06 Nov It really isn’t all diet and exercise…

Today’s blog post comes from UK based health & fitness coaching team, Hodgson Health…

Yes, we know that’s a pretty bold statement to start with when writing a blog for anything health and fitness related however…

We wanted to make our first post for The FlexFood app a little more about how we believe anyone, and we mean anyone, can accelerate their results with this kind of approach.

We know that when someone wants to lose weight and perhaps work on the way they feel about themselves it’s always 2 things they work on before anything else.

Diet and/or Exercise

We totally get it because truth be told before we entered into the online coaching side of things we were the same, we thought it was all about eating chicken, rice and broccoli paired with hours and hours in the gym.

That was until we had our daughter and realized that there’s much more to life, possibly like chocolate, and a nice glass of wine, and more often than not, it’s not practical to just revolve our day around the gym and eating 5-6 meals a day, that’s not real life at all.

Trust us, we’ve both been the ‘boring friend’ at times when out with friends and family for dinner ordering Sparkling water, no starter or dessert, choosing salads etc.

Whilst everyone else enjoys their wine and 3 course meal washed down with a glass of wine (yes we like wine, in moderation). All because we wanted to shift a few lbs and whilst that kind of mentality is admirable, it’s also quite dull and boring.

So what is it all about you say?

Well, as you asked, there are two key components that we know will help you accelerate your results and they are mind set and lifestyle. Both of which, once you have in the right place, the diet and exercise tends to more or less fall into place in a way that works for you.

Now, we often find people confusing mind set with motivation but it’s really not, well not for us and our clients. Motivation should be easy when you have the correct mind set but without the right mind set the motivation often doesn’t mean a great deal.

Mind-set is about aligning yourself with your goals so that you can reduce the number of emotion based and increase the number of logic based decisions we make on a daily basis. So often this can be done with having a clear goal and being clear on your priorities in your life.

For us, our priority is always our daughter, so example we have zero guilt missing a workout should we be doing something for her, and that really can change the game.

Then we move on to lifestyle which for someone trying to lose weight is vital to address, because although many personal trainers may like to disagree with us, you don’t struggle with your weight because you’re not training in the gym or living off chicken rice and broccoli. The thought that you need to get to a gym regularly and eat a super strict diet can already put barriers up, which is why addressing the lifestyle is so important.

So by addressing the lifestyle it will improve your eating habits and increase your activity levels without it being a diet and exercise plan. This will make the whole ‘weight loss thing’ much more manageable for you and more sustainable.

So breaking it down to 2 simple things to accelerate your results today right here and now-

1- Become crystal clear of your goals and priorities and begin to make more logic based decisions as opposed to emotion based ones. Let’s face it we know most of the reason we put weight on is because we are making emotion based decisions that may say staying in because it’s cold, you’re tired or eating that food, because it smells good, you’re tired, and other emotions.. When logic tells you that if you want to lose weight you need to be a bit more active and make better choices.

2- Improve the lifestyle, now we get some clients who try to go all or nothing, but that’s not for us, it’s all about simple little steps. So if you currently drink alcohol 5/6 nights a week, could you reduce that to 2-3 nights a week? If you’re currently driving everywhere, could you start walking the shorter journeys? If you’re currently using the lift could you use the stairs? Perhaps park the car further away, all these little steps and much more will help you either do one of 2 things:

• Reduce your input (the number of calories you consume).
• Increase your output (the number of calories you burn).

So by doing thing that will do one of or both of these you’re significantly increasing your chances of results. Give the new mind set and lifestyle a few weeks, then follow a 3 step formula to make sure you’re on the right path.

Track– your stats that are important to your goals.

Assess– your progress after a few weeks, women I’d try the same point in your cycle.

Adapt– just adapt 2-3 things (don’t completely change) then repeat steps one and two.

We also had Chris Jones owner of the Flex Food App as a guest on our Podcast a few months ago check it out- http://hodgsonhealth.com/podcast/episode-29/

To find out more about Hodgson Health go to:

hodgsonhealth.com

facebook.com/hodgsonhealth