We are all looking for progress, but we often forget the most important part: patience. A fitness coach with 18 years of experience advocates for a “patient progress” model, which is built on a solid mindset. This mental framework, he argues, is more critical than any diet or exercise plan. If your mind isn’t in it for the long haul, your body will never catch up. Here are three tips to adopt this sustainable approach.
The first, and most counter-intuitive, tip is to slow down. We are a culture of “instant gratification.” We want to see results now, which leads to a “hypersonic” approach—crash diets, two-a-day workouts. A veteran coach explains this is a path to failure. Rushing leads to mistakes, deprivation, and frustration. It’s the enemy of consistency, which is the only true engine of progress.
By embracing a slower, more deliberate pace, you become more careful. You make fewer errors. You build a routine that you can actually live with. This “patient progress” model, while less dramatic, is what allows you to progress much faster in the long run. You are no longer “going in circles,” but are making steady, forward momentum every single day.
The second tip is to focus on your efforts, not the outcomes. Patience is hard when you’re obsessed with the results. We check the scale, the mirror, the fit of our clothes, and we get frustrated when they don’t change overnight. A fitness expert insists you must focus only on what you can control.
This means your energy must be invested in the controllable, daily process: your sleep, your hydration, your food choices, your scheduled movement. This is a more practical and less anxious way to live. This leads to the third tip: choose small, compounding changes over big, explosive ones. A big, drastic change is overwhelming and rarely lasts. A small, patient change—like adding 10 minutes to your walk—is sustainable and builds unstoppable momentum over time.