Self-Management and My Fitness Journey

Disclaimer: The information on this website is for general information purposes only. Do not rely on this material to make personal, legal, or any other decisions.

Self-management is a useful set of skills to develop to apply in all aspects of your own life, whether it be for creating healthy fitness habits, to set goals and make plans to achieve them, making study plans, setting work schedules, and so much more. According to Cooper et. al (2007), utilizing self-management can promote a more effective and efficient day-to-day life, break unhelpful habits to be replaced with helpful habits, accomplishing difficult tasks step-by-step, and achieving personal goals.

Self-Management is useful for:

• Promoting effective & efficient day-to-day life

• Breaking unhelpful habits & replacing with helpful habits

• Accomplishing difficult tasks step-by-step

• Achieving personal goals

(Cooper et al., 2007)

In my opinion, of the biggest and most important benefits of learning self-management strategies is that it helps people feel free, competent, and empowered. What I mean by this in more behaviour-based terms is, when you learn skills such as self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-instruction and you apply it to important behaviour in your own life and see meaningful changes and results, you gain competence in changing your own behaviour successfully, and if you’ve done it once then you’ve got a formula to attempt success again next time. You build that trust in yourself when you stick to a plan that you’ve created for yourself.

As for me, I will now go into my journey and how I started my fitness lifestyle.

It all began in 2013 when I attempted to start a video workout program. I started and stopped it twice - it was a really difficult program and those first two times I just hadn’t found my guiding compass yet. I hadn’t yet explored my values around fitness - why did I want to complete this program? What was my goal at the end of all of this? I realized that I had to dig deep into my values and my why. I decided that my reason, my values, my guiding compass, my why, was that I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish this program. That’s it, that was my goal. My goals were not to lose weight nor to change my body - but these were what I was measuring throughout the program with “progress pictures” (defined as comparing side-by-side photos between the start of the program and current photos, taken at various points throughout the program).

I think this was important for my personal journey - that my value was “commitment” to myself to finish the program. And what I measured was physical progress.

How did I set up my environment for success?

One strategy I used was to adjust the environment to make behaviour more likely to occur: for example, I went to bed earlier so that I would be well-rested to wake up early to workout before getting ready for work. I also put my workout clothes in an easily accessible location to reduce response effort in the mornings.

What I found from waking up early consistently was, I enjoyed the time in the mornings to myself. The slow-pace of waking up early to have time to get my workout done, shower, get ready, make breakfast and go to work. This was a change of pace from my routine before, which was more rushed in the morning.

My fitness routine had made my days begin off to a good start, and I began to enjoy all of it. The endorphins from working out, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of satisfaction as I follow through with my commitment to myself, and inching ever so much closer to my goal of finishing the program.

I also used a self-recording or self-monitoring system (Cooper et al., 2007) - I had a calendar with each daily workout listed, and I checkmarked a workout off each time I completed it. This way I was able to easily see which workout was to be done that day, which one would be coming up next, and also permanent products (checkmarks) of the workouts I have completed before.

I had a dedicated location space (Cooper et al., 2007) for my workouts - my basement! I really enjoyed the ease of working out in my basement because it reduced the response effort of having to go to a gym, plus it is so easily accessible I can go any time of day (and arrive within 5 minutes lol).

One aspect I enjoyed about this workout program is self-evaluation (Cooper et al., 2007) - at the beginning, middle, and end of the video program were fitness tests. They were the same test each time, and the point of it was to measure how many of each exercise you could complete in 1-minute. With these recorded scores, I liked to look at my past score, to try to push past it.

Once I completed the program, I felt AMAZING! I finally committed to completing the program and I DID IT! I had myself to thank for finishing the program, and that feeling was incredible. I knew that I had the capability of finishing a program, and I knew I could do it again. In addition, the progress pictures showed that I had lost a significant amount of weight and inches. This progress is what was now the motivation to continue. I had built trust in myself in creating regular committed action (which heyoooo turn into habits), and I wanted to maintain this momentum of a regular workout schedule.

Now, my goal was to lift weights and further see what kind of “progress pictures” could happen when committing to a weights program.

So I finished yet another program. And then started doing printed workouts on my own. Maintenance of my fitness routine, and generalization to other types of fitness programs baby!!

All throughout this, my eating had remained relatively the same - except I used replacement behaviours and substituted carbs for other options in order to achieve a lean physique, my new “goal”.

That’s the funny thing about goals though - they’re a destination. They can be reached, they can be completed and finished. Values, however, are a guiding compass. Important difference.

So I achieved this goal of a physique I was happy with. And then I got pregnant. This, again, is where values are SO important. See I had reached my goal, and now I wanted to continue living according to my values. My values of being committed to a fit lifestyle, to staying active, to maintaining my lifestyle of moving my body regularly in workouts.

While this fitness lifestyle looked different throughout pregnancy and post-partum, in the form of more rest, more modifications, more grace and more compassion, I was committed to staying true to my values - which now had turned into, living an active lifestyle that includes moving my body regularly and when it feels good.

I have not been attached to physical outcomes, which I think has been useful in my journey, as my physical appearance has changed so much in the past 8 years - growing and birthing two healthy humans.

So, whatever my current goals are, and no matter how often they may change, I know I am solid in my guiding compass of my values towards a fit and active lifestyle, no matter what that looks like.

For additional information, read more at https://contextualscience.org/act

References

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Disclaimer: The information on this website is for general information purposes only. Do not rely on this material to make personal, legal, or any other decisions.