Change

Often as a PT we will talk to clients they will say they really want to make changes, eat better, train more, sleep better, lose weight, gain weight and so on.

We identify the things holding them back from these changes happening.

We suggest ways of overcoming these hurdles.

Let’s say eating out a lot is holding back someone from losing weight. We might suggest changing what they order to a lower calorie option, ordering one less course or skipping one meal out a week to socialise in a different way instead (like going for a walk or t the cinema).

Those aren’t dramatic suggestions, they’re adjusting the norm a bit for something you want.

Do you know how often we hear, but when I go out for dinner I want to order what I enjoy, if I’m spending money on it I want to get what I really want and other variations of the same theme.

And that’s fine. Nobody is saying you can’t. But in this situation you have to decide what you want more. The change you have said you want or the ideal dining experience. If you really want the change, you have to make adjustments. I’s about which thing you want more- there’s no right of wrong here, but you do need to be honest with yourself.

If you find that every time someone suggests an idea that might help you move closer to your goal, you find an objection. I you aren’t really willing to make any small sacrifices, if you already think your way of doing things is right anyway, it might be worth considering how much you really want that goal you’ve set.  Because to create any type of change you have to actually make changes.   

Weight Loss is Simple

Losing weight is easy.

Like literally all you need to do is consume fewer calories than you burn. Simple.

If that were the case why would a large proportion of the population be on a diet almost constantly.

Now factually it is correct that the actual mechanism for losing weight is ridiculously straight forward, the fitness industry over the years has created all these rules and systems for creating a calorie deficit but the actual principle remains remarkably simple.

Losing weight isn’t easy though is it?

Because people aren’t machines, we all do things that aren’t optimal for us, we have emotions and whilst we might know what would be best for us doing it doesn’t always seem quite so straight forward.

So the notion that losing weight is simple because the actual method of losing weight is simple doesn’t really help much. What we need to be able to do is work on our own obstacles and find ways to overcome them.

Depending on how much weight you want to lose and where your starting point is, those obstacles will be very different and some much harder to overcome than others. That’s why someone looking to lose a couple of pounds before their holiday is going to have a very differ net weight loss experience to someone with health issues who is looking to lose a couple of stone or more.

Understanding that just because something is theoretically simple doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or straight forward in real life is the first step to being able to actually work towards weight loss.

Why Pay?

There’s so much information for free on the internet why would you ever pay for a PT?

It’s true you could lose weight without paying anything. You can work out your TDEE and track calories for free using apps, you can plan your own workouts within a gym or even at home. There is literally no need to pay anything beyond your weekly food shop to get results.

As long as you do the work.

What is hard though is staying consistent, motivated, accountable to yourself, and sticking to the basic principles regardless of the noise and fads around you.

This is where PTs and online coaches come in. They might not tell you anything you don’t already know (of course they might) but they will hold you accountable, work with you on the tough days and when your mindset starts to wobble help you. Knowing things is all well and good, applying it is much much much harder. A PT will also have experience with actual people. Advice online is generic, for instance, a TDEE calculator can be pretty accurate but won’t take into account the actual person, the little specifics about them that might mean that number needs adjusting. Here is where  having an actual coach in your corner makes a difference. The other difference is buy in. Investing in something will often make you more committed to it, paying for a coach in itself might just make you a bit more invested in actually sticking to what you’re doing when things get tough, because even with a coach you still have to put in the work so having parted with cash you might just find yourself more motivated.

Consistency

I hate the feeling of unless things are perfect you’re failing. I think most of us know that consistency is more important that perfection. But it’s tallying the two notions up and finding the balance and feeling ok with that, that’s difficult.

I tend to beat myself up if I’ve not done everything I meant to in a week. I can have eaten in a calorie deficit but just not necessarily the meals I planned to and I can have trained more than most people, just not completing every session I meant to, and see that as a bad week. When in reality it’s helped me get closer to my goals regardless. The issue in my head is that I’m not meeting the standard I decided to set for myself, even though in reality I’m pretty consistent.

I think I’m pretty common on this.

Part of it comes from social media. On the one hand you see people talking about consistency but at an epic scale. Like, say you see someone super fit who trains on an epic scale every single day or runs every day and then presents this as consistency and shows you all the benefits from creating those habits. Now that’s both inspirational and a little bit disheartening. Because on the one hand you think look at them and if I was consistent like that it could be me. On the other hand, in reality how many people can be like a PT who works in a gym or an influencer who trains as a job? And when it’s someone who has a full time job and still manages to train like crazy, well that’s amazing but what have they had to give up to get it done? Prioritising getting a session in over sleep or seeing your friends isn’t admirable commitment, in my view it’s a bit worrying. Because consistency is getting things done and doing it regularly and week after week but not at the expense of everything else. It should help enrich your days not overtake them. Yes you need to find consistency to regularly make time for your health but also be ok with things changing, not happening, missing sessions or meals.

Of course there’s the other end of consistency, where you consistently do nothing and put getting started off. If you keep saying you’re going to implement a habit and then don’t so put it off for another week, well that won’t help you either. In these situations doing it and not being consistent at first is going to be better than taking an all or nothing approach. If you can then turn that into doing the habit more often than you don’t you will eventually find that consistency.

We need to remember too, that consistency can be lost and regained. Illness, injuries, life events can throw us off balance and it can be hard to regain that momentum again after sometimes. That’s not a failure on our parts, it ‘s pretty normal, and beating ourselves up about it probably does more harm than good.

Diet and exercise really is a lot about mindset and balance – not being all in one camp or all in another, not being all or nothing. Having goals but also being ok about where you are now, being able to celebrate what you can do or have done whilst also aiming to improve. Mentally that’s hard because you have different voices in your head competing and our brains tend to quite like black and white thinking and we’re less comfortable with the various shades of grey, so you have to find a way of not letting that make you feel bad. Fitness is in reality largely a mindset game. 

Control the Controlables

You can’t control what happens but you can control how you react to it.

This applies to all aspects of life, things around us, decisions of others, other people’s actions will have an impact on your own life and change things, whether it be for the better or worse. Sometimes you might be able to influence them a bit but sometimes things really are beyond your control. When that happens how you decide to respond to it is the only thing you do have control over. You could ignore something, hide your head in the sand, decide to take the best curse of action available and so on. You can be angry and frustrated or decide no to stress about things you can’t control or anything in between.

This applies to your diet and exercise too.

Things will happen most weeks that stop you doing what you planned. Kids get sick, work deadlines, a cold, a birthday, the list is endless. Some of these things you can plan for and work round. Some will pop up and mean plans have to change and there’s not much you can do.

How you react to that is what matters here. You could press the f**k it button. Think well this weeks messed up so I may as well just do nothing and eat a load of junk and start again next week. Or you could think well, I can’t do what I planned but I could focus on doing what I can. I might not be able to cook the meal I planned but I could pick up something quick and easy and still healthy instead of ordering a takeaway. I might not be able to go to the gym after work now but I could still go for a quick walk when I get in and get some steps in and some fresh air.

Not only do these actions effectively act as damage limitation, they’re also more likely to make you feel more positive about yourself and the situation, less frustrated, and therefore not only just better about whatever happened in the first place also more positive about keeping working towards your goals.

Focusing on what you can control over what you can’t isn’t a magic wand. It won’t stop you being annoyed or frustrated about situations but it can help you reign those emotions in a bit and help you get the best possible scenario for yourself.

It’s OK to be Uncomfortable

Something to remember about losing weight, or mastering a new lift or sport or class or starting anything new fitness releated.

I often write that it needs to be sustainable and allow for breaks and blips and not be super prescriptive.

Too often though we can take that message to mean that we shouldn’t feel any discomfort.

The fact is if you need to consume less or move more it is, at first at least, going to be a little uncomfortable. You will feel hunger or achey or a little deprived or tired.

If you stop as soon as you hit this point because, YOLO, you will never create the changes required to change your body and fitness.

When we say it’s about balance don’t forget balance has two sides to it and as well as giving yourself freedom within your diet and exercise you also need to be able to exercise restraint and spend some time in discomfort too.

In or Out

Why is it easier to create a calorie deficit by tracking and reducing your calorie intake as opposed to increase your calorie burn?

In theory you can create a calorie deficit in both ways, you can eat less or move more (or meet in the middle and do a bit of both). Generally though, I’d tend to push people to focus on calorie intake over what your burn and here’s why.

It’s pretty hard to track how many calories you have burnt a day. You can get idea of your TDEE across the week based on your general activity levels, but how many calories your burnt in that specific HIIT class or on that run is difficult to put a number on (smart watches calorie burn figures are normally massively inaccurate). Beyond that you need to remember that your TDEE will take into account your normal activity levels, so those calories have already been accounted for, so at what point do you know you’ve done ‘extra exercise? The answer is in reality you don’t. So how much you expend is a rough figure, but you can track how much you consume with much more accuracy. Of course it’s never going o be spot on to the nearest calorie but with apps like My Fitness Pal you can track your intake for free and to a reasonably accurate level. The fact that trying to monitor what you eat allows you more accurate data to sue means you’re more likely to be successful sticking to a calorie deficit if you try to adjust what you eat instead of trying to increase what you burn. If on top of this you then also look to move more (which I’d full encourage) you will find you can increase your calorie deficit a bit more and maybe assist your results.

The other aspect of creating a calorie deficit by burning more calories instead of eating less comes if you are already quite active. If you currently do nothing and then start walking daily and maybe doing planned exercise once a week, then you will probably find that you can eat the same and lose weight. You might also find though that you’re more hungry because you’re doing more so you end up eating more too. Without tracking this is a very hit and miss approach.  Now if you are already quite active and want to create a deficit through exercise the issue comes from how much more can you do in reality?  Unless you want to spend all your time in the gym how realistic is this going to be for you?  

The one time I’d be mindful of making a deficit a mixture of reducing intake and increasing output is when someone is quite small and already quite light. This is going to give them a smaller TDDE to start with and so creating a calorie deficit by food alone might leave them with a very small daily calorie amount. In cases like this a missed approach could be beneficial, however equally, it might be that a review of goals and a decision of whether weight loss if the best goal here or whether body recomposition might be a better focus.

Ultimately there are multiple ways you can create a calorie deficit. Using one which allows you to track accurately will allow you to assess progress and when you start to plateau or are noting getting results as you think you should be you have real data to use to assess why and what you can do to change that.

Bad Things

Things that are bad for you.

We’re endlessly hearing that this that and the other is bad for your health.  Not getting enough sleep, drinking too much coffee, eating too much sugar or fat, the list is endless.

If you listened to every single piece of advice you’d never be able to do or eat anything.

The thing is if you look at the ideal there are lots of things we wouldn’t ideally do or would ideally do. It would be practically impossible and very dull to live like that though.

So how do you find a balance and decide what changes to make and exactly how far to go with them?

Let’s take coffee as an example. Drinking too much coffee can affect your sleep, it can cause adrenal fatigue, it can make you feel jittery, if you’re having lots of coffee shop coffees with creams and syrups it’s adding a shed load of calories to your week.

But coffee tastes good, it’s a cheap pre workout, it helps kick start your mornings. There are worse habits to have to be fair. So really do you want to cut it out all together?

Here’s where balance comes in, what negative effects does coffee have for you personally?  If you’re trying to lose weight cream based Café Nero’s might not be great for you, but you could swap to an Americano each day and maybe have one of you favourite drinks a week instead. If you don’t sleep brilliantly, stopping the caffeine hits earlier in the day or limiting yourself to just a couple of cups might benefit your sleep. Neither of these scenarios require you to cut coffee out completely, just make some adjustments which will hopefully produce enough benefits for you to see the worth in the change.

Not everything you do has to be perfect to start making positive changes in your health and fitness, not everything has to be dramatic or black and white.

Calories Aren’t Bad

How often have you heard about calorie counting being restrictive / bad / creating obsessive eating habits? It’s the anti diet movement’s tagline.

Now the notion that you haven’t got to be a certain weight or size is great. But if you do want to lose eight because you want to and you will feel better then you are allowed to.

If you are going to do this you have to eat less than you burn. There’s literally no other way.

So if you are keeping track of your calorie intake in order to sensibly lose weight because you will feel better for that why would that be bad or unhealthy.

Of course, like anything, it can be taken to extreme. If you are refusing to do things because it would take you over your daily calories, skipping meals, finding yourself obsessing over your diet, severely restricting your food intake for quick results, cutting our food groups or anything like that then there’s an issue. If that’s you, those are signs it may be helpful to seek a medical professionals advice. For most people though, keeping a track of how much you’re eating doesn’t create such issues.  It does allow you to sensibly work towards your goals with data you can use to see what is and isn’t working.

What are the alternatives? You could use an eating systems where calories aren’t counted. Slimming World, Weight Watchers, maybe Intermittent Fasting.  They might take the counting away but they don’t prevent restrictive habits or a bad relationship with food.

You could eat intuitively. Which is great if you are happy with your body as it is, but in reality if you want to lose weight then what you eat now isn’t working and without a mean to measure your food intake how do you know what changes to make?

The upshot is, there are so many reasons you might have a bad relationship with food. Calorie counting might not be for you because of that, but calorie counting in itself doesn’t create bad relationship with food, there are so many factors in play when such a thing happens. Making a process, that is pretty factual when you take our emotional relationship with food out of the equation, into a negative idea is dangerous, not least because it’s actually the easiest, least faddy and cheapest way to lose weight out there.