I want to tell you something profound.
You remember when you first signed up to one my websites…
How did you feel?
Were you anxious about how you look?
Probably drinking, stressed and or emotional about how you currently look or feel.
It’s true, isn’t it?
The reason why you felt like that is the very reason you are in that position in the first place. You felt some sort of emotional response and ate too much, felt shit, stopped training, and the list goes on.
It is what’s called your ‘chimp’ brain. Well, actually, it is a part of your brain that reacts to situations you encounter instinctively.
Instinct.
It is something that both saves your life and ruins it on a daily basis.
It is responsible for you not walking out in front of cars, not strolling around in front of wild animals, retract your hand quickly if you are about to get burned, but also the part of your brain that makes you overeat, stress, become paranoid and a whole host of other negative things too.
Never thought of it like that, have you?
Try put your hand on a flame and resist the instinct to pull your hand away. It won’t happen. Your chimp/primitive/instinct driven brain just won’t let you.
Same with when you are stressed, hungry or whatever. Your instinct tells you to eat shit food, not exercise and avoid discomfort because, from an evolutionary point of view, whatever results in an immediate benefit to your chimp brain is deemed useful and as a result, you are compelled to DO IT.
Similarly, anything that uses up energy and effort is deemed useless and is discarded.
The only way to overcome the urge to do nothing and eat crap is to convince your primitive part of your brain to allow these behaviours to occur. This is what we call a habit.
In order to establish a habit you have to reason with your primitive side and make it see the benefit of the new behaviour.
I.e. You have to do it long enough and often enough to establish a pattern that doesn’t interfere too much with your chimps agenda.
*shameless plug*
Joining a class or hiring a personal training or coach is the best way of establishing a habit and introducing some sort of structure to your training and nutrition routine.
Bryan Kavanagh BSc CSCS
theabsgym.com
bootcampsindublin.com
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