Hard

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

I think the hardest goal I ever set myself was to run a marathon.

Back in 2014 after running my first ever 10km event, which was in itself a massive challenge seeing as a year before I couldn’t run a kilometre, I decided to sign up for a marathon.

That was in May and in October I ran my first ever half before crossing my one and only marathon finishing line in May 2015.

What was harder than the day itself for me was the training. Training for a half is one thing but I don’t think I realised how much time marathon training takes up. It takes over your life a little.

Beyond time, you need to adjust your diet, deal with niggles and injuries and tiredness and generally always feeling emotional.

I think now, I’d only do another one if it was London, like a bucket list one, because for me it takes up so much time and energy you have to really want to do it.

Why is diet such a dirty word?

Mention diets and lots of people lose their mind.

You shouldn’t diet, diets are bad for you, they’ll never work, it’s all about a healthy lifestyle and so on and so forth.

What is really an issue is our mental associations with the word diet.

On a basic level we all have a diet. Whatever you currently eat, that is your diet.

What we generally mean when we refer to a diet of course though is an attempt to lose weight.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe you’ve been told by a doctor you could benefit from losing weight for your health. Maybe you’d just feel a bit better in yourself if you did. The fact is unless you are already underweight it is ok to want to lose weight and, you know what, to do that you’re going to have to create a calorie deficit. Which is, a diet.

And diets don’t have to be bad. When we think about the bad rap the word diet gets, really what we dislike is the diet mentality.

Some of the habits and thoughts that can arise from fad diets and a lack of knowledge can create a bad mindset around food and exercise.

That doesn’t mean diets themselves are always bad though. When we talk about making it a lifestyle choice instead of a diet, what we mean is make it sustainable, so it fits into your lifestyle instead of being something you can’t keep up.

So are some diets not great for you long term, for your mindset, of course. Does that mean diets in themselves are bad – not at all. The key is how we are viewing the diet and ourselves during the process and avoiding the negative diet mentalities that are naturally ingrained in many of us.

Diets Do Work

How many times have you heard the phrase diets don’t work?

I’ll be honest I’ve said this myself so many times.

Then in 2019 I went to Martin MacDonald’s Nutrition Tour and he said something that turned my thinking on this totally on it’s head. I’ll have to paraphrase because I don’t have the exact quote.

Diets do work, weight maintenance is what people fail at.

When we say diets don’t work, as fitness professionals we are saying it from a good place, as a way of trying to protect clients, but it isn’t actually what we mean. It’s a simplified statement to generalise what we mean.

Because the fact is diets do work.  Or at least they can if you follow them.

Firstly let me clarify here when we talk diet we generally mean a way of losing weight.  I’ve said previously in it’s most accurate term your diet is whatever you happen to eat, but as a society we hear diet and we think weigh loss effort.  That is how I’m going to use the word today.

I’ve also said before all diets, no matter how they are dressed up, work by creating a calories deficit in some way.  If you create a calorie deficit you will lose weight.  Some ways are healthier than others. Some ways are more likely to promote unhealthy relationships with food than others.  Some ways provide more education as to how you are losing weight than others and some pedal myths that you are in fact losing weight because of a pill or a shake or your food combinations instead of calorie control.  But, the fact remains you burn more calories than you consume you create weight loss.

Therefore diets do work.

I can say oohhh don’t do Herbal Life, Weight Watchers, Slimming World or whatever diet you want to put in place of that, but fundamentally if you do them and follow them you will lose weight.  It would be wrong of me to lie and say that is not the case.

So why do I and so many people say you shouldn’t follow a diet when they do work?

Because what we really mean when we say that diets don’t work is that diets, as opposed to educated lifestyle changes, work whilst you follow them.  When you stop following them and go back to previous eating habits they will stop working, and the issue with diets is that they are very often not sustainable in the long term or if they are sustainable they tie you into contracts with that brand.

Some diets are restrictive.  Anything very low calorie or which cuts out certain foods for no other reason than weight loss is hard to maintain forever.  Especially once you have lost the weight and the scale coming down every week no longer exists as motivation.  I’ll tell you from experience no matter how much you believe staying at your ideal weight will be motivation enough it really isn’t.  Therefore very restrictive diets are difficult to maintain long term and so if you don’t have the knowledge and acquired skills on how to maintain weight once you reach your goal it is the maintenance part you may struggle with, and this is often why we see people yoyo diet.

Other diets are certainly less restrictive and I do see that there is honestly no reason why once ready to maintain weight you could not continue with them.  The issue with these is they very often tie you into a product.  Weigh in groups for instance (Slimming World, Weight Watchers and so on).  You could continue to attend these and eat in this way quite comfortably to maintain but you must continue to buy into the method because there is a lack of education included to allow you to go alone.

Equally things like Herbal Life, these can be promoted by PTs who also provide education around nutrition.  But they integrate their products into that education, so you believe you not only need a protein shake and a herbal tea and a pre workout and a meal replacement shake to lose then maintain weight, but you need that particular brand.  I believe that psychologically if we have succeeded in losing weight on those products we will believe even more so that they are important to remaining on track.  This essentially means to maintain weight loss you are tied into a product for however long you maintain.  If you suddenly can’t afford that product, mentally it is a lot easier to then lose that maintenance.

So when a PT says diets don’t work what we really mean is the diet phase is really not that important in the grand scheme of things.

You want to lose 3 stone.  You think that that is the hard part and then keeping it off will be easy.  Nope, at 1lb a week allowing a few weeks where you lose nothing you can comfortably lose 3 stone in a year (less if you are very focused but actually you don’t want to be obsessed with losing weight).  Say you are 25 and live to 98, that is 1 year of weight loss and then another 72 keeping that weight off.  If you are successful at this the majority of your life is in the maintenance phase not the diet phase (obviously not taking into account life changes etc).

So when we say don’t diet, we mean diet if you wish to lose weight, but don’t follow a fad.  Learn about calories, get a coach,  not a diet plan (PTs can provide advice and education not diet plans unless they are qualified nutritionists), get an idea of how much energy you need to eat.  Then eat that food in a way that suits your lifestyle (by the way that could be paleo, via fasting or another method if you are also aware of your calorie consumption).  If you do that once you hit your goal you adjust your calories slightly and just continue as you were.  The key here is all the time you have eaten normally, in a way that really suits you – not in a special magical way that has helped you lose weight but requires a lot of thought every day / week or a lot of money.  The key is you’ll know why you lost weight and don’t attribute it to magical speed foods (yes Slimming World I’m looking at you) or a magical pill (there might well be a product out there you love that makes you feel great and that’s cool, use it, feel great but all the while know that product is not the reason for your weight loss).

A decent PT knows if they do their job well you won’t need them forever – if they try and make you reliant on them forever they pretty much just want your money.  We might retain clients for a long time because they feel the benefit of our support or thrive from the accountability, valid reasons to see a coach, but we want clients to understand where their results come from – not to mystify them so they remained chained to us.  Whether you chose to continue working with a coach or not you should be given the skills that if you went it alone you have knowledge and are empowered to do so.

Diets do work. We struggle with maintenance. That’s why dieting in a sustainable and suitable way paves the way to a greater chance of success with maintenance, and if you are currently dieting or thinking about starting a weight loss journey know both that and this. Weight loss isn’t what you want. What you want is to be able to maintain that once you reach the goal. You don’t want it to be a short term thing so don’t look at short term options.

One Thing

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

The idea behind this is that every day you should always start the day knowing what your one thing is.

That’s not to say that you can’t or won’t do other things but if you know what your ‘absolute must do priority’ is then it gives you a focus to get that thing done.

That way even if you don’t get some stuff you’d have liked to have got done completed you have made progress in the area of your life that was most relevant that day.

Sometimes life gets overwhelming and our to do lists can be never ending. The benefit to adjusting your thinking to this must do, could do, don’t need to do yet type of priority system is that you reduce the overwhelm and makes things a bit clearer as to what you need to do day by day.

Consistency over detail

Successful people do the basics well and consistently

Sometimes it’s easy to look at these things and think- they’re too simple there must be more to it than that. The reason I’m not getting the results I want isn’t that I’m eating too little or too much it must be how my body responds to certain foods… and so on.

Now the truth is there are lots of variables to our health and fitness. But, you can take account of all these things and yet if you don’t nail the basics it won’t be effective.

Think of your fitness and nutrition like levels in a game- to get to level two you must master level one. Each level acts as a foundation for the next level. You’ll often hear of things like the nutrition pyramid – that’s the same concept, you need to establish a solid base (in nutrition that’s getting your energy balance right) before looking at macro and micro nutrients, meal timings or supplements – you basically don’t want to build on a shoddy base!

It’s human nature for us to want to look into the specifics, the idea that little tweaks will be the things that makes everything fall into place for us is a tempting one. But it’s the little tweaks at the basic level that will first make the difference. Once you’ve cracked those then feel free to move onto looking at the specifics of what and when you eat if you still want to- although you might find that you feel less of a need to.

The key is you need to do these things more often than not and over a sustained period of time. That’s not to say you must never take a break or have off days, just that you do things more often than you don’t.

You don’t always need to be nice

I wrote a blog the other day where I said one good piece of advice I’d been given was You don’t always have to be kind / helpful / nice.

This got a few comments and messages saying always be kind and I think maybe I didn’t explain this very well!

Not being explicitly or overly kind or helpful towards someone doesn’t mean you be unkind or mean. There are behaviours in between, it’s not an either / or thing.

Being kind or helpful to someone doesn’t have to mean someone reciprocates or even acknowledges it, and I agree its nice to be that kind of person, I’ve always tried to be. But. It can mean that you can be taken advantage of because not everyone will think in the same way as you. With some situations and people it becomes too much if you give and the other person doesn’t acknowledge, care or their actions have a negative impact on you. You could of course carry on being overly kind and nice and helpful and ‘the bigger person’ but often that’s at the detriment to your own well-being. So at points like that it is perfectly ok to not be that nice kind helpful person anymore and step back.

That is not being unkind it’s just not giving your energy to people who don’t appreciate it. It’s neutral as opposed to the being the polar opposite and I think that realising that is a good lesson which was why it was a good piece of advice. Life doesn’t have to be lived in extremes where everything is either totally one thing or another which is a concept the world isn’t great at these days. Whilst we can all try not to be arseholes in day to day life that isn’t to say you need to be a door mat.

4 Things I’ve Learnt

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I couldn’t pick one so here’s four instead:

1) ‘Go grab life’. Last week Nicky Newman, someone I never met but followed on Instagram passed away from stage 4 breast cancer. For 5 years after diagnosis she campaigned for breast cancer treatment and care with this message. None of us know how long we will be around or what will happen in the future and you can’t wait until the right time to try things or go places. Essentially do things that make you happy, big or small.

2) Pay attention to people’s actions not words. It doesn’t really matter if someone says all the right things if what they do doesn’t align with this.

3) You don’t always have to be kind / helpful / nice. This one’s hard because I’ve always tried to be these things, including when people don’t reciprocate, but honestly some people who consistently just behave like idiots do not deserve your energy.

4) Just because they use big words doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. OK this is less advice and more something I’ve learnt. Over the years I’ve realised that often all those words and bluster just hides the fact people don’t really know what they’re doing and equally plenty of people who are experts in their field are maybe just a bit rougher round the edges when it comes to communication. Same as in the gym when you first enter the weights room and are intimidated by all the super confident people who seem like experts and as time goes on and you learn correct technique you look at them and think hmmm … your really going to hurt yourself one day!

Gym Energy

What things give you energy?

Before training….

1) Pre Workout – a supplement that boosts your energy and could help you with a more sustained and focused workout. Usually contain caffeine but also ingredients like beta-alanine, creatine, BCAAs, and B vitamins. Costs can vary.

2) Coffee – if you just need a caffeine fix this is a cheaper version of a pre workout and easy to grab wherever you are.

3) Eat two hours before- A mix of carbs and protein a couple of hours before should give you enough energy to feel good for training.

4) A banana with peanut butter – 30 minutes beforehand can give you an energy boost

5) Water – If you’re dehydrated that will contribute to an energy slump.

6) Sleep – Less of a quick fix but being well rested will help your energy levels.

It was a donut

‘That looks like 20 minutes in the gym’.

Someone said that today as I ate an ice donut.

Now apart from, in reality I probably wouldn’t burn the amount of calories in the donut within 20 minutes (ever realised how much we over estimate calories burnt during exercise?), the notion that we have to earn our food is a horrible mindset to be in.

When we think in terms of ‘if I do this, I can have that’ or I’m going to have to exercise for this long because I’ve eaten this’ we effectively put a negative narrative on certain foods and make exercise a form of punishment.

Of course when we are more active we will burn and therefore be able to eat more calories to maintain our weight. Of course if you want to lose weight you need to understand the balance of calories in and out. So being aware of calories you are consuming or your TDEE isn’t unhealthy or obsessive.

But thinking of food as something that needs to be earned instead of enjoyed makes it a chore instead of a part of life.  Thinking of exercise as something we have to do to eat instead of something we get to do to feel good and be healthy makes it something we may well end up resenting.

A donut should always look like a donut (tasty) not 20 minutes in the gym.   

What Healthy Is

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Being healthy is not:

Being a certain weight

Being a certain size or shape

Being ripped / having defined visible muscle

Being able to run a distance in a certain time

Being able to lift really heavy weights

Eating really strictly

All these things can be a result of being healthy but in themselves they are not indicative off being healthy.

I know people who live incredibly disciplined lifestyles and look in great shape. They are undoubtedly fit. That doesn’t mean they are healthy.

You can be in great shape but have difficulty managing your training and beat yourself up if you don’t stick to your training schedule and feel like you must do a certain amount each day.

You can be in great shape but beat yourself up for eating certain foods or having some time off from your normal diet, or find yourself being careful on nights out to avoid causing damage to your fitness.

You can have an Instagram worthy routine and lifestyle and find yourself turning down social events because it would interrupt that.

Equally you can be a little bigger than you’d like and eat a more rounded diet and still be fit and healthy, and importantly healthy in more way than just one, because you know that not doing things perfectly doesn’t matter.

That’s not to say I think being overweight is healthy. If you don’t do any exercise and eat too much that is likely to lead to health problems and not be healthy.

We don’t have to live to an extreme though and a balance where we eat well and move (preferably in a way we enjoy) to allow us to feel good and enjoy life is probably the healthiest way to be.