Become the best coach you've ever had

We begin Stage 3 at the heart of what makes the SparkPeople program truly special: coaching. In Stage 2, we served primarily as your nutrition and fitness coach. By teaching you to become your own best coach, you will dramatically increase your odds of making this time finally stick as a permanent healthy lifestyle change. In becoming your own best coach, you not only take control of your destiny, but you'll also be learning the motivational skills you need to push yourself to be great, even on the days when you're not feeling it.

Most diets fail because they don’t teach people these types of life skills, but with SparkPeople, we'll always be here for you, even as you learn to coach yourself. After all, even the greatest athletes still rely on their coaches to help them stay on track and reach their full potential.

Take Control of Your Life

Many people have some level of "victim mentality," in which they believe that other people or other outside forces are in control of their lives; others have a general passiveness about life.  As you practice setting, reaching and tracking one small goal at a time, though, you will start to feel more in control of your destiny, shunning those common tendencies to play victim or be passive. As a person with anxiety when I was younger, I definitely had a fairly high level of victim mentality. It was a revelation when I realized that I really was largely in control of shaping the future events of my life and could take action now to work toward my goals.

Viktor Frankl is a hero to me and millions of other people for the lessons he shared in his book "Man’s Search for Meaning." In it, Frankl details his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp and uses those experiences to show how he developed and lived life by his own powerful principles. Arguably, his most powerful principle is that no matter what happens to you, you have the power to choose your response. When you see him follow this principle in a concentration camp where everything has been taken from him, it’s nearly impossible to think that you can’t follow his lead and take control of your life.

Consistency and Momentum

Being consistent might sound boring at first, but it's a true secret to finding success in life and is one reason planning is so important as a way to be your own best coach. Here are two of my favorite points related to this concept:

1. The Right Spiral: During interactions with SparkPeople members, I often talk about the positives of a virtuous upward spiral and the dangers of a vicious downward spiral.

In an upward spiral, you might:

• Have a great night’s sleep
• Be motivated to make healthy food choices that day, such as making a slow cooker recipe that leads to healthy leftovers for the next few days
• Have the energy to do a good workout or hike
• Invite your sister to go on the hike with you and receive encouraging advice from her

In a downward spiral, on the other hand, you might:

• Have a bad night’s sleep and hit the snooze button several times in the morning
• Not have enough time to eat healthy and grab something loaded with sugar for quick energy, instead
• Be grouchy at work and get into an argument with your boss
• Be too exhausted to exercise that day
• Have an argument with your sister when she calls you
• Go to bed stressed about your day causing another bad night of sleep

Imagine these different spirals carried out over days, months, or years.  Of course, most real days will have both ups and downs, but your decisions on consistency will help you build either positive or negative momentum.

2. The Momentum Continuum

This next point about consistency shows how taking the right steps regularly will lead to big results.  

1. The A-ha Moment: Occurring often at the beginning of a journey to health, this is that moment when you realize something you can learn from for the first time, such as how many calories you consume in a day.
2. The Woohoo Moment: This is when you have taken action and want to celebrate. It might be the first time you walked a mile, noticed muscle development, created a delicious and healthy dinner or felt proud of making it to an a.m. exercise class—any time that makes you want to shout "Woohoo!" at the top of your lungs.
3. The Breakthrough Point: When you string together enough small goals—including both A-ha and Woohoo Moments—your odds for a true life breakthrough increase significantly. This can happen when you reach a significant goal like losing 50 pounds, or when you can tell that you have reached a true healthy lifestyle change with everything in your life working together. A breakthrough point is something that can accelerate your life, leading to experiences and reaching goals you may have never thought possible!

Planning

Back on day six, we introduced the concept of daily planning. While planning is "officially" part of Stage 3, we like to introduce it early on in case people would like to get a jump-start using the daily planner integrated within your SparkCoach. I wanted to mention it again here to reinforce that planning is one of the top ways you can be your own best coach. I’m so happy we have a daily planner integrated into SparkPeople for the first time! It truly is built to help you establish and build on healthy habits that will stay with you for life.

Coaching can mean many things to many people, but when your self-efficacy—also known as the belief that you are capable of succeeding—is high, you have the power to be the coach you always needed to help you achieve everything you've ever dreamed about.