The Importance of Writing Things Down

Progress rewards patience and patience make ways for more progress that leads to results. When you keep making and seeing progress, you'll keep doing what needs done even if it's inconvenient sometimes.  Stop focusing on the end result. Pay attention to your progress and forgive yourself when you have setbacks (or be more flexible with your approach so you fall less easily).

How is this done?

Training: focus on performance goals instead of physique goals. If you put in the work and track your sessions/lifts, you will clearly see that your body is adapting to new physical stressors that allow you to see quantifiable progress which will push/reward you to WANT TO train more. If you don't document, you won't get this feedback that makes you feel rewarded for the work/time you put in. This is how most people fall off training programs.

If you focus solely on physique goals that may take months or years to achieve to feel complete or accomplished, you are more likely to fall off sooner than those who actually love training. Those who enjoy the process of hardwork also get back on track sooner than those who hates it when life gets in the way. If your focus is on performance, you will have an easier time waking up early to go to the gym, brace the cold weather and soreness, and prioritize your time better because you love what you do. Feedback from physique goals (pants size, weight scale) are too slow and confusing (water retention) to give you this instant positive feedback to continue doing something you don't like.

Nutrition: focus on caloric intake/output so you can set objective goals that comes with quantifiable variables you actually have control over. Instead of completely swear off cookies and margaritas for a month (not practical and totally unnecessary), look up your favorite foods' caloric content and work that into your budget so you'll never actually "ruin" your diet. You'll have days that you eat at target and days you go over but at least you know to reflect and tweak your meal prep why you go over consistently. Is it because you're bored, stressed, or eating due to social influences? If you can make the process of dieting less restrictive, then you'll more likely have the patience to follow through. Stop focusing on what to eat or not and focus more on how much. At the end of the day, the law of physics is what matters. Not some gurus telling you what foods are "super" and "clean".

Fall in love with a performance focused program so you'll actually follow through for the long haul instead of buying into every new fluff program that requires "willpower", "discipline" and "28 day challenges". If you love it, it'll feel like you're "playing" and not "exercising". Your transformation would be a lot quicker and spontaneous this way. Make your diet as flexible and quantifiable as possible by ignoring most of the myths out there that disregard the importance of caloric budgeting. When you do fall off, you'll actually know why and get back up sooner instead of beating yourself up for weeks and months why you can't give up sugar or alcohol or whatever that's supposedly off-limit for the rest of your life.