YHATC067: Accountability is Your X-Factor for Reaching Your 2020 Health Goals

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All right, y’all, we know that 2020 is around the corner. Another decade, the end of another decade, the beginning of a new decade. It’s crazy, I still remember 2010, I still remember 2000. 1990, I remember that a little bit, but I was only about five years old then. But anyway, you know why I’m talking about 2020.

As a personal trainer, as a health and fitness entrepreneur, why in the world would I be talking about the new year? Well, you and I know that one of the biggest things that we like to do, at least in our society, in American society, is make New Year’s resolutions. Now, one of the funny things to me is that these days, a lot of us already kind of know how we don’t be keeping new year’s resolutions.

So we say, “I’m not going to make a resolution”. I’m just going … I don’t know. I’m going to set a goal. I’m a … something. But let’s be honest, y’all, at least for some of us, we still like making resolutions, we just try to call them different things so we don’t really feel as guilty. I know, I’m messing with you, but it’s all good though, it’s all good. I just got to call it what it is. We still set New Year’s resolutions, we just try to call it different things sometimes because we know that year after year, after year, we’ve kept setting New Year’s resolutions and we kept failing with them. But anyway, y’all, I’m about to tell you something in this podcast today that is going to liberate you if you let it.

And that thing is this: Accountability, and I’m talking about real accountability, which I’ll kind of explain a little bit about what it is.

Real accountability will ensure that you meet your health goals in 2020, whatever they are. It might be you been wanting to lose 20 pounds, and it might’ve turned to 30, 40, 50 pounds by now, but either way, you’ve been wanting to lose weight year after year, or you’ve been wanting to get off of blood pressure medication, or maybe you said you’re going to run a 5K or a marathon (too long for me, but you do what you will). But either way, you said you’re going to do something, accomplish some health related goal, and years have passed and you keep on not making good on that resolution. Accountability is going to help you to reach that goal now.

It’ll help you if the following criteria are met:

Number one, accountability will help you meet your health goals if you’ve already decided that you’re really, really tired of not reaching your goal. You’re fed up, you’re done with not reaching that goal. You’re tired of failure.

Number two, accountability will ensure that you meet your health goals if you find a good accountability partner who’s really going to hold you accountable, even if it means that they make you mad sometimes, that they get on your bad side sometimes. Why? Because that’s what real accountability is. Accountability is when somebody tells you … you tell somebody, “Okay, I’m going to do X, Y, Z.”

So, say for example, you’re somebody you know who wants to … the most common New Year’s resolution, you want to lose weight, you want to lose 25 pounds. And so you tell your accountability partner, maybe a spouse, maybe not. You have to use wisdom. It may or may not be your best friend, it might be somebody who’s maybe a little bit less close to you, or it could be somebody who’s really close to you who tells it like it is. But either way, accountability is when this accountability partner, you’ve told them, “Okay, I’m going to drink 80 ounces of water every single day, and instead of me going and buying a sausage and egg biscuit every morning, I’m going to eat apples and peanut butter or something like that.” Just giving an example. Apples and peanut butter is a good breakfast, by the way.

Anyhow, you tell them that and then when you … This is somebody who is at your job and you, one morning, decide that you’re going to give yourself a little break because you kind of woke up on the wrong side of the bed, somebody made you mad or you felt kind of sad. So you went ahead and stopped by a fast food restaurant, got you two sausage and egg biscuits. You got to work and you walked by your friend’s, your accountability partner’s cube and they were like, “So what are you doing? Why do you have those biscuits?” And they tell you, “Throw them away.”

They say, “Throw those away now,” and you protest even though you know they’re right, because you know you spent the money and you’re like hoping that they just kind of find it in their heart to let you make an exception. But they’re like, “No, throw it away, throw it away now.” And you get upset with them, but you throw it away. But what happens? They’re helping you to reach your health goal. They’re helping you to do what you said you would do even when you don’t feel like it.

See, check this out. So think about it, if you’ve made a resolution or you set a goal, whatever you want to call it, to lose weight for example, that resolution, that goal means absolutely nothing if there is nothing in place to make you do whatever your part is with that. So you can say that’s why people don’t meet their goals year after year, after year, after decade is because they keep on setting a goal, but then they never really do any anything to really make them have to accomplish that goal. You see what I’m saying? They don’t really count the cost. They want to do it and they just kind of imagine themselves lighter and all this kind of stuff from having accomplished their goal, but whenever that feeling comes to get off track, they don’t put anything in place to be like, “No, I can’t worry about how I feel today. I can’t worry about what I have a taste for. I got to do it,” and so they fail at the first change of feeling.

And I mean, that’s why being motivated doesn’t really always work because motivation, it goes away. What’s going to hold you then? What’s going to keep you going? Accountability will, again, if you got the right kind of partner. Another thing, accountability will not let you settle for the classic, “Oh see, I really wasn’t ready this time,” that cop-out. It’s not going to let you cop out like that. That’s a very, very kind of common thing where like, “Oh, you know what? Okay, so I actually wasn’t really ready this time, so I went ahead and kind of fell off, but I realized that in another month after such and such and such and such happens, I get that out of the way, then I’m good, then I’m ready.” But what’s to say you don’t keep doing that over and over and over and over again? What’s going to keep you from that?

Real accountability is going to call you out and be like, “No, you said you were going to do this. You said you were going to do this. So that doesn’t matter. You got to keep on going. You got to keep on going.” That’s accountability and I want you guys to think about that, because accountability, real accountability will actually hurt sometimes. But if you are serious about meeting whatever your health goals are, being a healthier individual, enjoying your healthiest life, being at your healthiest weight, being in your best shape, being off of some medications that you take for lifestyle-caused diseases, if you’re serious about that, you have to have somebody who can tell you no and hold you to whatever you said you were going to do. I hope you hear what I’m saying to you.

You got to be willing to submit to somebody. A lot of times we kind of joke about submission like, “Shoot, ain’t nobody going to tell me what to do,” and that kind of thing, but submission is a powerful thing if you’re submitting to somebody who’s going to help you to get to the next level, somebody who’s going to make you better. Submission is really a good thing, and you have to submit if you’re accountable. That’s another thing, you might have a great accountability partner, but are you willing to put yourself under them, to listen to them whenever they tell you, “No, you can’t do that. You got to do something different.” Are you willing to submit? So you got to check yourself too. After you make sure your partner’s a good partner, make sure that you have gotten to that place where you’re willing to allow somebody else to tell you what you need to do and what you don’t need to do.

If you’re not willing to do that, to be honest, please don’t set a resolution, don’t set a goal because you’re not ready yet. You’re not ready yet if you’re not willing to let somebody else tell you when you’re wrong and you’re not ready yet if you haven’t gotten to that place yet where you’re like, “Okay, 15 years of not reaching the same goal is enough. I’m tired of it. I have to get to the best place in my health right now and I’m not taking no for an answer anymore.” I’m telling you guys, I wish I could shout it, but my children are upstairs asleep, so I can’t be too loud. But please understand me, you got to get fed up. You got to get fed up. You have to get fed up and if you’re fed up, you’ll do whatever it takes to reach your health goals in 2020.

So I’m telling you, accountability is going to be your X-factor. That’s going to be the thing that makes all the difference in you reaching your health goals. But remember, you got to be at that fed up place and you got to choose, you have to choose a good accountability partner who’s going to tell you no sometimes and who you’re willing to submit to. Now along those lines, I will tell you one thing that I’m going to start to offer in 2020 is a virtual health coaching program. And essentially what that entails is accountability for you.

Now basically, this means it’s not so much in person. Well it’s actually, to be honest, it’s kind of like a hybrid, at least for those who are in this local Macon/middle Georgia area. It’s hybrid personal training. So I meet you once a month to kind of assess you and kind of give you your exercises and whatnot to train you. And then through an app, I deliver your workouts to you, I give you your health … Excuse me, your nutrition recommendations and whatnot. You also will be able to use the app to send me pictures of your meals. We’ll be tracking your weight, we’ll track your blood pressure, your blood sugar, if that’s relevant, and we’ll progress you week after week. I do four weeks, eight weeks and 12 weeks. But the main thing is I hold you accountable. If you stick with me, you will reach your health goals, guys.

All right, y’all. That’s all I have. If you’re interested in any of that health coaching or whatever, look at the links below this podcast. You can follow me on Facebook (@ShawnB2B), Instagram (@ShawnB2BFitness), and Twitter (@ShawnB2BFitness). Subscribe to my website, YourHealthAtTheCrossroads.com/subscribe. What else? Did I miss anything? I don’t know, but either way, y’all, always remember this: Your doctor is not responsible for your health, you are. God bless you.

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