One of the reasons people fail in their transformation is not having a clear vision of what they want to achieve. I believe that it's absolutely instrumental to be able to envision your future body and then to set specific goals in terms of body transformation. We'll talk about proper ways of setting goals in my next blog whereas today I would like to talk about the very first thing we do - about envisioning your future self.
So... Let's make a mental experiment - imagine your dream physique. Take a moment, think about it well and try to visualize it and to describe it. Before we get to the description part, I'd like to make a little assumption here - I bet you used some media person as a role model. It was either a bodybuilder or a fitness model if you have been into fitness for a while, or, most likely, you pictured a body of a movie star who managed to get into an amazing shape for one of their movies. If you are a man likely you thought of someone like Chris Evans as Captain America, or Chris Pratt in the Guardians of the Galaxy, or Chris Pine in Wonder Woman… Christian Bale would be just an amazing example of someone who apparently can change their appearance at will. I'll throw in Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel and Brad Pitt in either Fight Club or Troy so that you don't have an impression that I exclusively follow actors whose name is Chris.
I don't know too many actresses who would have undergone a remarkable body transformation for a role - I mean getting muscular and ripped like Demi Moore in J.I.Jane, apparently it's not a prerequisite for securing a role for them, but there are plenty fitness models looking at us from fitness magazine covers promoting exercise and nutrition products.
In any case, with this mental exercise, I just want to draw your attention to the fact that our aspirations are often heavily influenced by media - we absorb images of successful, rich, influential and famous people and incorporate them into our image of self. We have plenty of examples that leave us with little choice of what to strive for (I would also encourage you to read about Fiji study [1] - very interesting and very relevant). At the same time, I would like to emphasize that the way these people look is far from natural and actually almost impossible to achieve for a regular person like me and you. I promise to go over some reasons why these “ideal” bodies are far from natural (and it's not only steroids that some people use), but today I'd like to focus on our chances to have such bodies. And right away I will say that these chances are slim.
Why? Let's take a closer look at the images that popped up in our minds during the exercise…
First of all, all these people are professionals whose professional standing and income depend on their physique and their looks. Again, I won't touch the topic of pharmaceuticals that they might be using to achieve such a great physique as many of them don't use them. But they do have resources necessary to increase their physical performance, lose body fat, and gain muscle. And they use them. They don't have a day job that would take 8-10 hours a day and distracts them from their progress - their body is their day job! They have proper nutrition, time for exercising properly and - one of the most important factors - they have time to rest and recover. The latter is an absolute must for gaining muscle as without appropriate rest (and nutrition of course) you simply cannot build a really great body. Also, let's not forget that if we are talking about professional athletes they likely went through an elaborate selection process and only those who were genetically gifted for their sport ended up professional and competitive athletes in the end of the day. On top of the actual work these people put into their physique, their photos are properly prepared and staged - they are on the peak of their form, pumped up for the photoshoot, they use makeup and proper lighting, they know how to pose and the last, but not the least, their photos are processed. Almost no one looks like their magazine photo in real life - just compare paparazzi photos of celebrities in their everyday life and their "staged" professional photos.
So, do you still believe that you can look like that? Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage you from working on your looks and your physique. You can actually do a lot and in a relatively short timeframe - based on my experience I can say that you can make a noticeable difference in just 2-4 months and achieve a really good physique in 1-2 years. You will be complimented and noticed for sure! Again, what you can achieve will depend on a number of resources you invest in your physique. We can use the 80/20 rule here - you will get the 80% of result with investing just 20% of effort needed for the ultimate "Greek god" body. It's totally up to you if you want to go full 100% of effort, just be prepared to make a huge commitment. If you are a regular person with regular genetics and limited resources it's better to focus on some intermediate goals in order not to feel like a failure in the end. Good thing is that these goals are not mutually exclusive - you can start with working on your good physique and when you achieve this goal you simply raise the bar and strive for better i.e. set a new goal and move towards it.
Thus, I would also strongly recommend setting a series of goals or steps you have to take towards your success. With each step being realistically accomplishable in a short-term prospective you will be able to safely get from A to B to C and so on until you reach your final goal. Or decide that D is fine enough. The process will be very satisfying and effectively self-sustaining as with each accomplishment you will reward yourself. We will talk more about it in my next 2 blogs.
Sincerely Yours,
Dr.Sam
1. Becker AE. Television, disordered eating, and young women in Fiji: negotiating body image and identity during rapid social change. Cult Med Psychiatry. 2004 Dec;28(4):533-59.