One of the hardest (and frustrating) concepts to grasp is the one where you realise that no matter how much exercise or training you do, it’s not enough to help you reach your goals by itself.

I mean, you put in so much effort and get to see such small results on the scales after your initial ‘beginner’ losses.

And likewise if you’re aiming to build muscle, if you’re just training, you’re not going to see fabulous results either, unless you’re a teen or 20something years old male or a pure beginner to resistance exercise.

Exercise is critically important no matter what your fitness goal or body composition goals.  It will help you to lose body fat, gain or maintain muscle, feel better, look better and perform better.  And without it you’ll be disappointed.

But the piece missing from many people’s puzzle is nutrition.  

Over the years I’ve coached 100’s of clients aiming for various goals, the most common being to look and feel better.   
Which for most of those people, means losing excess body fat, toning muscles, getting a bit stronger, getting fitter and having more energy.

Out of all those people, the ones that only focused on exercise only,  have gotten the least results.  They still get fitter and therefore have more energy.  And initially, the addition of exercise to a previously sedentary lifestyle does reduce body fat a bit.   

While they do often look and feel better with that initial loss and of course the improvements in muscle tone and fitness, to progress further, just exercise isn’t enough.

After that initial loss, further results require that you fix your nutrition.  

In other words, you need to sort out what you’re eating.

The fitness industry usually focuses only on what you look like.    
It’s all about abs, butts and selfies.

At FitterFaster, these are also important – if they’re important to you.   

However, I like to look fat loss in terms of improving health and improving self esteem.  
If you add exercise/training to yoru routine, you can expect to lose some body fat if you’ve previously not been active.  
However, your scale weight (something many focus on) will often go up a bit, or at least go down only slightly.

This is due to a few reasons, some of which are:

• You may increase your muscle mass (even if just slightly) = more weight
• You may be better hydrated as often clients start quite dehydrated = more weight
• Your bones and organs can actually get heavier over time with an effective fitness program = more weight
• Your body fat may have gone down but maybe not by as much as all the above went up = no or just slight change down

This is so annoying as you’ve put in so much effort and time and spent money as well.  Yes, you are definitely looking and feeling better but you want more.

The way to turn this around is to also sort out out what you’re eating.   

There is no way around it.  To lose body fat, you need to eat less calories than you are using.  
This is called being in a calorie deficit.

You can increase your activity (or the number of calories you use) or decrease how many you consume (a lot easier) or both. I like to use a combo of both so that you can still eat a decent amount of food and not be hungry all the time. You can also include some treats this way as well.

There is no magic solution. It’s calories in v calories out every time.

I’ll conclude with a few tips to get you into a calorie deficit more easily:

• Cut out any drinks that contain calories – so that’s soft drinks, nut milks, rice milk, milky coffees, sports drinks, some flavoured water etc.  Drink plain water and black (or almost black) tea and coffee only. If you don’t like black tea and coffee – just add enough milk to change the taste, not a whole cup😀
• Eat more salads and vegetables.  Eat them fresh or lightly steamed so you dont add more calories back in with cooking oils and dressings. the more salad/vegetables and fruit you eat, the faster fat loss will be 😎
• Up your step count – aim for 8000-10000 steps per day. If you already do that easily, make it 12000 which is my personal daily target. The actual number is individual, but aim to increase your steps by 1000 a day over 7-10 days till you hit around these targets. 🚶🏽‍♂️‍➡️
• Add in some exercise if you don’t already.  If you do a bit, add some more (don’t go overboard here- there is such thing as too much) Make sure the exercise you are doing is effective 🏋🏼
• Stop rewarding yourself with food. Yes, you can eat food you enjoy, but don’t use it as a reward for other behaviours.🍩
• Only eat at the table. Most people tend to eat less if they sit down at the table instead of eating on the go 🌮
• Slow down your eating. Enjoy your food instead of gulping it down.
• Minimise the days you drink alcohol.  This one should have been first. So many people drink daily to ‘relax’ and it is contributing to obesity and poor health in so many ways – and not just physical.  Find better ways to wind down – play with your kids, go for a walk, take part in an exercise class or read. Aim to limit alcohol to 1-2 drinks every few weeks.

All of the above seem so simple.  Too simple and so much that most people won’t even bother with them.   

In this day and age of the quick fix and result right now, the above don’t seem sexy enough to do anything or bother with

But it’s the simple changes repeated daily that give the best results long term.  Not that fast results are always bad, but for most, making permanent changes ends up being faster in the long run.

IF you’re ready to get started, on fitness AND nutrition, FitterFaster has you covered.  Our JumpStart program introduces simple lifestyle and nutrition habits over time to compliment your new fitness routine. 

Hope the above info helps. I’m happy to answer questions any time

If you’d like info about getting started at FitterFaster, complete your details below and I’ll email them to you