Finding your fitness solution
Whilst there are often many different individual components to achieving a health and fitness goal (i.e. learning how to lift weights, understanding how to eat to match their weight management goals etc.) your success inside and outside the gym will ultimately come down to one factor – how good you are at problem solving.
Often when people come to me with a primary focus (i.e. lose 20kg, gain 10kg of muscle etc.) they don’t know how to break that down into small, achievable habits they can do consistently – they instead only focus on the larger outcome and struggle to stay motivated during the long stretch of time it can take to get there.
To give yourself the best chance of long-term success it helps understand the individual steps required to get to your goal, as they will often be what’s required to maintain your results. Let’s look at the following example:
Client Goal – Weight loss
Say you join the gym and start training with the goal of losing 20kg. First we must understand your ‘why’:
What are your emotional drivers for choosing this goal?
Do you have an event/significant date you want to be ready by?
Have you been medically advised by your doctor to lose weight for health reasons?
We seek to understand your ‘why’ so we can see the broad scope of where this goal falls in terms of two main areas, the first being desire. I’ve spoken with people before who said they ‘wanted to lose weight because they thought it was what everyone had to do’, or because a friend/partner/family member said they should. Is this actually your goal, or someone else’s? Where is the desire for the goal; and how will you personally feel once you’ve achieved it?
We next look at the priority for the goal – how important is this for you? Often when I speak to people who aren’t looking to achieve their primary goal in the next 6-12 months, it can be harder for them to feel engaged with the goal and motivated to complete the necessary steps because it feels ‘too far away’. If this is the case, it’s typically better to set a smaller target that will feel ‘more real’ for you to help you get cracking with the behaviours you need to achieve it.
As Jay Z said, ‘set goals so appropriately that people wanna fine me’.
From here we look at your timeline:
When are you expecting this by? Is this reasonable/too soon/not soon enough to inspire a sense of urgency?
Have you been on a weight loss journey before? What worked/didn’t work?
Once we’ve determined your timeline for achieving your goal, we can work backwards to find what rate of progress to aim for each week. If our weight loss goal is 20kg in 12 months, this would break down to a 385gm loss each week.
I wouldn’t generally recommend people do such a long period of straight weight loss as it can be difficult to both physically and mentally sustain, so it would be wise to plan to have a series of ‘diet breaks’ where you can relax slightly with your food and training and aim to maintain your weight whilst enjoying a mental break.
An example if this would be a dieting period of 11 weeks followed by a diet break of 2 weeks, which you could repeat 4 times a year. To achieve your 20kg weight loss goal, this would now mean that during your dieting period, you’d be aiming for a 450gm loss each week.
We’ve now determined what your long-term goal is, how we’re going to structure your dieting periods to get there, and what rate of progress we’re aiming for each week. Now, we need to bridge the gap between where you are and where you need to be to get on that weekly rate of progression. This is where we start looking at your food, exercise and lifestyle habits:
How often are you exercising each week? If you’re currently exercising twice a week and not getting results, can we push that up to 3-4 times a week?
How are you eating each day? If you don’t have any set structure with your food and don’t know how many calories you’re consuming, can we gain some awareness through using a food journal?
How does your routine change on the weekends? If you’re eating fairly healthy during the week but then completely blowing out your weekend with alcohol and take-away, can we start to introduce some slightly healthier options/routines to substitute those behaviours?
When considering making these changes, remember that we don’t need to aim for ‘perfection’ – we just need to aim for ‘better’. That doesn’t mean you have to spend every spare available second in the gym doing cardio, or that you need to buy 5,000 Tupperware containers and cart all your food around with you like some kind of fitness nomad. Don’t get weird – all we need to do is find a way to get you onto the weekly rate of progression, and no more than that.
As a rule, I try to only carry enough meals to load up one camel.
If you are struggling making these changes or don’t know where to start, that’s ok – it’s all part of the journey. Start researching online, find a friend/family member that you can ask to help hold you accountable, or speak to a coach about getting set up on a program. There are plenty of solutions to the problems you’re struggling with; we just need to find the right one that works for you.
Talk soon,
Alex
