Reshape Your Butt Using the Stages of Butting Out – Part 1

If you don’t intrinsically enjoy the thought of, or the activities required for fitness (yet), or if you have an exaggerated view of how long and difficult a process it is, it can seem a little like quitting smoking. You know it is, or would be, better for your health and that, all other things being equal, it will add years to your life.

It will occasionally require that you restrain yourself from indulging in every passing craving you have (though, you can intelligently indulge in more of your cravings on the road to fitness than on the road to quitting). It takes some willingness to put effort toward something that you won’t always feel like following through on; and both can be hard to get started and lend to much procrastination before those first few steps.

With so many commonalities, it makes sense for us to look at the five stages successful ex-smokers have gone through, and to apply them to our fitness goals. Today, we’ll look at the first two stages as they apply to the greatest number of people who are or feel they are unfit.

Whether Its Losing Weight or Getting Fit, Knowing the Stages of Change Will Help You Get There

Whether Its Losing Weight or Getting Fit, Knowing the Stages of Change Will Help You Get There

Pre-Contemplation

The first of the five stages is Pre-Contemplation. This is the stage where you aren’t considering changing your diet or exercise habits and you have no plans for changing them in the future. People in this stage may not be open to discussions about the health risks of obesity and inactivity or they may greatly underestimate how those risks apply to them.

We’ve all heard the smoker defense that their friend’s cousin’s wife’s great-aunt smoked every day of her life until she was 97. Someone who is overweight is similarly deluded that they aren’t at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease, and other lifestyle-related diseases.

Chances are that you aren’t in this stage if you have come across this article. If, however, you do happen to be in this stage, read on. You may find that fitness is not the boring self-denying activity you think it is.

Contemplation

The second stage is the Contemplation stage. At this point, you begin thinking about getting fit but aren’t quite ready to begin. You might be thinking that one of these days you would like to do something about the expanding waistline or the shortness of breath when you climb a couple of flights of stairs with a few bags of groceries, but no real planning is happening.

You are more aware of the consequences of your lack of fitness to your health, your quality of life, and possibly even your self-esteem, and you have started to feel like this is something you would like to change, one day. People in this stage might browse fitness sites and magazines or talk about wanting to be more fit, but there isn’t any actual effort being put into it yet. A large proportion of unfit people are in this stage.

If you find yourself in the contemplation stage, start by asking yourself how long you would like to stay in this stage. And don’t let yourself get away with a politician-style non-answer. When you are thinking about future fitness goals, when do you really mean by “one day” or “soon”?

Can you think of 2 or 3 ways in which your life would be improved if you were more fit? Take the time to write the answers down in vivid detail as a way to remind yourself of why you might want to move on past this stage.

Then, realize that fitness takes much less effort than you may be imagining. You might think you have to sit down and work out a detailed fitness plan, alter your schedule, stop eating all your favorite foods, etc. This is nonsense. Sure you may find yourself interested in getting more involved down the road, but getting fit requires very little effort; definitely less than you expect.

In fact, if you feel you would like to lose about 10% of what you weigh, it’s as simple as serving yourself portions that are about 10% smaller than you normally would and moving around about 10% more. Just approximate it. Cut the slice of cake about 10% smaller than you usually have. Park at the far end of the lot, rather than trying to squeeze in as close to the building as you can.

That’s it. If you feel you would like to lose more than 10-20% of your current weight, start by trying to cut your portion sizes by 10 or 20% and see how that goes. Don’t overdo it, don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be. Eat less, move more. It really is that simple.

In the next post in this series (Reshape Your Butt Using the Stages of Butting Out – Part 2), we’ll look at how you can adapt the third, fourth, and fifth stages of quitting to your fitness goals and look at some “advanced simplicity” if you want to take things a little farther.