Posts tagged weight loss lifestyle
Three Changes to Make When Yo-Yo Weight Loss Has You Hanging by a String...

As I sat in my home office in Plymouth, MN (in between personal training sessions), my attention was grabbed by the familiar Facebook prompt: “So-And-So mentioned you in a comment…”

Curious, I entered the productivity killer of social media to see why I had been tagged in a comment. A woman named Libbie asked about how to keep weight off. She said she’d yo-yo’d the same twenty pounds for years, and that was driving her insane.

What does it take to achieve long-term weight loss? How can we make success sustainable? The trick is to be purposeful in fortifying our healthy standards. While the blueprint looks different for everyone, here are three ways to best position yourself for your weight loss success to last.

Personal Trainer Tip to End Yo-Yo Weight Loss #1 : Demote Your CEO

When an organization wants to change directions or raise their standards, they often times fire their CEO.

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We all have a CEO. Who is yours? Is it your friend, spouse, or sibling? They are our partner in crime, our sharer of treats, our…Chief Enabling Officer!

The greatest challenge in raising our standards (and keeping those standards) is that we often are surrounded by people who don’t raise their standards with us. That’s our CEO. They are the one trying to convince us that we deserve a night out when we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go out for apps, drinks, or dessert. They are the one texting you a photo of them at your favorite restaurant, asking if you want to swing by. Your CEO likes you just the way you are…in part because it is close to the way they are.

To maintain weight loss in the long run, we need to marry the higher health standard we’ve been dating. Make it permanent! Make it official! And who is standing in the way of our permanent improved relationship with our health? Our Chief Enabling Officer! I’m not suggesting you disown your sibling or best friend. I am suggesting that you re-work the rules and roles of the relationship to guarantee your success.

Change your schedule to force yourself out of your CEO’s most enticing standing offer. Is it apps and drinks at Trivia Thursday? Join a group fitness class for the next ten weeks that meets on Thursday nights. Is watching the game with him going to result in a caloric and gluten tsunami capable of wiping out your entire week of clean eating? Watch the game at your place while you cook clean food for the upcoming week.

Maybe you invite your former CEO to join you at the fitness class and clean cooking. Maybe you don’t. Either way, it’s important for you to recognize who your CEO is, which rules you need to change in the relationship to guarantee your weight-loss success, and what new role they will best serve in your life. You may have room for them as your CMO (Chief Makeover Officer…when you have earned a non-food reward like a massage or pedicure).

Losing weight is hard work. You deserve every opportunity to maintain your progress. Demote your CEO to make sure you can protect your new, healthier standards.

Personal Trainer Tip to End Yo-Yo Weight Loss #2: Get Yourself a Bulldog

The best way to fortify your healthy standards is to find and hang out with a bulldog. You know who I’m talking about. They are the one who has standards that intimidate you. They are the one who can do things in the gym you only wish you could do…or can’t imagine yourself doing. You admire the strength of their discipline (and discipline, by the way, is the muscle we must strengthen most when we want to make lasting health change).

Maybe it’s a personal trainer like myself (I typically serve the western suburbs of Minneapolis). Maybe it’s your friend that we don’t see as much since they raised their health standard (does that make us their former CEO???). Find someone who has the type of standards and discipline you want. They are the type of person that takes accountability seriously. You start slacking off? They will get in your face about it. You keep slacking off? They won’t have time for you. They are, after all, a bulldog.

Your bulldog won’t let you skip a workout. They will text you to ask if you stuck with the lunch you brought to work instead of partaking in the pre-diabetes party your co-workers like to call “Flatbread Friday!”

Your bulldog should deliver the discipline, accountability, and consistency to help you fortify your healthy standard. If you want to end your yo-yo weight loss, get yourself a bulldog!

Personal Trainer Tip to End Yo-Yo Weight Loss #3: Integrate Fresh Ideas Into Your Program

Variety is not only the spice of life…it is the self-imposed road less traveled that keeps us traveling down the healthy path! A new recipe and a fresh set of exercises can go a long way to keeping us on track. A bit of variety allows us to stick with what works without finding ourselves so bored we stop doing the work.

What’s missing from your food plan? Do you need a good soup recipe as the temperatures turn colder? Is it a sweet tooth that begs for you to find a Paleo blueberry crumble (I love the one in Diane Sanfilippo’s book “Practical Paleo”)?

I’ve done the math. There are 1.2 gazillion recipes on Google, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. Make it a point to integrate a new recipe twice a month or more. A fresh idea keeps us engaged, delivers fresh energy, and helps keep our eye from wandering from the game plan we know is working for us.

As you may have experienced, new and different exercises can surprise our body. Recently, I did a hamstring exercise I hadn’t done in awhile. During the exercise, I could REALLY feel my hamstrings getting good work. I was excited about how good it felt to engage my hamstrings in such a way. And then I was sore. For eight days! I REALLY surprised my hamstrings!

I’m not saying the goal is to be sore for days on end because of a new exercise. What I am saying is that our bodies can get into a groove with our exercise routine…and sometimes that groove turns into a rut. By integrating new exercises here and there (safely…and in moderation…lest we get sore hamstrings for EIGHT STINKING DAYS!), we can defend against a stale fitness experience.

New ideas provide the variety we need to keep us engaged. By keeping our program fresh, our journey keeps us engaged, which helps us fortify our healthy standard!

IN CLOSING…

Winning with weight loss for the long term is no easy task. If losing weight requires raising our standards, then keeping off the weight requires fortifying those standards. If you can create distance from your chief enabling officer, find yourself a bulldog, and keep your program fresh, you will be on the path to cutting ties with yo-yo weight loss.

Where Fat Camps Fail

How to Bring a Weight-Loss Camp to You

One of the most searched google terms within the field of body change is the term "fat camp".  Thousands of obese Americans are investing thousands of dollars to attend camps to get away from their out of control lifestyle and learn how to get healthy and be fit.  There is one problem, though.

Weight-Loss Habits Tend to Stay At Camp

The best and worst thing about any camp is that it is camp: it's a remote location far removed from reality.  The gap between a weight loss/fat camp and reality can be devastating.  Imagine going through a week of nutrition and exercise bliss, only to come home to the same old pantry, the evil fridge, and the impossibly convenient calorie factory: the workplace.

The biggest problem anyone should have with a weight loss camp is that it is a destination.  The workers of the camp won't come by and blow up your fridge.  They won't raid the pantry.  And they won't check in three weeks later when it's 11pm and the cupcakes at the corner store are calling you.  The unfortuante by-product of a weight loss camp is that all the strategies, progress, and new great habits tend to weaken quickly away from camp.  How disheartening it can be to spend a week or two making great progress in a safe haven, only to have your dietary will collapse at the very sight of the items in your own pantry.

How to Cultivate Lasting Weight Loss and Body Change: Bring a Weight-Loss Boot Camp to Your Door

What if a weight loss camp came to you?  What is the boot camp to body change stopped by your door on a daily basis?  Can you imagine eating the perfect food at the perfect time and completing the perfect workout for days and days at a time...all the while still going to work and living your regular life?

That's what I do.  I bring a weight loss boot camp to your door.  We meet daily for exercise, we build your meals and snacks, go grocery shopping, and even plan out eating out.  Instead of people going away to a weight loss boot camp safe haven, I work with people to turn their life into a safe haven for body change.  How can we re-write the rules of your work environment to get turn it into a place conducive to body change?  What do we put in your pantry (and your car, and your home office) so that every time you reach for a food it is the right food? 

What if your life was rebuilt to not only be conducive to weight loss, but was rebuilt to maximize it?  What if you knew what the tastiest 200-calorie breakfast tasted like?  What if you knew what to eat every single time you ate out with clients or family? Why go to a weight-loss boot camp when you can bring one to your door? 

Creating a Lifestyle to Maintain Weight Loss

A plan for weight loss is only as good as its execution.  Imagine having a meal plan that had 30 days of flexibility.  Imagine having an exercise plan with tremendous variety, had challenging and fun exercises for each day, and was built just for you.  When you bring the program from www.keepyourbetterhalf.com to your door, you are taught how to maintain and advance the lifestyle of weight loss and body change that began during your boot camp.  Not only do we walk with you through your first week(s) of weight loss, we give you all the materials you will need to maintain the habits of exercise and nutrition that fit nicely into your body change lifestyle.

Bring a weight-loss boot camp to your door.  Send an email to adam@keepyourbetterhalf.com or visit www.keepyourbetterhalf.com to learn more about bringing body change to your door.

Adam Erwin is a personal trainer who travels the world working with people who want to experience fat loss and weight loss in record-time. He currently resides in Minneapolis, MN and loves to train with people whose health does not match their lifestyle. Adam works closely in the Eden Prairie, Wayzata, Excelsior, Minnetonka, and Edina communities.  Visit www.keepyourbetterhalf.com to learn more about his work.