COMMITMENT: CONSISTENCY, MOTIVATION, PATIENCE and KNOWLEDGE

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I have been working on transforming my body for the past 8 months. I can say despite me wanting to change my body over these 5 years, I was only 100% committed in my diet and training for the last 5 months.

In these past 5 months however, I have seen enormous changes in my body, due to adherence to only a few key principles. Commitment and devotion to training and diet are they key to the results that we all want.

I belive very much in the old cliche "you only get what you put in". This saying undoubtedly rings true in many different areas in life, but I feel that it really applies to bodybuilding / exercise and improving one's health and quality of life.

Some of the keys to my success have been:

CONSISTENCY (In training and diet)

I train 6 days a week, and never miss a session. As for my diet, I personally stick to a "targeted low carb diet", taking a a relatively low number of carbs 6 days per week, with the majority of my carbs being ingested directly before and after my workout.

As I began to maintain consistency, I saw the gradual changes in my body, and became almost addicted to the feeling of bettering myselft in the gym and seeing the results in the mirror.

MOTIVATION

It is completely natural to sometimes lack the drive and desire to get into the gym and maintain a healthy diet day after day, week after week.

I keep myself on track and motivated in a variety of ways; I keep a mental image of what I want my body to look like in my head, and think about how great I'm going to feel once I achieve this long term goal, and having my "dream body". This type of mental imaging and goal setting is powerful and motivating.

I look to others as motivation as well. I have an enormouse folder of inspirational images and qoutes on my computer, that I often find myself looking at before I head to the gym. Of course, I also view pictures of my crushes in facebook. Kidding aside.

I also make sure to keep my iPhone loaded with music that gets my blood flowing and gets me pumped up to have a great session in the gym or running outdoors.

KNOWLEDGE

Learning about different exercises, techniques, dieting principles, and nutritional information has been incredibly helpful to me in my pursuit of a body that I am happy with.

For years I didn't know about what to eat, when to eat, how much rest or recovery time my body needed, and what types of exercises would suit my goals best. I am learning new things about nutrition and exercise everyday, and with this new found knowledge, I'm able to maximize the time I put into the gym, and thus see results faster.

PATIENCE

It took me 8 months to achieve what I thought to be a short term goal of like 2-3 months. The reason it took me so long, is because I lacked the four very basic principles I have outlined here. I lacked consistency, in that I would commit myself to exercise for a few weeks, and then neglect my training for weeks or sometimes even months on end.

In addition, I knew little about nutrition, so much of the time I was putting in at the gym wasn't being used to its full potential anyway due to my lack of knowledge. I lacked the motivation to change my habits, my body, and my life, because I wasn't seeing immediate results.

Results in the gym don't happen overnight, they happen over weeks and months of consistent work and proper nutrition. That doesn't mean that it's going to take someone 1-2 years to achieve their goals, because in fact, I feel like if I could do it all over again, putting 100% in effort in consistency, keeping myself motivated, attaining relevant knowledge, and maintaining a little bit of patience, I'm extremlt confident I could have made the same transformation in well under one year.