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Summary
On episode 299 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan closes out the five part Wellness Roadmap series by covering what happens after you reach your goal. The acronym for this final stage is CARGO: celebration, adjusting to your new normal, resetting your GPS, and go.
Celebration means acknowledging what you accomplished without falling back on food or old habits as the reward. Adjusting to your new normal means accepting compliments and comments about your change without letting them define you, positively or negatively.
Resetting your GPS means treating the finish line as a new starting point: pick a new vision, set new milestones, and keep going, because health and fitness is something you maintain and build on, not something you finish once and file away.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com
Key Takeaways
- CARGO is what happens after you hit your goal: celebration, adjusting to a new normal, resetting your GPS, and go. Allan built this stage specifically because reaching a goal without a plan for what comes next is how people slide back to where they started.
- Celebrate, but don’t make food or old habits the reward. Allan warns that using food, alcohol, or skipping workouts as a celebration for reaching a fitness goal is exactly how people undo the lifestyle change that got them there.
- Non-food rewards reinforce the identity change. Allan suggests things like a trip, new clothes that fit the new body, or new gear (a bike, workout shoes) as rewards that support the new lifestyle instead of undermining it.
- Adjusting to your new normal means managing other people’s reactions. Family and colleagues will comment, sometimes positively (“you look great”), sometimes not (“you’re getting too skinny”), and Allan says neither should be allowed to define how you feel about the change.
- Health and fitness is attained and maintained, not attained and finished. Allan is explicit that reaching a goal is not the end state; it is a new baseline you either maintain or build past.
- Resetting the GPS means picking a new vision after every goal. Once you have completed something like a 5K or a Tough Mudder, Allan says the next move is to define a new destination rather than letting the achievement become the finish line.
- Allan’s own next reset targets balance training. After a close call climbing scaffolding left behind by a contractor before a hurricane, he decided his next round of goals would specifically include balance and agility work to reduce fall risk.
- Go means sustained action, not a single event. The final letter in CARGO is a reminder that health and fitness has to be revisited in terms of what it means to you next year, five years, and ten years out, not treated as a solved problem.
“Health and fitness is not something you attain and keep. It’s something you attain and work to keep, or it’s something you attain and decide you want to go even further.”
Coach Allan
