In life, failure is inevitable.
It happens every day at work, with our friends, in our relationships, with our goals, and in many other ways. We see it happen often in nutrition and fitness goals too—with both ourselves and with our clients. Failure truly is part of life and so we want to encourage you to embrace when you do fail and let it propel you forward. Failure can actually be a good thing and one of the most powerful teachers… if you let it be!
This sounds like a great idea, but I am sure you are asking how to do this…
Here is some advice we have for you on how to fail forward.
First off, we want to encourage you that failing can be a great way to gage progress!
Let me explain and put this in the context of working out.
We think it is always good idea to track your progress over time. We love doing HIIT workouts and find that they are a fast and effective way to lose fat, get shredded, and get a great sweat in! With our HIIT workouts, we will do an exercise for an allotted amount of time. This is called density training. That basically means you are doing as many repetitions as you can until you “fail” or cannot do anymore within the given time.
So here, this is one example where failure comes into play.
We will usually do the exact same workout or at least that same exercise later in our programs and you will again go until you “fail” within the time allotted. Yes, you will in a sense “fail” again, but with hard work throughout your workout program, your failing point will probably be later—meaning you lasted longer and improved your number of repetitions! In this specific example, pushing so hard in the workout to failure actually made you better!
We truly believe that breakthrough happens when we are willing to push past your comfort zone!
When you push to the point of failure in a workout, you are actually pushing on your threshold and giving yourself room to improve your fitness!
Secondly, another example of how you can let failure propel you forward is with nutrition. We have tried almost every type of nutrition approach out there… from low carb to Keto to you name it, we have tried it. But, we have found carb cycling to be the most successful and sustainable way of eating long term.
You can read more about our flexible carb cycling philosophy here!
Back to failing forward….
If you are having trouble reaching your goal of losing weight, fitting in those skinny jeans, or feeling good about yourself, we recommend taking a step back and access what you are doing, why you may be failing, and then making the adjustments!
No need to sit in your failure, wallow in it, and let is snowball into a bad month of eating.
People write in to us all the time saying that they ate dessert last night or did not do their workout and now feel like they are a failure.
Our response is always this…
“One bad meal or missed workout will not derail your results. Give yourself grace and then give today your best effort!”
Hop back on the saddle, as they say.
We find out flexible carb cycling programs so successful for us and our clients because they allow flexibility for life events and lets you live in balance. It lets you make carb cycling a lifestyle, rather then a rigid diet.
So the next time you fail in life—whether in fitness, nutrition, or your personal life—we want to remind you that your failure does not define you.
You may have failed, but you are not a failure.
Today is a new day, so let that failure propel you forward to make great choices today!