Putting the pin back in the hand grenade…

Why so many people fail when it comes to fat loss and how many coaches struggle with client communication and nutritional advice.

It’s fair to say most people have tried more than once to lose weight and regardless of where the information comes from they’ve tried a nutrition plan in order to look and feel better about themselves

Am I right? So how many times in your adult life do you think you’ve tried a nutrition plan and failed?

5 times — 10 times — more than 10? Then when we fail the guilt kicks in, the disappointment knowing you’re going on your holiday or to that family event not feeling even 50% confident in how you look and the feelings of hopelessness kick in. Understanding this it’s kinda strange when we consider how many people pay their hard-earned cash for a nutrition plan only to glance through it and immediately say…

“I’m not eating that” “I won’t have time to follow this properly”

“OK but can I not just…” “I’ll try… but this won’t work for me”

And all sorts of other excuses.

Have you ever considered that because we’ve failed in the past we see any plan good or bad as a perceived THREAT?

Hence we immediately take a defensive stance to protect ourselves from failure, the failure we’ve experienced so many times before? regardless of how body confident, you image some people to be everyone has experienced these feelings.

So here is the kicker… If we look and consider personal multiple failures we begin to develop and identify them as a threat,

Just like a pin being pulled from a hand grenade in a movie…Everyone jumps for cover

If we consider a threat is perception-based and they’ve developed from our ability to recall past experiences, stories and thoughts then again like the pin being pulled we know it means DANGER. It’s similar to sustaining a bad injury, for example, a person jumps from a chair and falls injuring themselves badly. Their story becomes “every jump is going to injure me”

So they may be fully healed but their internal dialogue becomes … “ahh nope not doing that again I’m going to be extra diligent and slowly step down from the chair…”

So how does this apply to your diet? WELL… They’re all interconnected.

Our STORIES are creating perceived THREATS that create BAD CHOICES which then become PATTERNS

It’s all about perception and stories. What’s one of the biggest perception-based fears most people fall victim to? I’ll tell you, it’s public speaking… people really feel uncomfortable when asked to speak in public?

We tell ourselves “I’ll be judged” it’s such a threat, what will people think of me, the embarrassment.

I hear it all the time when the floor is opened to coaches and PTs taking part in a seminar they make the same complaints “My clients are making BAD CHOICES..” The reality is that most coaches don’t investigate their own fears. Then when it comes to coaching they mirror their personal fears and judgements on their clients. Heavy stuff right ….

As a coach, one needs to look at ones own personal fears and then understand how we feel about these fears is exactly how your client feels about emotional eating for example.

The biggest problem is most coaches don’t coach… they give orders…. THEY PULL THE PIN….

They don’t consider that choices are logical but no ones really logical when they are in survival mode. So that BAD CHOICE is more like a reactive pattern. “I’ve given them a nutrition plan and they’re just not following it”

Again they fail their client by not recognizing that every goal the client has is based on the client being in a thriving environment BUT You can’t thrive when you are living in survival mode causing all your choices to be reactive based. You see it’s easier for the coaches to put the blame back on the client, “they’re just not doing what they are told”.

But you see it’s not about “go do this” or “go follow that”…That’s not communicating.

The unknown creates uncertainty and the anxiety creates a….THREAT …WHEN IS THE GRENADE GOING TO EXPLODE?

Look we all do it, but something I’ve learned from all my studies and investing a lot of my time and money into understanding these situations is the thing about FEAR is we need to focus a spotlight on it and bring it to the forefront because if we hide it away we can never really address the true underlining cause. We continue to treat the symptom, not the route cause.

If we shine a light on a client's fears by ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS… and LISTENING…two very interesting things happen, clients vocalise their thoughts behind their habits and begin to expose those fears only then to realise they may not be as scary as they internally visualised allowing them to become empowered to do something about them.

So it’s about asking the right questions rather than “telling” someone what to do. So a good rule to follow would be Listen 80% Speak 20%

Secondly and this is a BIG ONE…

Step 1 is tell the truth about yourself to yourself

Step 2 then tell the truth about yourself to others

Step 3 then and only then can you start to tell the truth about others to others.

It’s a popular miss conception but the reality is our job is NOT to get the RESULT…our job as a coach is to help the client get out of their own way so that THEY can get the result.

And you can’t help someone by judging them and working from a place of shaming them into change…. You can’t help someone by just pulling out the pin…

Essentially if you don’t BELIEVE you can win if YOU don’t believe you can change you won’t play the game …you won’t follow the plan, you won’t put in the work required to produce a positive result.

It’s everything about belief and for that, we need to reduce threat … see where this is going? It’s about the dude that jumps on the grenade and replaces the pin or ends up covering the blast…

Here is an exercise you can try it’s called The judgement check

Write down 3 labels that could apply to you… then look for 5 to 10 stereotypes that apply to that label,

Now ask yourself a question do YOU fit all these stereotypes?

And the reality is when you write it all out you don’t fit them all right? So when we stereotype people because of their weight or the clothes they wear we are stereotyping all the time but it doesn’t automatically mean they all fit.

Not every over weight person is lazy, Not every thin person is weak, Not every good looking person has life easy or all worked out., Not every fit person wouldn’t understand, not all coaches won’t know how it feels…

“I’m going to leave that one sit out there for a little bit …”

Be safe, be active, be creative and
as always try and be kind to each other.

peace…Keith #stormfree