This comes up in conversations I have on a regular basis.
“I’ve tried everything…”
“No matter what I do I can’t budge it…”
“It’s not working…”
I understand. I’ve been there. But perhaps you’ve not tried everything yet?
In the last few years I’ve turned into somewhat of a scientist or investigator with all the little details of what’s going on in one’s life and their body’s reaction to it.
It’s opened my eyes to many ‘little’ problems actually being larger than they appear.
My life with chronic fatigue has taught me many lessons the hard way, but they were all valuable and I wouldn’t swap them for anything. It’s been like taking the blinkers off a horse. I do eat like a horse too so…?
You come to me wanting to lose weight. Cool. Happy to help.
I can’t just say do this workout and eat this diet, because I won’t know if it’s suitable for you.
I won’t even know if you’re actually prepared to do it unless I dig deeper!
So remember this when you decide to do a particular exercise plan or eat a specific diet that your favourite celebrity is following as it may not be suitable to you and your lifestyle.
This is where a coach’s training and knowledge comes into play.
I need to find out some background information to make a thorough assessment of your situation.
This includes:
- Your previous exercise history
- Your current exercise regime
- Your previous diet or eating habits
- Your current diet or eating habits
- Your previous health history and any ailments (big or small) which may be present
- Your current health level
- Your previous stress level and sleep history
- The current stresses in your life and nightly sleep
This is quite an extensive list, but the details matter.
Let’s break all these things down into specific examples so you can compare them to your own life and why they matter.
Your previous exercise history
Maybe you were a boxer but had to stop because of busted up hands.
This may make it difficult for you to do some bodyweight, dumbbell, barbell or kettlebell strength exercises.
We may have to find alternatives.
Maybe you were a dancer and you now have to live with stiff or worn down joints that stop you from doing jumps or running.
Maybe you were a competitive powerlifter and that’s lead to some degenerative bone issues, increased body fat or left you with injuries.
Your current exercise regime
You may be obsessed with yoga right now and love it, but that doesn’t work if your goal is to gain some muscle.
You’d be better doing less yoga and lifting heavier for a while.
You may love to lift weights every day, but your goal of running a half marathon has left you confused how to fit all that training into a week.
Your previous diet or eating habits
If you’ve been on calorie restricted diets in the past, this can have an effect on your body’s metabolism and how it reacts to lower calories.
You may have been eating low calories so long that you have adapted to it at the expense of your health.
Brain health, muscle and joint health and how you look and feel can be heavily impacted.
You may be way healthier and leaner eating 2 or 3 times as many calories every day, but convinced that you’ll get fat if you try it.
You may have been vegetarian for the past year, but your body type may run better with meat in your diet (I was in this situation ten years back).
Your current diet or eating habits
You may be all in on the ketogenic thing, but you’re finding you have less energy.
Perhaps your body type or current lifestyle need more carbohydrates to fuel your body.
You may be eating quite healthy and love eating fruit but putting fat on your belly.
Your body type may not respond well to sugar and you’d be better off with less fruit each day (this is something I found out and have experimented with over the past few weeks and my body fat has dropped just from reducing my fruit intake, especially bananas).
Your previous health history and current health level
Maybe you had a virus, parasite or cancer 3-5 years ago and you are trying to lose fat, but it’s not working no matter what you try.
The cancer treatment adds toxins to the system to treat the illness and this can add to your toxic load.
Their may even be other health issues that you know or don’t know about that are impacting the situation so the body doesn’t want to let go of the excess fat just yet.
You may have a large toxic load which the liver can’t keep up with, so it’s forced to store excess toxins in the fat to keep them away from the internal organs.
You may be getting fatter even though your diet is great, because it need somewhere to dump those excess toxins to keep you going. This is very common.
In some cases, the virus or parasite can be producing more toxins inside the body and poisoning you from the inside out!
In this case, your priority should be to reduce your toxic load while trying to kill off the virus, parasite or whatever.
I would, and do, take activated charcoal for this very reason and swear by it.
Saunas are also great for reducing the toxic load and are a tool I’ve used extensively in the last year.
Maybe you broke your collarbone and your shoulder doesn’t have the full range of motion or strength required to do may exercises.
We may have to find out what you can safely do as well as get you on a quality rehabilitation program.
Your previous stress level and sleep history
I know many entrepreneurs who have burnt out working too hard on too little sleep.
It’s very common nowadays.
I also know mothers who have several young kids close together and are running around like crazy trying to keep it together.
You may not have recovered enough for the body to return to homeostasis just yet.
In both cases, it can take years to get back into a regular routine with normal sleep and energy levels, so don’t be so hard on yourself.
Unfortunately, both of these groups of people are very hard on themselves.
The current stresses in your life and nightly sleep
You may not feel stressed, but there is always stress around.
And the stress may impact you more than you realize.
You may have relationship stress due to interactions with family, friends or partner.
You may have stress from not enough fulfilling relationships in your life.
There’s environmental stress from your workplace which may have new carpets releasing gasses that you inhale on a daily basis.
You may be sensitive to electromagnetic radiation like WiFi networks or live near a electricity or communications tower.
You may not sleep so great for whatever reason.
There’s financial stress which we all feel at one time or another.
You may hate your job and feel like your soul is slowly dying, but it’s all you know and you’ve gotta pay your bills.
…and there’s plenty more.
All of these factors must be taken into strong consideration when choosing what exercise routine will work best for your specific goals, body type and lifestyle.
Your nutrition will depend on it too, as will how you spend your time each week and what you are or are not prepared to do to reach those goals you set.
So if what you are doing is not working, you are not alone.
And there is an answer, several even.
You can commit your life to finding out everything you can about the human body and experimenting on yourself to find what works best.
Or you can work with someone crazy enough to do that themselves (yes, that’s me).
If you want a coach to go through these details with you, let’s get on the phone and talk about your situation and how my coaching program can help you overcome the obstacles in your life.
Just fire me an email and we’ll set a time to talk, or you can call me on 0403279744 any time.
If you just need something to get you started, you can join my Free 21 Day Challenge.
After months of mind-bending work, I’m finally done with my best product ever. I’ve put together individual men’s and women’s 21 day fat loss challenges to suit beginners and intermediates, and I’m giving them away free.
For the men it’s our Muscle & Metabolism Challenge.
For the women we have our Strong & Sexy Challenge.
Each program has daily workouts including strength, interval training, mobility and flexibility, soft tissue work including foam rolling and they can all be done in 30 minutes or less.
You can do the workouts at home with minimal equipment or at the gym. There’s also multiple levels so you can work to your own ability and increase the difficulty as you get stronger.
To compliment the workouts, I’ve rewritten Naked Nutrition again in a very simple to follow format that helps you build healthy habits to ensure your success. You’ll get this too.
As most people won’t read a book past the first chapter, I’m going to send you daily emails breaking down the chapters into bite size chunks so you can take on the information and apply it daily.
So if you want to kick off your year with purpose and work towards your best body, get started and let me know how you go.
Or if you have a friend who you think might benefit from something like this, send it their way and tell them I’m happy to help.
