She looked at me, kind of puzzled and said, “That’s it? That’s all you want me to do?”
“Yup”, I responded with a smirk. “Small hinges swing big doors.”
This is a common response I get from clients.
Most people come to me thinking they have to change everything about themselves on Day 1 in order to lose weight, get stronger or feel better in their clothes.
The truth is, you don’t. And trying to might even be setting yourself up for failure in the long term anyways.
My approach over the last 13 years has changed and adjusted as I’ve learned new techniques to help people make lasting change.
This is one of the biggest differences.
You see, in my early days I used to recommend changing a whole bunch of things all at once. On top of that, a lot of these “things” were actually a combination of a bunch of “things” that I hadn’t thought about.
This approach helped some people better than others. But a lot of people would get discouraged eventually because they couldn’t sustain all of these changes.
So, I started thinking a little bit differently.
I started breaking these “things” down into smaller chunks. I started taking things a little bit slower with people.
Instead of telling someone to eat 1500 calories/day, I asked them if they could practice eating slowly.
I replaced my protein recommendation of “1 gram/lb of bodyweight” with “could you eat 1 palm sized portion of meat/fish/eggs with your meals?”
When they were having a hard time getting all their workouts in, I would simply ask if they could go for a walk a couple times this week?
All of a sudden people were much more consistent. They started getting better results. And the results were sustainable because they had developed better habits over time.
The key, I realized, isn’t changing everything at once.
It’s making the task so incredibly small that you’d be silly not to do it.
Then building on those tasks over time to develop better habits. Those better habits then lead to long lasting results.
Remember, small hinges swing big doors.
Stay strong live awesome, my friend.
-Cam
P.S. If you want to swing some “big doors”, I highly recommend you check out the Blue Phoenix Fitness Online Coaching program:
