I have had so many people contact me over the past month that feel like they’re stuck in limbo.

They are eating too much rubbish, can’t get motivated to do enough exercise and/or are beating themselves up for feeling like they’re in a funk (one women’s description)

Some of the things they have said are:

“I can’t seem to stick to my usual healthy eating and workout plan. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m normally so much more focused”

“I just keep looking for the perfect program. I jump from one thing to another but don’t see any results. I can’t stick to anything for long enough”

“My habits have gotten so bad and I can’t see to control myself. I just can’t pull myself out of it”

“I’m overeating and drinking to cope. I know I’m doing it but just can’t stop myself”

“Because I can’t go to my gym I feel like it’s hopeless. What’s the point, so I’m giving myself excuses to eat crap and way too much of it”

In our discussions, I asked what they thought would help them. I was planning to run a group program soon anyway and had been putting it off due to lockdown.

I realised pretty quickly, that people need something NOW.

So I asked them what had worked for them in the past, what hadn’t worked and what they thought they needed, right now, not at some time in the future that is so unpredictable at the moment.

This is what I found people were looking for in a program:

• A simple, proven and results driven system so that you know exactly what to do every day forever.
• A fitness and nutrition program that works in the real world – not just on an influencers highlights reel or a fitness professionals schedule (after all, we do this for a living)
• A support system – a coach or even better, a team holding you accountable. While friends and family are great for support in many areas of life, someone outside your circle is better for this. You need someone who is going to call out your bullshit, and give you strategies to work through overwhelm, lack of motivation and any other struggles.
• A solution to keep track of actually keeping the promises you make to yourself and to make sure you take the daily actions that provide guaranteed results.

So I came up with SPRING INTO IT, my newest 6 week program that combines the best of our group challenge programs and my individual coaching programs. It can be done from anywhere as training at our base here at FitterFaster and our online live zoom classes are all included.

You can read about that here SPRING INTO IT But I’d also like to give you some ideas to follow on your own, if a program. Here are those tips:

WRITE IT DOWN

Most of us are hanging out somewhere between being totally over-obsessed with what we’re eating and not giving a crap at all.

In the middle is the grey area where I usually find you all.

The grey area is where you can use pretty much any excuse you want under the banner of ‘balance’, ‘everything in moderation’ or my personal pet hate ‘being happy’ or ‘living life’

Unfortunately, this area almost always ends up with you eating/drinking too much or eating and drinking the wrong things too much because you simply have no idea what and how much you’re eating or drinking.

A food journal from a new client points this out within days.

You either actually record everything and are horrified. Or you realise on the first day how much shit you’re actually consuming, and you tame it down immediately. Either way its an eye opener.

I suggest you spend the next 4-5 days actually recording every single thing you consume. Liquid or solid, write it down with approx quantities. No need for a fancy app (unless you want to do that). A simple pen and paper or note on your phone is enough for this exercise

HOW FAR HAVE YOU ACTUALLY GONE?

Next, take stock of the actual damage.

How much weight have you put on over the past 1-5 years?

How many times have you gone up a clothing size?

How unfit are you really? Can you run up a few flights of stairs without huffing and puffing? Could you push out 10 burpees without much effort? Could you do a few push ups? Or run around a football oval with your kids without getting up a puff or a sweat?

Once you’ve had a real look at where you are exactly, decide where you want to be. While I’d love to promise you that you can achieve any goal in 6 or 12 weeks, it’s probably going to take a bit longer than that – depending of course on many things.

If you know where you’re headed and where you are starting, you can measure progress. And seeing progress of any kind is the best motivator of all to keep going. Thats why we do regular check ins, assessments and measurements of everything, not just your body in our programs.

MAKE A PLAN – AND DON’T OVER COMMIT

At this stage, you may be thinking your life needs a total overhaul. But this is one of the biggest mistakes people make, especially if you’re doing this on their own.

You make a plan to do a workout 5 times per week, drink 2 litres of water every day, eat 3 serves of vegetables at every meal, cut out chocolate and alcohol, walk 15000 steps per day and swear off eating out – ever or at least till you’ve reached your goal. Oh, and you’re going to a yoga class as well and be in bed by 8pm every night.

Not going to happen people! If you are ‘going it alone’ or even if you’ve enlisted a good friend or family member to support you, the absolute best plan of attack is to tackle 1-3 things at the most at a time.

I almost always suggest to add exercise first. This is because as well as burning calories and building all important fitness, improving heart health and getting you stronger, exercise has other amazing benefits. Especially when you do at least some of it outside.

These benefits are not physical. I have found over 13+ years of doing this, that the people who exercise consistently and regularly also make the most lasting changes to other aspects of their life.

They consistently make better food choices, they sleep better and they even do seemingly unrelated things better, like get to bed earlier and drink more water. If there was anything that you could call magic, exercise would be the closest thing there is.

So if you want me to choose which action steps first, I’d say; start exercising a few times per week, drink at least a litre of water each day and make sure you eat some veggies or salads in at least your main meal each day.

Oh, and limit alcohol to 2 days per week (in fact, if you drink more often than this, I’d probably work on that and exercise first)

And don’t even try to add anything else till you have those things down pat. You will see results if you take those actions consistently. And by that I mean most days. Not a few days per week or when you think of it. But day in and day out with few slip ups. Those things should be easy to fit around your ‘living life to the fullest’ or ‘being balanced or in moderation’.

MOVING ON

Once you get the basics happening on a regular basis, you can move to things like calorie or macro counting, more frequent training, adding step counts etc. But the key is to get a few things happening at once, get some wins and progress on the board and build from there.

Let me know if you need any help at any stage with this. Just shoot me through an email with any questions jo@fitterfaster.net.au

If you might be interested in working with us, you can fill out your details below to get some information about our regular training programs and our trial packages by email. No obligation to join just by getting some info.

And don’t forget our 6 week Spring Into It program which starts on 13th September. We take all the guesswork out of what to do when and cover all of the points mentioned at the start of this article to guarantee that you get the results you’re looking for.