When you’re working with people as long as I have, you get to see patterns of behaviour, the same patterns of behaviour over and over again. When I see someone struggling to change, whether that’s to improve their fitness, lose weight, or just get healthier, the same bad habits crop up again and again.
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Skipping the nutrition basics
If you’re struggling to get results, and are juicing, smoothy-ing, and living in the health food shop buying raw this, and vegan that, it’s time to take one massive step back. Mastering the basics of your daily food intake is the key to success. The weight loss industry would have you believe different, but you don’t need anything new or complicated to be successful with food.
2. Weighing yourself.
So pointless and it’s not an accurate reflection of the work you’re putting in, or the results you’re getting. If anything, it holds you back. When you learn to give up the scales and focus on actually fitting into your clothes that you know when you do, you’re at a healthy weight, is the ideal. I have met so many women that have given up, while doing so good, because they’re unhappy with what the scales say, and cannot get past that. Talk about zapping the life out of something that’s supposed to be fun and empowering.
3. Counting calories burned in a session.
The biggest waste of time, and gets you to think of sessions as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Watches that show calories burned are not good for you, and not a true reflection of what’s going in. The truth is, they don’t take into account the post-workout after-burn, or the fact that strength training turns you into a calorie burning machine.
4. All or nothing mindset
You’re on it, you’re off it. You lose 10lbs, you gain 10 pounds. Striving for perfection and then quitting and bingeing is just the pits. I feel so sorry for women who constantly yo-yo, it is the worst feeling in the world and can really knock your confidence. Work at developing a healthy attitude towards food and exercise and stop being so hard on yourself when you’ve a little indulgence!
5. Taking shortcuts.
Going very low on calories before a holiday, or cutting out carbohydrates is CRAZY. Are you going to do it forever? If the answer is no, why bother? Think of all the weight that you’re going to gain the second you stop! Think of the heartache of your confidence being affected, of your clothes getting tight, and all you did was start eating normally again!
Avoid keto, atkins, shakes, 5:2, all that crazy, silly stuff, and just eat normal healthy food like we were designed to! Healthy food is not making you gain weight!
Hope this helps,
Jessica X
