Weight Loss Tip: Stop Overcomplicating Things!
It’s a warmish day here on Long Island, and I’ll admit that today I had some trouble coming up with what to write to you. Outside of a ‘rest day’ that I take every week where I do nothing but leisure activity, I try to provide value to you every single day. As you can imagine, this sometimes gets tricky, but I think I have something new to say without repeating myself too much :-p
Since my schedule’s getting packed and I’ve taken on several new clients in the last couple of weeks, I’ve had quite a few consultations. My consults tend to be very short, and include a review of the client’s goals, scheduling, payment and a fitness assessment so I can design the best personalized fitness program for that individual.
During one of these consults, a client was concerned about nutrition on my program. He’d gotten ‘expert’ help elsewhere, and these so-called ‘experts’ put him on a severely calorie restrictive diet. He lost weight in this capacity, but he didn’t stay with these ‘experts’ because after a while, his body just couldn’t stay in that starvation mode.
When we got to talking about how my specific nutrition program worked, he asked if I was big on tracking calories, taking exact measurements of food and drink, etc. I told him that to start, all I care about is the QUALITY of the foods he’s eating. I could care less if he eats 2,000 calories in a day, or 4,000. All he had to do was listen to his body, avoid added sugars and processed grains, and he’d be in good shape.
My clients seem to be relieved when I tell them how easy nutrition for weight loss is, because if you’re reading this, you’ve been there before: You’ve tried to diet on your own, and looked at what was being done on TV, or perhaps what the biggest fad diet was online. You’d go to a site like bodybuilding.com, download a program for weight loss, and just try to go at it yourself.
While I’ll admit that my weight loss journey from the ages of 19–25 was done exclusively on my own and through a great deal of trial-and-error, I tended to overcomplicate things during that six year period. Restrictive fad diets would come and go with varying degrees of success, and quite a bit of stop-and-go weight loss occurred during that time.
It wasn’t until I began following these three maxims that I began to see consistent, and then sustainable weight loss once I lost 100 lbs and had reached my goal:
Maxim 1. Instead of counting calories or reducing portions, focus on the QUALITY of the foods you eat, rather than the QUANTITY. The 80/20 Rule works in the beginning. As your palate changes, eliminate more and more junk out of your daily diet, and replace the crappy foods with healthy ones.
Maxim 2. The best form of portion control is listening to your body. Eat ONLY when hungry, and just to satisfy — NOT to stuff your face.
Maxim 3. Do (a) form(s) of exercise that works for you.
For many of my clients, interval training methods like Tabata, HIIT and FIT work for them, since they’re busy parents and professionals who don’t have the time to spend two or more hours spinning their wheels in a gym.
For those who have more time on their hands, take some local exercise classes, and explore the different fitness methodologies offered in your area. Figure out a few that work for you, so that when one gets boring, you can switch to another.
Like I’ve said, weight loss is SIMPLE! The issue is we hear all of these fad and sciencey phrases like ‘calories,’ ‘macronutrients,’ ‘EPOC,’ and others, and think we have to do a program to maximize our results.
When you’re getting started, forget all that! Keep things simple. And even when you’ve been at this a while, CONTINUE to keep things simple. The simpler things are, the easier it is to stick to, and the better and more sustainable results you’ll have!
Until tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Coach Pete
pete@weightlossbypete.com
P.S. If you’re looking to have a weight loss transformation of your own, then let’s chat!
I don’t know of any other health or fitness coach who specializes in Permanent Weight Loss, and that’s because most of them don’t have the knowledge or experience that I do in this arena :-)
Any Joe Schmo globe gym trainer can help you reach a short-term weight loss goal, but the real keys are in what happens AFTER that short-term goal is reached. My program won’t only help you to reach the short-term, but to LEARN as you go so that you stay at your goal weight and goal physique for the rest of your life.
To set up a strategy call with me, please go to www.weightlossbypete.com/strategy, and book a 15 minute call on a date and time that works for you. Please be advised that I’m almost entirely booked, but I’m a crazy bastard, and dammit I’m going to help as many people as I can before my brain literally fries due to the overload!
That link to book your strategy call again is www.weightlossbypete.com/strategy.
Toodles!
