The Simple Truth

A lot of people ask me how to lose weight - A LOT.

It's pretty much why my whole industry exists.

The sad fact is that nobody wants to believe me when I give them the answers.  I tell them what it will take for them to start losing fat, and they won't do it.  Why?  Because it involves hard work and sacrifice when they wanted to hear some special secret that I, as a fitness pro, must possess.

Everyone wants results, yet few are willing to do what it takes to get them.  Their current lifestyle - the one that got them the body they're living in - is too comfortable for them to make a change.  As many times as I say it, no one wants to believe that their bodies will resist small changes.  You have to be totally bought in to making a real change.

Count calories?  Exercise vigorously?  Who wants to do that?  Well, those are the things that I GUARANTEE will get you results, so it's up to you to decide.

You can't cheat physics.  And that's all weight gain is.

It's not your genes.

It's not your busy schedule.

It's not because you had a kid.

It's not because of stress.

It's because you're storing more calories than you're burning.  What can you do about it?  Eat less, move more...

... and have a healthy weekend, everyone.

How Do You Really Change Old Habits?

As the saying goes, old habits die hard.

Depending on how ingrained your habits, simple willpower is often not enough.  The problem is that everyone wants to believe they have strong willpower - who wants to feel weak?  This leads many exercisers and dieters to rely on self-discipline alone to get them to their goals.

I know it sounds cliché, but the mind is a very powerful thing.  The problem that the willpower crowd faces is this - patterns that form over time in our brains are not conscious patterns.  Our habits that lead us to excuse ourselves from exercise, overeat and eat certain bad foods are not cognitive decisions.  Our willpower may allow us to fight the good fight, so to speak, but our habits are far more powerful than many of us are willing to believe.

One of the best tools you have at your disposal is good planning.  Structure allows us to ease the process of building good habits to replace the bad ones.  It removes us from the social and emotional cues that often lead us to fall back into our bad patterns.

Make exercise appointments and treat them like you would any appointment.  Plan your daily meals and snacks and make sure you have the foods you plan to eat available.  And don't just plan what - plan when and how much.

Old habits may die hard, but it can be done, provided you're using the right plan of attack.