Your thoughts and expectations… vs… the truth.

“I expect to see a weight to drop every week” Some weeks you lose a large amount between 1-2kg, some weeks you don’t lose anything and maintain. Some weeks you might even gain a little bit 0.1-0.5kg. Yes, the main trend should be downwards in any weight loss journey but you have to manage expectations that that is not always the case. Patience in this journey is your best friend. Trust the process and you will come out on top.

“If I exercise that’ll be enough” Now that may be the case for some but for the majority, you’ll need to look at so much more than just exercise on your journey. Starting with exercise will only take you so far. 2 of our 4 key pillars we look at alongside exercise are nutrition and sleep the other one we don’t need to touch on just yet.

“This is going to be hard work” Yes yes, it is your right there is no denying that. Then when the hard work is needed and you’re required to put more effort in, you give up.

“I’m going to start running to drop the weight” Great idea… It gets you moving more and you may well drop the weight, but if you’ve never really done resistance training before you won’t have the muscle mass underneath the body fat, so sadly you won’t have much of a physique to show for your efforts except for your skeleton and the little muscle you do carry. Not to mention what the impact of running has done to your joints.

“I’m going to cut out all cakes, sweets, fizzy pop, alcohol etc” Again, not a bad idea when you look at it. However, have you really thought this through? Do you really think you can avoid these foods for the rest of your life? I highly doubt it. From my experience anyone who does this rebounds and by this I mean they usually end up binging and gaining back almost twice the weight they lost from cutting them out. Allowing 10%-20% of your daily food intake to be from items such as these will be sufficient and make your weight loss more sustainable and realistic.

“I’m going to train every day” Very daft and an extreme unnecessary approach for anyone starting out on a weight loss journey. Your body needs rest in order to build lean muscle and recover from each workout. Your body will also not have the tolerance level to train every day by this. I mean, the likelihood of you injuring yourself or seeing a dip in performance levels is HIGHLY likely. Let alone the fact you won’t be able to keep up to that schedule for a long period of time. If you’re just starting out, my advice would be a day on day off completing 3-4 full-body workouts a week 60 minutes long depending on time available these could be shortened.

“I’m going to eat 800 calories a day”Because this is a sustainable way of losing weight right? Much like you cutting everything out going for ridiculously low-calorie intake is not only going to mean you eating next to nothing, it’s going to leave your body feeling lethargic and tired, it will start to affect your sleep, you won’t have the energy to train and nothing in your body will work optimally to help you burn fat anyway. You may well lose the weight at least I would hope so on that low-calorie intake, but you wouldn’t be a picture of health on the flip side of it. 

“I’m going to lose all my weight in the next 8 weeks and then job done” Some may read this and be like no way does someone think this. Well, I’m sorry all the statements above are true and from clients whom I’ve trained over the years….. Firstly, it is possible to get in shape in 8 weeks yes! But it depends on your starting position. For the majority of people whom I train, it’s not realistic and its definitely not job done. You see, for some people it may take 2 years to get to where they want to be. It may take others 6 months. Once they get there it’s then the start of the next phase, educating these people on how they maintain this weight. They now know how to drop the weight and get lean but it’s a whole new process when it comes to maintaining in a healthy way.

The take home message is to manage your expectations before you start out, set realistic targets that are sustainable and adjust along your journey. If you don’t know then ask. There is nothing worst than guessing or trusting some statement you’ve seen from some dude on social media who had no credibility to back up what they are saying.

Losing weight doesn’t solve all your problems… It just solves your weight loss problem. If you don’t fix all the pillars surrounding your health (Exercise, Nutrition, Sleep, Mindset) you will feel exactly the same as you do now, just a bit lighter.

Comment below which one of the above was or is you?