain foods ahead of time. There are three
things I want to cover here: meats, veggies and supplements. Cooking enough meat, chicken and or fish over
the weekend for the next week’s consumption is highly undervalued. Most people, even those with serious
athletic goals will complain about not having enough time to prepare the right kinds of foods. I religiously
employ this practice. Over the weekend whenever I can find even half of an hour, I will just get out three pans
and cook some fish, chicken and or lean steaks. If I am ever in a position where I must have protein but I don’t
have time to cook meat…guess what? It is already done! Beautiful. If you prepare a week’s worth of meat and
never have to take the time to cook it in the meantime, you will floor yourself at how healthily and easily you can
meet protein requirements without having to drink a million protein shakes a day. Though preparing meats ahead
of time has its benefits, realistically, sometimes we don’t even have time for a dish and a microwave, so having a
good protein shake mix is essential just in case you have to run out the door and are lacking in that area. Protein
shakes are an excellent way to supplement food protein sources to ensure your daily requirements are met.
Next, simply make a large salad or steam some vegetables in advance. Any nutrition plan in order to be healthy
needs to have vegetables in it, but most of the time it can be impossible to prepare salad or steam veggies
when you are already at work or if you are like me, there are kids running around you asking for everything
under the sun…but if it is in a Tupperware, just ready to grab and eat…your work is done. It is easy to take your
pre-prepared chicken and cut it up over some salad and add some seasonings and or low calorie dressing…an
instant chicken salad that may take you all of 1 minute to prepare because you did your leg work. So, do it
beforehand and make your work light! Lastly, any nutrition program needs proper supplementation. Even if
it is only a multi-vitamin you are taking, make it at least that. It is nearly impossible to get all the nutrients we
need from food intake alone. If you want to make your nutrition plan even a little more effective, you could
consider taking a fish oil supplement as most diets are lacking in omega fats which we all need a sufficient
amount of. I recommend getting a vitamin container from a local pharmacy and setting your vitamins out for
the week as well. I hear a lot of people say that they hate opening and closing a hundred pill bottles each day. I
agree, what a pain. If you set them out I advance, all you have to do it open, grab and swallow! A little leg work
in preparing foods and supplements goes a long way in meeting daily goals, so do it…and you will see how
much easier transforming yourself can be!

I am certain that everyday folks, and athletes, men and women alike get frustrated or discouraged from time to
time as they try to set and accomplish goals. I know this to be true as I am not only a professional athlete, but
also a proud mother of four children with all the responsibilities associated with that most important job of
motherhood and raising a family. I want to strongly emphasize that no goal is too lofty. I never thought I would
become a professional bodybuilder. With my life, the odds were definitely against me, but I did it and am so
happy about it. You can achieve anything you put your mind to. We often put ourselves through more trouble
and guesswork then is necessary which can often lead to frustration. However, it is when you are committed
not only to yourself but basic good habits, that achieving your dreams becomes easier. Awesome things are
possible and it can be easier than you think. I have every confidence your ability to accomplish whatever you
set you mind to because not only have I been there, I am there…working toward my own goals every day. It is
only a matter of having the right resources and information and the commitment to act on them for yourself!
Your level of dedication will rise exponentially as you choose to employ habits that yield results! You will
experience not only ease in execution of your specific plan details, but maximization of results. This will
naturally increase your drive, determination and enthusiasm in accomplishing your body transformation goals!