By Naomi Rabon, NW Fitness Team Trainer
 

 
Feeling insecure about something means you are uncertain or anxious about yourself or your capabilities. You could generally be a confident person but you just have insecurities about something in particular, such as a goal you’d like to achieve. You might feel some hesitation about achieving that goal, so you question your ability to go from point A to point B. You don’t trust that you will follow through with what you set out to do.




HAVE FAITH


You may not even be aware of your insecurities towards your fitness program, or towards your coach or trainer, your workouts, or your nutrition program. We’ve all heard the phrase over and over trust the process. What this means on a deeper level is that while you may not feel confident in your abilities and you may doubt and question and hesitate, and you may be down right afraid – trust anyway! Having faith means that you are scared and insecure and uncertain but you put your trust in whatever it is that you’re afraid of anyway.

ARE YOU INSECURE ABOUT YOUR FITNESS?

Feeling insecure about your fitness program can mean any of the following:

• Unsure the program will work for you
• Second guessing your commitment to stick to your program

• Giving yourself permission to give up in some way at any point in time
• Negotiating with yourself and making excuses for skipping workouts or deviating from meal plans
• Overthinking your fitness program

• Being OK with giving up and not reaching your goals
• Repeating the same vicious cycles of starting then quitting over and over…and over
• Going from one program to another to another without giving any of them a chance to work

• Displaying the same behaviors and expecting a different outcome
• Repeatedly using the same excuses
• Being sick and tired of being sick and tired


FACE YOUR FITNESS INSECURITIES

If any of these sound all too familiar to you, here are some steps you can take to gain more confidence in your fitness program and start experiencing small victories on your way towards achieving your goals.

1. Don’t Take On Too Much Too Soon When you are trying to break away from insecurities and gain confidence in your workouts and nutrition, I feel like it’s more important to set small, achievable goals rather than trying to take on too much too soon. If you try and tackle too many workouts per week, or workouts that are too intense, this will just deflate your confidence even more and have you thinking “See, I knew I was a failure. I can’t do this.” And the same goes for your nutrition. You need to make small, realistic changes that will help boost your confidence and your ability to actually live a healthy lifestyle, rather than do a complete overhaul to your diet and have you feeling so deprived that it leads to unhealthy binging habits, or you swearing off any further “painfully difficult” healthy habit changes.

2. Acknowledge Your Insecurities One of the first steps in strengthening a weakness, or in turning an insecurity into confidence, is recognizing or identifying what that insecurity is. I know many women – and men – who are insecure about going over to the free weight area or “big boy” area of the gym. It can be intimidating for sure! I sometimes feel insecure about going to certain areas of the gym if they are really crowded and busy, too. But you may miss out on some exercises because there are certain areas of the gym you don’t feel comfortable going to. There are a number of ways to work around this. My personal solution is to wear my hat low, put my headphone music on high and just don’t look around too much. So, I’m in my own little world and barely recognize who else is in the general vicinity. Identify what your insecurities are and try to come up with ways to but these at ease, boost your confidence or work around them in some way.

3. Reassurance Surround yourself with others who maybe share some of the same insecurities, or who have overcome these insecurities in the past and can help you navigate through yours. We are ALL human, and we’ve all gone through struggles and insecurities in our life, have gotten through them, overcome them, and may still have insecurities when it comes to certain things. Learn to give yourself reassurance, and/or surround yourself with like-minded people you can trust to open up to and share your insecurities with who will give you some reassurance in return. That alone can help you gain confidence in your ability to be successful in the gym and the kitchen, and ultimately reach your fitness goals. 


4. Have Patience I can’t emphasize this enough, but so many of us (myself included) can be so impatient with ourselves, which creates insecurities. We put a time limit on something – internally this creates anxiety in anticipation of a certain outcome – and if it doesn’t happen within that time limit, we feel like a failure and associate insecurity and self-defeating emotions with whatever it was we were trying to achieve in what was most likely an unrealistic time frame. Have confidence that if you stick to your plan, success will come. It just may not come as fast as you’d like it to. Impatience feeds insecurities just as patience can nurture confidence.

When we embark on a particular fitness goal – a transformation challenge, a competition prep, training for an athletic event, etc. – going into it with hesitation, insecurity and self-doubt can almost assuredly seal your fate in the outcome. Learning to trust, have faith, have confidence and self-assurance in your abilities and your commitment to the process and the goal will almost guarantee a path to achievement and success!
 

RELATED CONTENT
Tip Me Tuesday: Zero In
Tip Me Tuesday: Invest In Yourself
Tip Me Tuesday: Work Hard, Recover Harder
Tip Me Tuesday: Body Of Work
Tip Me Tuesday: Winning With Weakness

ABOUT NAOMI RABON
Naomi-lighterBIOOne of the trainers on Nicole’s elite NW Fitness Training Team, Naomi is a certified Personal Trainer and Fitness Specialist through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. She is a NPC Figure competitor who has been involved in the health and fitness industry for over 12 years.

Go here to find out more about training with the NW Fitness Training Team!