Accountability

Your “New Year, New Me” plan won’t work unless you do. You know that to accomplish any goal you have to put in the work to do so. You also know that you’re always going to be better off setting more, small goals than one big daunting one. These are all things you know; but what comes next? Even with small, attainable goals, day-to-day accountability is going to be your catalyst for success. But what does accountability look like? The truth is, it’s going to look different for every person, but, if you can figure out what strategies work best for you, you’re going to have the best chance at reaching those goals you set for yourself while enjoying the process and sticking to it. Today, I want to go through three key areas- sleep, nutrition, and daily activity, that relate to any fitness goal and discuss accountability strategies that will make it easy for you to achieve your goals and stay consistent along the way. 

First, let’s talk about sleep. It’s something none of us get enough of, and by the same coin a lot of us have gotten so used to that 5-6 hour nights are normal. Unfortunately, busy work schedules and belief that “more is better” in the workplace have created this presumption of normalcy acceptable and commonplace. Now, most of us have heard that we need 8 hours a night, but why is it so important? According to a 2008 study by Cauter, Spiegel, Tasali & Leproult, report that over the last 50 years, the average night’s sleep has decreased in duration by 1.5-2 hours per night. So on average, once again, none of us are getting adequate sleep. This can cause a plethora of health-related issues, but how does sleep deprivation relate to your fitness goals?  Cauter et al., also explain how chronic recurrent short-term sleep deprivation can really mess with your hunger-regulating hormones, leptin, and ghrelin. Leptin is a body fat regulating hormone, and ghrelin is the “hunger hormone”. The authors explain that chronic lack of sleep has been shown to decrease leptin levels and increase ghrelin levels; very basically that means it’s going to be easier for you to store body fat and you’ll be hungrier, or more prone to overeating, and thus putting on more body fat. That’s not what you want when you’re looking to drop those few extra holiday pounds or reach a new fitness goal. 

Now, that was just one example of how fitness is affected by sleep, without even going into the discussion of sleep on physical performance, and while that isn’t really the focus of this article, if you want to read more on that, check out this study on performance here. 

So if sleep is so important, how can you stay accountable for getting a little more of it? First, it’s important to understand that you ARE in control of how much you sleep, no matter how busy you are. Now, you may be willing to sacrifice some for your job, your family, or whatever it is and that’s perfectly okay, but even within that, you can find ways to be more consistent. One simple practice is to set a bedtime. It’s just a process of finding when it works for you to most consistently going to bed at a time that will allow you to get as much sleep as you can, and then committing to sticking to it. Again, just like with any goal, start small- get to bed on time 3 days in a row, and then go from there. Another thing you could do if you really can’t get that much more time in bed, is to practice healthy sleep habits to increase your quality of sleep. Create a “bedtime routine” (even if you can’t have a solid bedtime) where you go through the same relaxation and winding down the process to end your day. Sleep in a dark, cool, quiet room, and avoid screens for 30-60 minutes before bed. If you can even get an extra 30 minutes a night you’ll start to see improvements in both how you look and feel. 

Next, let’s talk about food and nutrition. This is an area that I think takes a little less explanation as to its importance not only to fitness, but overall health and wellness in general. If you eat good quality foods in adequate quantities, your body will thank you. If you eat poor quality foods in inadequate quantities, your body will not be as happy with you. When thinking about accountability as it relates to nutrition, we could be here all day going over different strategies to stay on track, but I’ll give you a couple of simple ones. First, try keeping a food journal for a week. When you can actually look back and see what you’ve been eating, it can paint a much clearer picture of your current nutritional practices, and where you may be able to make some adjustments to help you reach your goal. Another strategy you could try is meal prepping, so you know exactly what you’re going to put in your body, and can control that aspect of your day so much more.  For more on the ins and outs of nutrition, more details on how to start with strategies, others or just where to find your food square one, check out Emily Champoux, and Fuel For Life Nutrition. 

Finally, we get to look at how you move during the day, outside of the gym or traditional exercise. This can look like a lot of things, but if you have a goal to get into better shape, moving more, in exercise and in other ways is only going to help you get there faster and help you enjoy the process while feeling better too. Just like we all don’t get enough sleep, the vast majority of us sit way too much. One simple thing you can do is to work while standing up, whether that’s working away from the computer, or with a standing desk. Accountability here simply means finding a way to remind yourself to stand more. If you have a smartwatch, most of them have stand reminders. Or, you could stick a post-it on your desk to remind you to stand, and you practice doing that every time you look at it. There are some other things you can do to stay accountable and move more in your day-to-day as well, some you’ve probably heard before. One of those things is taking the stairs. Now, this is simple, but can feel like a chore; I appreciate an escalator as much as the next person. However, even taking the stairs some of the time is better than not at all. My personal rule is if I’m somewhere with a lot of levels, I’ll take the stairs until I’m tired of it. It’s such a basic strategy that I almost feel silly calling it that, but what you’ll find if you try it is that you’ll start taking the stairs more. It might just be one flight at first, or for a while even, but then it will be two, and so on. It seems insignificant but any additional movement is good movement. 

When we talk about staying accountable in the gym, the most obvious area of import when achieving a fitness goal, there are so many strategies you could use, but once again, I’ll stick to a couple of simple ones. Similar to a food journal, keeping a workout journal and/or following a program allows you to stay on task and take a visual inventory of what you’ve accomplished and what you have left to work toward. Another way you could create more consistency in the gym is to find a workout partner (or group). When you have others to share the accountability with and when you share similar goals, it will make the process so much more fun and enjoyable.

Now, as you may have gathered by now, a lot of being accountable is trial and error and finding what works best for you through that. A lot of it is just practice. And it’s a lot of little pieces that create the whole picture that is your fitness or health goals.  One overall accountability strategy I like to use for keeping track of all my pieces is an old school wall calendar. If I had a good day, hitting my nutrition, sleep, movement, and any other small daily goals I set for myself, I mark that day with a star or check, if I maybe didn’t get to most of my small daily goals that day, I mark it off with an X. Then, all I’m really trying to accomplish is to have more stars or checks than Xs at the end of the month (or a week, however you want to break it down). Then, I know I’m going on the right track (or not). If I’m at less than fifty-percent stars or checks, my goal is just to get past that fifty mark. If I’ve gotten there, then I’m just trying to get one or two more stars every month I go on. This is a really good strategy to see how all the little choices and staying accountable daily really add up. 

So, try some of those out as we get into February and I’ll bet you’ll really start seeing changes you want to see. And, if you really don’t know where to start or can’t seem to figure it out, come see one of us. As fitness professionals, we want to help you find ways to stay accountable with everything you do, in and out of the gym.