A few months ago, I wrote this post for Debt Free in Sunny CA! With the new year just beginning, weight and money goals are surely top of mind for many. I wanted to share this article with you all as you begin the year working on your health and money goals.
What do your net worth and weight have in common? Yes they are both numbers, but they have a lot more in common. Maybe the two numbers alone don’t mean much to each other, but what you need to do to have a number that you’re happy with for both is a lot more alike than you may realize.
When it comes to money, I know what to do to be in good shape. Budget, live within your means, avoid debt, invest, etc. When it comes to physically being in good shape, I haven’t always been as disciplined and/or fascinated with all the things behind it.
For all of my teen years and the first half of my twenties, I was always a “skinny” girl. I suppose I had a good metabolism or maybe constant stress to thank for that, but whatever it was, I was one of those people that could eat ANYTHING and not gain a single ounce. I was an athlete in high school (water polo & swim), but once I started college and started working, I completely cut exercise out of my life. I didn’t need to workout, right? I was just naturally small.
Fast forward to my mid-twenties and somehow all the pizza, burgers, greasy & fried foods, and lack of exercise caught up to me. Before I knew it, I had gained over 20 pounds in just a couple years. I panicked a little and of course initially my concern was all about how I looked.
I started exercising more and even joined a kickboxing gym. If you’ve kickboxed before, you know that it’s a pretty intense workout and you can burn a lot of calories. I thought I had figured it out! “I’ll just burn more calories and I’ll shed the extra weight in no time”, I thought.
I worked out a lot more than I had in years, but saw hardly any results. I exercised but didn’t change my eating habits or anything else. I was still eating fast food and not paying attention to what was going into my body. Until I was 26, I had never once in my life looked at the nutrition label. I didn’t care about calories, sugars, macronutrients, or anything else.
I had been told by trainers and other physically fit people in my life that when it came to losing weight and seeing physical results, you couldn’t just exercise and needed to change nutrition too. I ignored that advice for a long time and thought it couldn’t be true.
I finally got to a point where I wanted to make a serious change and started to worry more about actually working towards being healthy and not just about the number on the scale or how I looked. As fate would have it, right around when I had made my mind up to be better, some of my family members started a weight loss challenge. I’m a pretty competitive person so it was just the thing I needed to get me going.
I decided I would try the whole diet thing and I began tracking every single thing I ate. I used MyFitnessPal (an app that helps you track everything you eat and gives you recommended calorie/macronutrient intake based on your goals) and by the end of the first week I saw results that I had never seen before from only working out.
“It works!” I thought to myself. Naturally since I saw results so quickly, it motivated me to keep going the next week and the week after and so on and so forth. Having a plan for my meals, tracking every single thing I ate, and working out consistently helped tremendously with my health and fitness goals. From January 2019 to when this post was written (June 2019), I lost almost 10 lbs which may not seem like a crazy amount, but given my starting weight it was a pretty significant number.
By now you must be wondering why I’m telling you all this. Somewhere along this journey, I stopped one day and it hit me that the advice I took to help me achieve my health/fitness goal was advice that sounded really familiar. I quickly realized that the tips that I (and many other bloggers, coaches, etc.) give for financial goals, was very similar to the advice I got for weight loss.
- Setting a calorie intake goal was like setting a budget!
- Tracking every single thing I ate was like tracking every single expense.
- Me just exercising and not changing any other behavior was the equivalent of someone thinking that making more money would solve all their financial problems.
- The right behaviors make all the difference. Making more money will never solve anything for you if you continue to overspend and live above your means – just like exercising more didn’t do anything for me.
If you want to take control of your finances and make serious progress towards your goals, you can’t just do one thing. You need to implement all the behaviors that will drive that success.
You need the budget (calorie intake goal), you need to track your expenses (everything you eat), you need to exercise (make wise financial decisions), and most importantly you need to be consistent.
When it comes to being financially and physically fit, there are no shortcuts and no easy ways out. If you put in the work, the results are sure to come.
So if you’re unhappy with your net worth and/or weight, it’s time to get back to the basics and do all the little things that will add up and help you thrive. Who knew your wealth and health had so much in common? 🙂
