Consistency WILL bring you real results

Tom is the At Home Fitness personal trainer in Hitchin, Hertfordshire – and works with clients online across the country. We caught up with Tom to talk about habit stacking, sleeping well, and some neglected areas that make a big difference to your mental and physical health.

Learn more about Tom Ephgrave, personal trainer in Hitchin and Online here.

Consistency is the biggest thing that’s going to bring real results. Fact!

I’ve worked with a lot of clients over the last couple of years, and everyone’s journey is different. People have different goals and ambitions – some want to lose weight for a holiday, others want to bust stress with a regular fitness routine, others want to regain control of their health through better eating.

But through everyone’s unique goals, there’s one thing that is the same for every single journey: the key to great results is consistency.

Today, I’m going to give you some tips on how you can build consistent habits into your routine, to help you stay on-track and get the results you want.

First up: The basics

It’s important to look after the basics to set you up for success. That means sleeping right, staying hydrated, and keeping the stress in-check! 

The basics:

• Make sure you get enough sleep each night (or day if you're on night-shifts). This varies from person-to-person, but 7-8 hours is recommended to improve health
• Stay hydrated. In our busy lives, it’s sometimes easy to forget to take a drink of water throughout the day! Aim for 2 litres of water every day to keep your body in-check.
• Carve out time for you and try to manage stress. Stress eats away at the body if it goes unchecked, so try to build in breaks through your day, and switch off from work in the evenings – that means no checking work emails in bed!

Next up: Exercise, Nutrition and Well-being

It doesn’t matter if your workouts aren’t perfect every time. It doesn’t matter if you slip up on your ideal meal plan. It doesn’t matter if you have one bad day at work. The important thing is to keep showing up for yourself. Every. Single. Day.

Here are my top tips for a balanced health & fitness routine

• Be consistent with your workouts. Set a time to start, and just start. It doesn’t matter if it’s for 10 minutes or an hour, getting moving at the same time every day helps build a positive & sustainable habit, and the benefits will surprise you.
• Forget perfect. People get hung up on finding the perfect workout routine, or thinking you need to have a flawless meal plan. Focus on mastering the basics first. You’ll get 90% of the way by building a good foundation, then fine-tune over time. Remember, it is a marathon not a sprint!
• Have fun with it! Whether you’re on your own, or you’re working with a personal trainer, be honest with yourself about what you like and what you don’t. Keep experimenting with new things and learn what works for you.

Finally: Habits for success

I love habit stacking – it is one of the most powerful ways to build habits consistently. If you haven’t read it already, I’d really suggest getting hold of a copy of ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. 

Whether you’re eating breakfast, lunch or dinner, taking a shower, leaving the house for work, or brushing your teeth, you’ll have a set routine that you do most days.

The trick to building healthy habits into your routine is (you guessed it) by practising them everyday. The principle behind habit stacking is to take a new activity, and do it alongside an existing habit as part of your daily routine. Over time, these new activities will start to become established habits!

Here are some great ways to ‘habit stack’ healthy habits within your existing routine:

• Do 10 squats every time you brush your teeth. Once you’ve built this habit up for 28 days, start increasing the number. It will become second nature in no time!
• Go for a 10 minute walk after you’ve finished your dinner. Associate eating dinner with some time outside to clear your head.
• Practise meditation for 10 minutes after your morning shower
• Eat a piece of fruit with your morning coffee

The best part about my job is that I get to help people to just turn up every day. Would my clients turn up to that 7am training session if I wasn’t there to hold them accountable? Probably not. Do they always feel glad that they did it at the end? Yes!

My advice to anyone who is thinking about working with a personal trainer is to just give it a go. You get a free discovery sessions with At Home Fitness, and they’re designed to open up the door to conversation, get to know your trainer, talk about your goals and starting point, and they’ll be able to advise on the best route forward. It’s just an hour, and is the first step to seeing long-term success.

Learn more about Tom Ephgrave, personal trainer in Hitchin and Online here.