Stardate: 20th November – 2015
Hi.
By now you’ve accepted my clients’ perpetual improvements in fitness and body composition as a known fact… you know, like:
- The sky being blue.
- The ocean being deep
- The fact that we will never see our tax returns again
You know… stuff like that.
What you may not know is the how of it.
You know, stuff like:
- How they manage to beat cravings.
- How they manage to eat at regular intervals through-out the day like the magazines instruct.
- How they stick to the same boring thing every single day.
- How they manage to get their vegetables tasting like something other than predigested grass.
I know, YOU know: “Calories in must be less than Calories out”, blah blah blah.
Your trainer probably beats you over the head with different variations of this mantra every… single… day. Basically everybody understands the physiology of weight loss: most people can grasp the mathematics, the biology. Some trainers delve in to the endocrinological elements. So why are you stuck? Is your trainer robbing you?
Not on purpose, no… at least, I don’t think so.
The mistake (s)he’s making is pretty common among physiology buffs: Ignoring the psychology of fat-loss – the school of thought that, whilst acknowledging that we are ‘the same’, realises that we are each very different.
Take my ever-evolving client Charlene for example. How do we beat her cravings? We don’t. We use them. Her dietary pitfalls? Fries. She said to me once: “I could eat fries all day, in every way. I don’t even need meat.” No meat? Baffling. I know.
She could do without snacking otherwise, and often missed meals. So, logically, the magazine-directed six-meals-per-day template would NEVER have worked for her. Instead, I built her diet around intermittent fasting (as she was already fasting unconsciously), chicken, a small portion of fries per day, and a copious amount of broccoli.
Here’s how it went:
- Upon waking, til evening – water, tea, coffee (unsweetened) – keep busy. Bored people snack on garbage.
- 5/6 pm. Intense workout. NO Cardio.
- Post-workout: 3 cups broccoli, 1/2 of a baked or barbecued/grilled chicken, 1 small portion of fries… in that order.
NB: Nutrition facts for the above?
- Medium fries – 340 calories (16gr fat, 44gr carbs, 4 gr protein)
- 1/2 of a baked chicken – 623 calories ( 26.9 gr fat, 91.6 gr protein)
- 3 cups broccoli – 162 calories (1.8gr fat, 33.6 gr carb, 11.4 gr protein)
- Total count: 1125 kcals (45 gr fat, 78 gr carbs, 106 gr protein)
Immediately, her body began to change. Did I mention NO cardio… No cravings… No cheating… and no guilt? Sometimes work commitments meant dining out. She handled it better with intermittent fasting, and the removal of food-demonisation, than she ever had… in her life. THAT, my friends, is the psychology of weight-loss.
Truly, I could write a couple hundred articles on the couple hundred ways I’ve had to manipulate this knowledge base to bring a person to the place of emotional comfort necessary to achieve and maintain weight-loss.
Now… realise: I am not, for one moment, suggesting that anyone else out there try to apply my approach to Charlene’s consultation. To suggest that, would sidestep the entire premise of this article… which is: Figure out your needs, as well as your short-comings… manipulate them.
If your trainer isn’t flexible enough to facilitate this…
…it’s time you find a new one.
Do yourself that favour.
Yours in health, peace, and fitness,
– Corey Springer
Apollo Fitness Barbados
Apollo Fitness Barbados 