The Big “How You Do Anything” Lie by Joan Kent, PhD

The Big “How You Do Anything” Lie
By Joan Kent, PhD

Have you heard it? It’s been around a long time: “How you do anything is how you do everything.”

I feel sure whoever came up with that statement – bad grammar and all – never worked in the fitness industry, or as a nutritionist.

How many times have I run into training clients like Kathy the stockbroker? She was a fearless cyclist but, by all accounts, a rather cowardly stock broker.

Or Debra, the sugar addict whose lack of progress in our weight-loss program made the supervisor say, “I don’t understand. She trains well.” For this client, training was the easy part. Not only was she accustomed to working out regularly, she was down for the intense workouts, too. Nutrition, on the other hand, was her challenge.

I explained to the supervisor that Debra was conscientious about her workouts because she’d been using them for years to compensate for bad food habits and her sugar addiction. She was trying to burn all those excess sugar calories in tough fitness classes.

If the how-you-do-anything cliché were actually true, why would either of these clients do one thing so well, but not the other?

Where There’s No Law, There’s No Freedom
(With apologies to John Locke)

Rachel was a successful attorney and a partner in a thriving law firm. She was less successful at creating healthful meals, at least at first. She did get on the right nutrition track pretty easily, but exercise was the tougher obstacle.

You might wonder how someone who could get into a good law school, make it all the way through, pass the notoriously difficult California bar exam, and become a successful lawyer could possibly have difficulty fitting exercise into her life.

But it had never been part of her life before, so it was completely new. The idea of making time for it was new. Prioritizing it, working her appointments around her exercise session, even waking up a few minutes earlier to squeeze a modified workout into her busy day – were all new.

Rachel didn’t seem to see that she could use the same skills she’d used her entire professional life to launch her fitness “career.”

In fact, when she started working on a new case and knew her schedule would be hectic for at least 6 weeks, her plan was … to skip her workouts till that hectic time was over.

Rachel had no clear picture of the impact those 6 weeks would have had on her fitness. You can’t take 6 weeks off and expect to pick up where you left off when you quit. You’ll end up starting from square one, especially in the early stages of a fitness program.

We did finally get Rachel’s fitness program solidly entrenched in her schedule, but it was slow going. She started with one day a week, and occasionally a second. Moving to 3 days a week – the minimum for fitness maintenance – took a long time. But she did it and got results.

Saving the Worst For Last

When I ran a weight-loss program in Silicon Valley, many of the participants were engineers. Over the years, we had excellent groups who followed instructions and achieved their goals, and also clueless groups.

The clueless groups couldn’t seem to manage anything pertaining to the training program.

They never showed up on time and were often up to 45 minutes late. They would forget to bring their workout equipment with them – heart rate monitors, cycling shoes, water bottles, towels, and more. They were undisciplined about making time for training on their own, between the scheduled studio sessions. They frequently failed to log their food as required. Some even had difficulty focusing on the training.

I asked one particularly scattered group to please start showing up as if they were doing it on purpose.

Clearly, people who performed their jobs with the same haphazard incompetence would be promptly fired. But these guys all had jobs and seemed to be good at them.

Apparently, the way you do anything is not necessarily the way you do everything.

So How Can This Help You?

What have you done with great success? It may be any victory, small or large.

Are you great at planning your day? At making the most of in-between moments – spare blocks of 5 to 15 minutes, for example? Find some stretching or strength exercises you can do standing or seated, in office attire. (They do exist!) Find a short but intense cardio workout to fit in first thing in the morning, or in the evening.

Are you a good “just in case” person? Pre-pack your gym bag and leave it in your car, even on days that seem too crowded for a trip to the gym. You never know. And if it’s packed and ready, you’ll never forget a key item.

Are you disciplined enough to get up 15 minutes early? Wake up and immediately head to the kitchen and eat real food. It’s far better than waiting and grabbing something convenient but junky, like a granola bar, as you run out the door.

Bonus tip: Stop buying granola bars.

Are you adventurous enough to get away from standard breakfast meals? Try healthful dinner leftovers for breakfast (something other than pizza and beer, please!). Seriously, start your day with protein and vegetables and see if you don’t notice a difference in your energy and mental focus.

Are you good at planning and pre-planning meals? Prepare lunches and snacks on the weekend, enough for a couple of days. Repeat midweek.

Many examples can be found in virtually anything we’ve done well. The obvious, but overlooked, trick is simply to assess your wins for the skills that made them possible. Apply those skills to fitness and wholesome food.

Then it’s easy to make them part of your life – in a way that’s already comfortable for you. Maybe the way you do anything will, in fact, become the way you do everything.

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If you’d like help with health, mood or nutrition, I’d love to help you. Please visit Coaching on the home page and request a free Food Breakthrough Session.