Firstly, I know I am a bit delayed on getting the second part of this series out.
The way that stress affects our body, our behaviour, our food choices and of course weight, is so complex and yet so simple at the same time.
It’s simple because all you really need to know is that chronic stress is most likely underlying in many of the things you are struggling with at the moment.
Your weight, your energy, your food choices, your mood, your digestion, skin, hair, nails, sleep, hormones etc. etc.
It’s complex because I think that most people probably know this. They just don’t know the why.
And sometimes we need to and want to understand the why so that we feel motivated to managed and create change.
So today is a little bit more of the why.
If you saw my previous post on Is Stress Your Metabolic Road Block? (If you didn’t head over the previous blog post), you should hopefully know now that modern living creates an unresolved stimulation of the brain-adrenal connection, stimulating stress hormone production.
I want to come back to this term “unresolved“.
It is one of THE most important terms I use to contextualise what is going on with people.
When there is a problem be it weight, sleep, mood, hormonal imbalances, digestive complaints, poor energy, foggy brain, skin issues or anything else someone would come and see me for…
the problem is always the same problem…
Something unresolved.
Now that might seem like a silly thing to say.
Of course the problem is something unresolved. It’s a problem, therefore it isn’t resolved.
The symptoms are not the problem they are a failed solution.
An attempt to create resolution that was not successful.
If it was successful there would no longer be any symptoms.
Now I know this is getting confusing so let me explain further (stay with me, I want you to get this!).
EXAMPLE:
Being overweight is a symptom of insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance, if you read my previous series on weight loss, is when we can’t get energy into cells to be burned up, so we store energy in our fat cells instead.
Insulin resistance is an attempt to resolve a problem.
One can be insulin resistance for many reasons.
Perhaps you have an infection in your gut and your immune system wants to prioritise energy resources towards itself to fight the infection.
Perhaps you are over-consuming calories and your body wants to store excess in the form of fat for times of famine (because traditionally, starvation was a real threat to survival)
Perhaps you are in a state of high stress and your body wants to keep energy for a fight or flight response.
So can you see how something happens (a stress – infection, food, perceived danger) and your body creates a change to cope with that thing.
The change in this example is insulin resistance.
The symptoms is weight gain.
The problem was a stress.
The insulin resistance was created to overcome the stressor.
It was the solution to the problem.
And… if the problem doesn’t go away (because we are bathed in a life of chronic stress).
We have an unresolved symptom to due an unresolved problem.
I hope I haven’t completely confused you now!
I wrote this on my Facebook page a week or so ago. I think it fits in well here today.
So this is what I want you to “get” from today’s message.
All your “complaints” are likely to come down to stress.
The continuous pressures of our daily lives have a “winding up” effect.
I feel like I have given you enough to think about today, so I will explain the “winding up” effect next time.
I’ll also be giving you some tools to evaluate your life and what you can do about it, because, ultimately, this is your responsibility.
Only you can manage your life.
Yes, there might be things going on at the moment that aren’t pleasant, you don’t know how to deal with and you may be wondering how you can cope.
From experience, most of the things that people worry about don’t happen.
It’s the things that we never thought would happen that blindside us, and we cope.
Everytime.
Because what does it mean not to cope. As long as you are alive and breathing, you are coping just fine.
We cannot change some things in our life immediately, but when we change the way we think about the things in our life, the things in our life change.
I’ll leave you with that thought today.
More pieces of the puzzle to follow I promise.
If you feel totally confused, stick with it. It will all come together and you may need to read these emails a few times (think of all the calories you will burn doing so!).
PS. If you want help losing weight, but most importantly rebalancing your lifestyle to find results that actually last (like these women did below), then feel free to apply for a Complimentary Breakthrough Call to discover if Weight Loss Mentoring is the right approach for you.
I see with almost 90% of my clients that stress is a massive road block to their weight, health and fitness related goals.
Normally when my clients start to eat in a way that isn’t helpful in the context with their goals, miss workouts or disengage from what they want to achieve, 9 times out of 10, it’s down to some sort of stress.
Stress impacts our weight in many ways:
>> The physiological impact that changes our metabolism which may affect weight and hunger
>> The psychological impact that drives our behaviour and makes it harder to make the best choices
I’d like to cover these broad areas across the month to help you understand why stress is the biggest thing to get a handle on if you want a healthier life.
I’ll also be sharing with you what you can do about it.
So I will unfortunately start with some of the sciency stuff.
I’ll aim to keep it simple, although I can’t promise 😉
I’d encourage you to persevere and do you best to process the information and understand it.
FYI – we live in a world where information comes at us instantly and we seldom actually have to use our brains. Believe it or not, this is something that is influencing your weight!
Did you know that professional chess players burn up to 6000 calories (the equivalent of running 3 marathons) per day, due to the amount of glucose used by the brain.
When we direct energy towards the brain by actually trying to use it, we pull it away from the immune system and this actually something that can help with weight loss, because weight gain is actually immunological!
So you are losing weight just by reading this email
Let the science begin!
This is an adrenal stress test (a saliva test that tests stress hormone output)
The adrenal glands are the glands in the body that produce your stress hormone, cortisol.
Cortisol is an essential hormone that we release every day. It should be highest in the morning because it is associated with being alert and mobilising energy. It is lowest in the evening because you don’t want to be alert when you are trying to sleep.
The ideal rhythm of the cortisol is shown by the green in the graph.
You can see in this case, the person who took this test (me!) was not producing enough cortisol during the day.
More on that later.
What I want you to know about cortisol for today is that it is responsible for mobilising fat stores.
So healthy cortisol function is essential for weight loss!
So what would make cortisol function unhealthy of imbalanced?
Long term stress.
Short term stress may induce a peak in cortisol (as seen below)
This is normal and healthy physiology.
In previous times short term stress would have been…
>> Hunger
>> Cold
>> Heat
>> Thirst
>> Attack from a wild animal
>> Conflict with another tribe
>> Infection
The cortisol response would initiate the energy to overcome the stress – search for food, find water, fight and infection, deal with a threat.
Then physiology would return to normal.
The problem we have in modern times is that traditional stressors are no longer relevant…
>> we have an abundance of food available all the time
>> we drink continuously throughout the day
>> we control our temperature with heating or air conditioning
>> we have no threat from wild animals
>> we have medications to deal with infections
The stressors of modern day live are continuous and unresolved…
>> we continuously worry about things that haven’t happened yet
>> we have financial stress
>> we have the stress of over-feeding
>> we have the stress of over-drinking
>> we have stress of modern day toxins
>> we have work/relationship stress which mostly exists inbetween our own ears
The continuous nature of modern day stress results in a continuous activation of what is known as the HPA-axis.
The Hypothalamic-Pituitary (parts of the brain) – Adrenal (gland releasing cortisol) – Axis
This is the connection between the brain and the adrenal glands which then cause the release of stress hormones.
What is also important to note is that a stressed state is a state where we predominantly burn sugars AND NOT FATS.
This means that if you are carrying extra weight, you won’t be able to burn it in a state of stress.
You will burn sugars that are available and once you’ve got through those, you’ll start to break down proteins.
This means muscles and organs (like the gut lining – causing digestive problems).
The loss of lean tissues, slows metabolism and creates this…
This is actually a diagram of someone with Cushings Syndrome. An autoimmune condition resulting in a hyper-reactivity of the HPA-axis resulting in a large amount of stress hormones being produced.
I love this picture because it is a fantastic graphic presentation of what chronic stress does to the body.
Thinning limbs with fat accumulating around the belly, not to mention hair loss, disrupted hormones, problems with bones, problems with energy, muscle aches and pains, inflammatory conditions and the list goes on and on…
So that is all I want you to get from today.
Modern life = chronic activation of the stress pathways = loss of ability to burn fat and disruption of many metabolic pathways.More to follow in the post…
PS. If you want help losing weight, but most importantly rebalancing your lifestyle to find results that actually last (like these women did below), then feel free to apply for a Complimentary Breakthrough Call to discover if Weight Loss Mentoring is the right approach for you.
A while ago I wrote this blog about exercising for weight loss. It’s still great and I would recommend that you read it. I just have some more things that I want to add and some more information to share with you.
I would like you to understand a little bit about why regular physical activity is important if you want to drop pounds and lose inches. However, before I explain, let’s look at the dietary strategy for weight loss because, everyone knows you cannot out exercise a bad diet.
DIETARY CHANGES
Dietary changes for weight loss can be simple and complex at the same time. The basics work and they work well. When they stop working we can use some more advanced strategies to help get past plateaus but I want this information to stay appropriate for people who don’t need those advanced strategies just yet.
In summary, this stuff works and it is a basic version of what I ask all my clients to do:
Consume less calories than you expend. Because this is a blog on exercise we will assume you are going to be exercising so that might roughly look like 1700-1800 calories per day if you are anything like one of my average clients – maybe a little less if you are a naturally small person.
Don’t’ eat rubbish consume single ingredient foods which are minimally processed.
Eat protein with every meal – a palm size portion of fish or poultry works a treat
Fill half your plate with vegetables with many different colours
Moderate your carbohydrate intake but you shouldn’t need to avoid carbs completely
Don’t drink your calories unless you are making a superfood breakfast smoothie
BONUS TIPS THAT I LOVE: Consume one to two servings of fermented foods per day and get enough sleep.
NOW BACK TO EXERCISE…
To lose weight you want the body to be able to burn fat – most likely to fat on your belly, your hips and your thighs.
I’m sure you have heard the saying – if you don’t use it you lose it?
Well this applies to your ability to burn body fat.
If you have been overeating calories, sugar and carbohydrate you have been training your body to burn sugars (not fat) for as long as you have been maintaining these habits.
So weight loss is about retraining your body to use fat as a fuel.
We burn fat in mitochondria. Think of them as fat burning factories in the cell.
Weight loss is about fitness training for the mitochondria. Blowing off the cobwebs and whipping them into shape so they can become efficient well-oiled (fat) machines – you get the idea?
So if you make the dietary changes described above, you drop your calories and your carbohydrate BUT you don’t exercise, your metabolism will very quickly adapt to the lower carbohydrates and calories.
You will lose some weight because you will deplete stored glycogen (carbohydrates) and with it you will lose some water.
Have you ever started a diet and lost a few pounds and then hit a plateau where the scales wouldn’t budge?
Well this is because you have made the dietary changes but not fixed the machinery in the mitochondria factory. The staff are showing up for work but the machines are broken.
So how do we fix this?
Simple
Exercise! Exercise is about breaking down tissues and then allowing for recovery and rebuilding (which requires rest and the right tools – nutrients from our diet).
As you start an exercise regime, starting at a low intensity will start to challenge the mitochondria. It’s likely if you haven’t moved in a while that you’ll have a lot of old and unused mitochondria and the physical activity will probably break them down.
This is a good thing.
We get bits of broken down mitochondria which then end up in the nucleus of the cell which tells the cell – “our fat burning factories have been destroyed – we better make some new ones!”
It’s kind of like when you see shops that have closed down and you see the empty buildings just sitting there empty and dysfunctional versus if someone knocks the building down and so that space can be used to build something new and productive.
The exercise is the signal that there is a better use for that space.
But it has to be the right intensity.
When we move we either burn up sugar or we burn up fat.
When we have a lot of sugar in our blood stream, because we eat a lot of carbs, it’s very easy for the body to use this as a fuel.
When we exercise at high intensities, our body also prefers sugar as fuel.
At lower intensities – provided there isn’t a lot of sugar already hanging around – we tend to burn more fat (see diagram above)
Therefore, to rebuild our mitochondria it makes sense for beginner exercisers to exercise in an “aerobic” way.
I could go into all the fancy definitions of what % of your maximum heart rate or VO2max you would need to train at but the best way for you to recognise what this could look like is for me to describe it as follows:
Exercise at an intensity where you can talk comfortably.
If you are out of breathe or unable to hold a conversation, you are in your sugar burning zone and you won’t be improving the functionality of your fat burning factories.
BUT
This does not mean that you only do this for exercise.
There are also benefits to anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic means without oxygen. This is the exercise where you cannot talk. It is when you burn a higher proportion of sugars relative to fat.
Weight training is anaerobic. It stimulates muscle fibres to grow muscle tissue. This in itself improves the muscle structure and metabolism and has a beneficial effect on weight loss.
[Not to mention posture, body shape & bones]
Being strong is also quite useful when it comes to activities of daily living and, provided you learn the right movements and activation techniques, it can help to prevent injury.
So what would a weekly schedule for a beginner look like?
Moving every day is ideal for health, but to commit to a structured exercise program on a daily basis can be a bit much in the beginning so you could start with something like this.
MON
TUES
WED
THURS
FRI
SAT
SUN
40-60 minutes
Whole Body Resistance Workout
30-40 minutes
Steady State Cardio (where you can talk easily)
Active rest day including walking, gardening, playing with the kids
40-60 minutes
Whole Body Resistance Workout
30-40 minutes
Steady State Cardio (where you can talk easily)
Active rest day including walking, gardening, playing with the kids
Active rest day including walking, gardening, playing with the kids
What you need to know is that as the weeks go by your body will adapt. You will have to change something. This might be the frequency, duration and intensity of your workouts.
For intensity: Increase your weights lifted, add extra sets or reduce rest breaks in the resistance workouts (increase weights within your capabilities or decrease rest between sets from 60 seconds to 45 seconds)
For Duration: Go for longer on your cardio days (start at 30 mins, 45 minutes, 1 hour)
Frequency: Introduce a 5th or 6th session per week
Progression
Every week do a little more than you did the week before. In your 3rd week you should really push yourself quite hard and on your 4th week take a step back.
In your 5th week you should meet the intensity you did in week 3 and then continue in this way with a “deload” in week 8 again and so on…
Example:
Week 1: Starting Point
Week 2: Increase
Week 3: Hardest Week
Week 4: Deload
Week 5: Repeat using week 3 as a starting point
Aim to continue with this for 12 weeks until you have established a good baseline of cardiovascular fitness and good amount of strength. You may like a different resistance program after 4 or 6 weeks to increase variety.
You may then be ready to make changes in terms of how you structure your workouts across a week and within sessions.
Example Resistance Workout
Warm Up: 10 minutes moderate intensity on cardio equipment of your choice (Cross Trainer/ Treadmill/Exercise Bike).
Exercise
Reps
Sets
Rest
Tempo
Notes
Front Foot Elevated Split Squats
12-15
2-3
60 -75 secs
3101
Use dumbbells to increase intensity, keep chest upright, core engaged and move through full range (back knee to floor)
Press Ups
12-15
2-3
60-75 secs
3101
Keep the stomach and glutes tight, tuck the elbows back. Work off knees as necessary.
Seated Row Machine
12-15
2-3
60-75 secs
3101
Lift chest and keep back muscles engaged even when arms fully extended
Leg Press
12-15
2-3
60-75 secs
3101
Weight through the heels, chest up, keep spine neutral, core engaged, knees pressing outwards, working towards better depth.
Close Grip DB Bench Press
12-15
2-3
60-75 secs
3101
Mostly idiot proof, make sure the DB’s are squeezed together at all times. As you press them away finish with arms directly over shoulders
Lat Pull Down Machine
12-15
2-3
60-75 secs
3101
Forearm Plank
–
2-3
60-75 secs
3101
Max Effort and aim to beat your times next week
*For novice exercisers even 2 sets can be quite tiring. Start with 2 sets and build up to 3 to increase intensity over the week (prepare to be quite sore after your first session)
Most of these exercises are on my YouTube Channel if you want to look them up – if not google works well too
So that’s it really.
A lot of people complain that they have to pay for my advice and get to work with me. So what you have here is something that is simple, straight forward and free. I am sure if you follow it, it will work a treat and you should get some great results if you are new to this whole exercise and nutrition thing.
If you want more help, support and accountability which you are happy to pay for, then I would love to work with you.
This is what I do…
I will teach you how to find balance.
To cultivate a positive relationship with food & your body (the side effect of which is usually more positive personal relationships too).
To help you feel empowered in all aspects of their life by increasing your confidence and self belief.
And yes, to get that toned physique that they have been chasing their whole life AND maintain it.
I Offer…
Sustainable weight loss solutions for high quality women looking for high quality results (no matter what your level of experience)
6, 12 and 18 month coaching programs which combine group and 1-2-1 coaching
Personalised nutrition plans that are realistic
LOTS of other stuff (including tailored training and mindset work) but more about that later…
I don’t do…
Cookie cutter plans, shakes, pills, extreme restrictions that rely on will power
Mass market low end delivery – if you get to work with me you are one of a select group of quality women not a number in a crowd
Spoon-feeding or molly-coddling – if you get to work with me you will receive top quality information and support but you have to take the responsibility to actually do it or ask for help when you need it
Quick fixes or yo-yo diets. If you are looking for fast results go elsewhere. If you are looking for sustainable long lasting changes you are on the right page!
How does it work?
The first step is to complete an application for what we call a “Breakthrough Call”. This is an opportunity to explore what is stopping you from achieving the body of your dreams and understand a little more about who we are, what we do and how we do it.
If you are a women with pounds to lose, a desire for more than what life is giving your right now and a will to change it then please apply. We want to speak with you and more importantly, we genuinely want to help you! x
It’s been a very busy few weeks in the Anna Marsh Nutrition / Ladies that Lift household. There is just a lot going on.
>> I’m working on an exciting new project or actually, couple of projects – all the be revealed soon!
>> There is the continuous day to day work of coaching clients, admin & marketing that comes with my current business
>> I’ll be running my first ever retreat in Tuscany in 10 days time with 10 amazing women who I can’t wait to meet. It has been fully booked since April so if you’d like to attend one of my retreats then keep an eye out for next year.
>> and finally, I travelled to London this weekend to attend a one day training workshop on body image. (I also did a little shopping in Anthropologie – see picture above – with a gift voucher given to me by my clients as a wedding gift – Thank You Ladies as I know many of you will read this! x)
I must admit, I didn’t quite know what to expect from the workshop. I was worried the information might be a bit old fashioned and not relevant to my client base. I don’t know why I created this story that it was potentially going to be a negative experience but all I can say is…
MIND BLOWN!
What an amazing day with so many insights into the mindset behind dieting and weight loss.
There were so many takeaways from the day and I intend to use what I have learnt as part of abody image workshop on my upcoming retreat. It goes above and beyond the scope of a mere email to communicate these learnings to you, but I’d like to share with you a simple gem from the day and maybe another one in a future email…
Don’t let a 5 year old run your life
Within us we all have a parent, a child and an adult. We can be any one of these at any given time although perhaps we may tend towards being more one than the other or, certain situations, or the people who we are with, may influence which one we choose to be.
A good give away to which one we are is the language we use.
I experience this in coaching.
Sometimes I coach women who are “adult”, they use empowering language, they are high vibe and are ready to learn from me but also keen to work things out for themselves and take responsibility for their actions.
A while ago I was really struggling with a few clients and I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong or what I could be doing better to help that person/persons.
I was talking about these challenges with a mentor on a recent Mastermind event I attended. The mentor was actually Mike Savage, one of Tony Robbins team and therefore, probably one of the best coaches in the world!
He said:
“If you ever feel like it is very draining to coach someone, then you are not coaching their higher-self, you are coaching their child. That person, might need to the tools to move from child to adult”.
It completely made sense to me.
We all speak to ourselves every day. In fact, we talk to ourselves more so than anyone else!
How often do you say “I must”, “I should”, “I’ll try”, “I could”, “I ought to…”
Instead off…
“I’d love to…”, “I will”, “I’d really enjoy it if…”
When you use the former terms, you could be talking to yourself in the toddler brain and oftenthe toddler brain might have a different desire to the adult brain.
It’s like your toddler brain is the brain that wants to binge on the chocolate bars when the adult or parent brain would like to lose 10lbs and fit into a bikini.
I also think it’s the toddler brain talking when I get those all too familiar complaints like; it’s too hard, it’s so much work, it takes so much time, I just want to go out and have fun with my friends and not worry about food.
Imagine the toddler who throws a strop at the supermarket because he or she wanted a chocolate bar or an ice cream or a bag of crisps.
Is it possible that your brain does the same thing?
There is nothing wrong with having a toddler brain, children are a lot more carefree and naturally open to fun. This is an element that we all probably would love to have more of in our life.
But what happens if we let our toddler brain make important decisions about food, health and our lives.
We might not get the best possible outcome.
If we allow the adult to take over we get;
It’s tough, but I can do this!
It will take time and effort, but it is worth it!
I can still go out with my friends and have fun as well as reach my health and weight loss goals. I will make a plan to make it work.
So the take away from this is – listen to your language. Not just the things you say to yourself, but how you choose to say it.
That’s all from me today, I hope you have a fabulous week ahead.
PS. If you are interested in working with myself and receiving coaching to accelerate your health and weight loss goals AND create sustainable change – find out more about what I offer and what I do HERE.
One of the questions I often get asked is “how do I lose weight off my legs?”. My top half is leaning off but I always feel that my legs are getting left behind.
To be honest, this is a question I find rather difficult to actually answer. My legs have been the body part that I have battled with most of my life.
Cellulite…
According to my memory, I have had cellulite even before I hit puberty and I still have cellulite today. I was overweight as a younger child and I remember looking enviously at the other girls in my class at school with their petite ankles and nicely shaped calves.
And then…
Last week Friday it was a beautiful day. I’d had enough of work for the day, my head was ready to explode, so I decided to shut down my laptop and head down to the beach for a late afternoon walk. I was walking along the beach looking down to avoid looking into the sun and it suddenly occurred to me…
I don’t dislike my legs anymore, in fact I quite like them!
I will never have fine ankles (thanks mom!), I will always have cellulite on my bum, but they are strong, they are shapely and, to me, it doesn’t matter what size they are, but that they look this way.
I will be honest and say the legs I have today, are not the same legs I had 5 years ago and they are probably not the legs I had 5 years before that. They may not even be the same legs I will have in 5 years time… but I think I know what works for me so that I can continue to love them.
My Oestrogen Body Type
In 2010 I went to Sweden to attend a Biosignature Conference by Charles Poliquin. His assistants measured everyone’s body fat using skin folds in front of the entire class!
Slightly embarrassing when the measurement of the skin sitting just under your bum is called out in front of a whole group of people and later projected on the screen at the front of the room!
Anyway, if you go by the whole Biosignature thing, higher skinfolds on your legs are associated with higher levels of oestrogen.
Biosignature or not, this is called a gynoid body type – pear shaped as opposed to android which is apple shaped – and this body type is associated with increased risk for hormone-related-cancers which are typically oestrogen driven due to oestrogen being associated with growth (e.g. tumour growth).
I definitely do have symptoms associated with higher levels of oestrogen. If you had asked me this before I moved to London in 2008 I don’t know if I would have been able to answer this. Not because I didn’t, but probably because I was less aware.
But now that you mention it, I did have a benign breast lump aspirated when I was only 15.
How our genes express themselves in dependent on the environment in which we bath them.
When I moved to London in 2008 I was hauled head first into an environment which did not suit my genes and by the end of the year I was hospitalised for a laparoscopy to investigated endometriosis – which fortunately came back negative – because of my extreme symptoms come that time of the month.
I still do suffer with monthly symptoms but I have brought these under control using the advice I gave in this video.
Last year I did genetic testing with 23andme and it did reveal a few polymorphisms in the gene’s associated with metabolising oestrogen. This would mean that I don’t necessarily breakdown oestrogen that well and this would make sense in terms of my “gynoid” body type.
The point of all of this background information is to say these are what my genes are doing. Yes genes interact with the environment and I’ve done a lot to improve the environment with food, lifestyle and supplements, but I am never going to have flawless legs. I CAN make a difference to the shape and tone of my legs and if I can (with my genes!) so can you.
These are some things that I do/have done which really help
Resistance training
I train my legs currently 2 times a week, I also use my legs when I do some sprints, yoga and running but even when I’m not doing these things 2 times a week does the trick. This is usually focussing one session on squats, lunges and more quad dominant movements and a second session on glutes, hamstrings and posterior chain.
I don’t mess about, I lift heavy and I push myself. I have a love hate relationship with split squats and I would definitely say that adding split squats as well as some isolation and activation work into my weekly training has made a big difference in the shape of my legs
Eat all the food
Everyone is different and will be at a different stage in their health and fitness journey. I am a massive believer in personalisation. What works for me will not be the exact thing that will work for you, you may need a tailored version or something completely different.I don’t know, it depends where you are at. For me, if I train my legs hard I need to eat.
On these days I will mostly eat an excess of 2000+ calories and 200g+ carbs. Your numbers might be different but if you want to build shape, you will need the building blocks. Low carbs and low cals probably won’t cut it.
Not to mention that restrictive diets increase adrenal stress which can drive oestrogen up (or at least the relative balance between progesterone and oestrogen creating what is known as oestrogen dominance).
Moisturise
I have naturally dry skin. I always have. I’ve noticed in the past couple of years that my skin gets even more dry than what it used to. I’m not sure if it’s an age thing or a sun damage thing but it was becoming a problem.
I’m quite picky about what I put on my skin. Because of the whole oestrogen thing I prefer natural skincare products without parabens or phthalates (chemicals which can look like oestrogen to the body). That said, I am also a little lazy with these kind of self-care practises – I’m not really a make-up done, hair styled, toes painted kind of girl! Lately however, I’ve been working on increasing my patience with it and 2-3 times a week I exfoliate and then do a deep moisturising session using bio-oil.
Speaking of which…. Exfoliate
This has been a life long habit of mine. I use exfoliating gloves several times a week to get rid of dead skin and improve circulation and blood flow.
Eat foods that support detoxification of oestrogen
There are plenty to mention but important ones include
Oestrogen is detoxified an excreted via our bowels. Therefore, you want to make sure you not only have the tools to detoxify oestrogen but you also want to make sure you eliminate it from the body in a timely manner. Fermented foods and a good diet with plenty of fresh foods make sure my digestive system works well.
Manage stress
My life is a continuous journey of stress management. I think everyone’s is. I don’t think we can ever be totally free of stress but we can accept responsibility for the things we can change – I’ve changed many things from where and with whom I live, the relationships I have been in, the way I run my business to who I will or will not spend time with – and change our thoughts to the things which create stress – this is much harder to do!
Stress affects the body in so many ways which I won’t go into the details of here, there will be another blog for that… BUT… what you do need to know is that stress will impact you hormones and your weight.
A little bit of self love…
Self love and compassion is something I aim to teach my clients. It’s not an easy thing to do. However unhelpful it is to berate ourselves, changing this doesn’t come easy as it is often the case of shifting behaviours built over a life time.
I am a MASSIVE fan of giving gratitude. I give gratitude for the amazing things I have in my life and I also have gratitude for the amazing things my body can do (however it looks!).
I love feeling strong.
I love being strong and it is not something I want to sacrifice anytime soon.
I don’t want to be limited in life by being too weak or too unfit. I like my body to be as ready as it can be for anything. So far, it’s serving me well, because I treat it well and I will continue to appreciate this symbiotic relationship we have.
If you follow me regularly on social media you will know that it is not often I would post a picture like this.
It’s not the best set of abs you will see on Instagram and also, posting these sorts of pictures is not what I’m really about.
It does seem to get attention though and you are #winningatinstagram if you can post pictures like this (or better) all the time. I took and posted this picture today because I wanted to say something about this picture…
This pictures is of me (obviously).
It’s my body.
My body hasn’t always looked like this. It won’t always look like this. But it’s what it looks like now.
The most important thing to know about this body is that I’m NOT on a diet.
I’m NOT beating myself up in the gym either.
I’m not trading food for exercise.
e.g. if I eat this it’s okay because I’ll do an extra 30 minutes working out tomorrow.
Food is NOT reward and exercise is NOT punishment for not being “good enough”.
I’m actually doing less weight lifting at the moment and I’m basically eating whatever I want (with sensible moderation)
As I am sitting here and writing this I’ve just ironed a shirt that I’m going to wear because I’m going out to dinner tonight. There will be wine and dessert and I’m going to enjoy it.
On Monday last week it was a beautiful day and I did a later afternoon walk on the beach and afterwards I ate an ice-cream.
On Friday night Ben and I got our regular Thai Take Away and I had red curry with coconut rice and we shared a bag of malteesers afterwards.
Now I’m not saying this to boast or gloat.
Not at all.
That’s not the message I want to get across.
I was chatting with Lorraine who helps me with the coaching on my Ladies that Lift, Women’s Weight Loss coaching program.
She said to me one time; you have great genes!
And I thought about it.
I don’t think I do.
My dad was diagnosed in his 50’s as a type 1 diabetic. My mum, who I love to bits, is overweight with thyroid problems and high blood pressure.
I was overweight as a child and I’ve had cellulite since before puberty.
My weight has gone up and down throughout my teenage years and my 20’s and at times I’ve been quite chubby because of choices I have made (eating too much bad food, drinking too much alcohol and staying up late partying and enjoying myself).
So no, I don’t think I have good genes.
I have just invested a lot of time and effort into finding out what really works for me and making this a habit.
There have been times when I wouldn’t have gone out for dinner and had the wine and the dessert.
There would have been times when I don’t get a take away and eat naughty chocolates everyFriday.
But I can do these things now and maintain my physique for a few reasons and THIS is what I want to share with you…
1. It is always easier to maintain that it is to lose.
You obviously have to put in more work to lose extra weight than you do to maintain where you currently are.
The problem is that a lot of women don’t lose weight in the right way and once they reach their goal weight, they don’t have a structured way to reset their metabolism which means that their only “exit strategy” is to go back to their past behaviours which creates weight gain.
Reverse dieting, is increasing calories and carbohydrates in a slow and structured way to find the threshold at which you gain weight.
In January and February this year I built my daily calorie intake up to about 2500 and 300g of carbohydrate without weight gain.
I stopped the process because I was actually finding it difficult to eat all the food. But basically, now I know that as long as I continue to exercise, I can eat on average 2500 calories a day and I won’t need to worry about weight gain. I mostly eat less than this because of my stomach capacity although I would probably go higher on special occasions when eating out or having a few drinks.
2. Don’t mess with your metabolism.
I meet a lot of women who have done a lot of dumb diets. Very restrictive, low cals or low carbs.
When you do a diet like this you will lose some fat, you will lose some water and you will lose some muscle mass.
The restriction will slow down your metabolism and the muscle loss will reduce your resting metabolic rate.
As you repeat this behaviour in what is commonly know as yo-yo dieting, you will need to restrict more and more to lose weight.
Sensible dieting is about learning how to lose on the most amount of food possible (not the least) and using the hormonal and metabolic impact (not the calorie burning) of exercise to keep your metabolic fire stoked.
This will prevent a loss in muscle mass and reduction in metabolism which will make it difficult to maintain.
3. Build good habits
I’ve mentioned that now I eat whatever I want. This is true, but probably not in the sense that you think.
Yes, I have treats, I have chocolate, I get take away and I have the occasional glass of wine, or three. But I also make smart and sensible choices to balance these out.
Today we went out for breakfast and I had avocado on toast and scrambled egg but decided to finish it off with a, very, rich gluten free brownie.
So for the rest of the day I’ve been having green tea (which I enjoy) and I had white fish and asparagus for lunch which was high in protein and low in fats and carbs so tonight I can go out for dinner.
For dinner tonight I’ll probably get a leaner, lighter protein dish with a side of vegetables so that I can have dessert or I’d get something heavy like steak and chips but then skip dessert.
This would totally depend what I was in the mood for, and you know what, if I was still hungry after the steak and chips I’d get the dessert too BUT I know that is unlikely to be the case because I’m happy to listen to my body that go home overly stuffed with a stomach ache.
4. Put the work in at the gym
I have done it all.
My exercise history started with aerobics step classes and Tae-bo (yep, I even had the tapes at home), I had a bicycle that would get me around when I was in high school and I did spinning at university, I used to run (I’ve done several half marathons), I did CrossFit semi-competitively for about 2 or 3 years and now I lift weights, do yoga, a little running/sprinting in the summer and I’ve just started to learn to windsurf as a hobbie.
Everybody has a different body but I can’t see how women would NOT get results from resistance training.
I weigh almost a stone more now than I did in my running days but my body is tighter, stronger, better shaped and more toned than it was when I was 10 years younger in my early 20’s.
When I was learning to lift I learnt to do it properly. Fortunately working in a gym at the time I had a friend who was a power lifter and a PT and he taught me how to squat, deadlift, press and do proper pull ups.
CrossFit can get a lot of bad press but we had excellent coaches at the gym I went to and I learnt do much about quality movement from my time there.
Even when I didn’t go to class I was honing my technique and putting form before strength and strength before intensity.
A lot of women are keen to jump into high intensity interval training without learning how to move properly and activate the right muscles.
Take the time to learn this stuff, if you move well and apply force properly and establish intensity by working the right muscles in your workouts you will see so much more progress than just burning calories for 45 minutes.
5. Plan
One of the things I notice in my coaching program is that people just don’t plan. I really don’t know why?
If you want to learn new habits and eat better and fit in your training you HAVE TO PLAN AHEAD.
I must admit now I don’t plan my food and I do wing it but that’s also because I have been doing this stuff for so long that I know how.
Each week I do an online shop and I make sure there is enough fresh protein in the house and there are ALWAYS spare chicken and fish portions in the freezer. There is ALWAYS brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat in their dry forms as well as ready to go pouches and tins of beans for when your in a rush or just plane starving. It’s really not that hard, stock up, when something runs out, replace it.
I don’t keep trigger foods in the house and we don’t buy bread or even own a toaster. If I want something sweet it will be a piece of fruit, a bowl of oats with honey or I’ll be walking to the shops.
And yes, there will 100% be times when I do walk to the shop to buy a chocolate. I tend to buy a portion sized bar around about the 30g mark so there is no chance of eating the whole bar – because I will!
6. I ferociously protect my sleep.
Sleep is so important if you want to lose weight. Not only do you need it to build that all important muscle tissue that will keep your metabolism high.
But, I don’t know about you, but I am so much more susceptible to jumping into a pile of comfort food when I am too tired. Not to mention the fact that I am probably a blubbering emotional wreck, completely unproductive at work, will make every excuse not to go to the gym and just not that nice a person to be around.
I aim to get to bed by 10pm at the latest, most of the time it is 9pm and there are times when I go to bed as early as 7. I can wake up any time from 5am to 7am but on average it’s 6am allowing for a minimum of 8 hours sleep per night.
There are some nights when I stay up later, maybe socialising with friends, but I know what my limits are and I take action to ensure that I don’t end up a broken wreck.
I know there are mum who have small children who just won’t be able to get enough enough sleep and that is understandable. It just means you have to be extra disciplined about not eating crap.
Is it in the genes?
The purpose of writing all the above is because a lot of the women I work with and speak to don’t want to sacrifice the fun stuff in their life.
I get it, you want to party with your friends and eat out and enjoy treat foods and sleep in and skip the gym. We all do!
But if you want a goal there has to be a certain amount of sacrifice that needs to happen before you can achieve it.
Achieving the goal will take a lot more from you than maintenance – provided you have the right strategy – but it should be a short term sacrifice for a long term gain.
When Lorraine said to me, I think you just have great genes, I thought to myself – do I?
Our gene’s interact with our environment (this is called epigenetics in case you like to know this stuff).
Genes express themselves depending on the environment that you expose them to.
Did you know that when comparing gene’s the biggest difference is overall genetics is between male and female. A Caucasian European woman has genes which are so similar from a black African women that there is actually no significant difference.
So do I just have “good genes” or have a put in the work and do I continue to do what most people aren’t prepared to?
There is a saying:
“Nothing worth having comes easy”.
You have to put in the work.
And if you are ready to put in the work, then we are ready to work with you and help you achieve your goals. Then please feel free to complete the application below and book in for a complimentary breakthrough call to kick start your health, fitness and weight loss journey.
[I just have to say as I final note that this is no discredit to those people who ARE putting in good work not seeing results. I do have a few clients who struggle with health related issues which affect their ability to lose weight – this is probably due to a long time of bathing their genes in the wrong environment before they had the education to know what to do to help themselves]
It’s not often we have a guest blog on the website. The following was actually written by a client of mine as a Facebook post in our Ladies that Lift VIP Supergroup. Charlotte has hit the nail bang on the head with her tips for surviving the busy London social life while still making progress in her health, fitness and body comp.
I’ve been having a very sociable time recently, and that has resulted in some additional refinements to the “how to survive a hectic social life plan” I developed in December to manage the ever busy Christmas Festivities.
This advice also works for those times when you can’t adhere to usual routine.
Figure out your limits…
How many nights out can you handle?
How can you ensure you get the sleep you need?
How many cheat meals and alcoholic drinks can you have without scuppering your progress?
Do you need to have more realistic goals for a period? – Aim to maintain rather than lose weight, for example.
And are there ways to counterbalance the additional calories, such as walking between meetings?
Once you have this figured out, you can then come up a plan of how to apportion your limited resources.
Here are some tips:
1. Alcohol is one of the biggest challenges. You might, for example, decide to only have three drinks in a week. So then you need to decide when and with whom you will enjoy those drinks. Or you could decide to not drink during the week but to have a couple at the weekend. Or not drink at work dos but to drink with friends. Or you might decide to try something more radical and not drink at all.
2. Avoid crap food. My biggest challenge in this regard is after-work drinks parties replete with carb and fat-laden canapes. To avoid face-planting the finger food, I eat a big portion of protein and a few carbs before the party then eat yoghurt and fruit when I come home. And only drink water.
3. If you are going to formal lunches or dinners, then don’t be afraid to be a diva and ask for special food in advance.
When I’m invited to an awards dinner, for example, I ask for a gluten-free dinner. That way I’ll get a much lighter starter and desert. The other night, for example, I got a vegetable medley rather a deep-fried rice ball and a jelly and fruit rather than a tart.
Don’t be afraid to request a restaurant where they will be lots of high-quality protein to eat. Suggest meeting for breakfast – I now do this a lot – I order poached eggs, grilled bacon and tomato and have a fruit salad. It’s easy to comply with macros for this meal and there is absolutely no question of having to drink alcohol!
When you are going out in the evening, make sure you save up carb and fat macros but eat lots of protein earlier in the day. Protein portions in restaurants tend to be much smaller than but there will be lots of fat and carbs.
4. Practise wafting into parties late and your Cinderella skills. At more formal work occasions there is no need to arrive on time or stay to the bitter end. An hour and a half is ample at a drinks party. You will also create an air of mystique if you leave the office party early. This will guarantee that you are tucked up under your duvet on time and you won’t be the butt of office gossip the next morning!
5. As you are no longer attending these parties to guzzle the free food and drink, find an alternative reason for you to be there. For example, do you want some quality time with your team (before they get too drunk)? Or use the party to network with more senior management? Or flirt with the hot guy in sales? This will allow you to enjoy the occasion rather than focus on the deprivation of staying sober and restrained with food.
6. Value quality over quantity. When you do decide to let your hair down, make sure you go for the best of what you want. So have a really good glass of wine or an excellent cocktail. If you go out for dinner choose high-quality food like crab salad, dry-aged steak or spankingly fresh fish. And enjoy every mouthful!
And finally, remember that to err is human – even with the best plan you will probably stray on the odd occasion and have four drinks instead of two or dessert when you meant to eat fruit. Don’t panic. This will not be great undoing of all your good work. Remember that without the plan you would have drunk and eaten more. So simply shrug it off, ladies, and get on it like a car bonnet the very next day. Or when the hangover subsides…
So if you’ve been following me a while you will know that I love an analogy.
I often come up with ideas for blogs and newsletters at random times of the day when I am doing different things.
The idea for this one came to me this morning while I was doing an early morning run.
I’m not a massive runner. At the moment I am just doing 1 run and some sprints each week to build up some cardiovascular fitness to compliment my weight lifting and yoga.
So, one of the things I often hear is…
“I’m just so sick of having to think about food all the time!”
You’ve been there right?
When you are on a diet you are thinking about what you can eat.
You are thinking about what you can’t eat.
You are thinking about when your next meal is. Or if you do the whole cheat meal thing then you are mentally planning your next cheat meal from one to the next.
This makes dieting really hard.
You are trying not to overeat, yet all you can think about is food!
The more you try not to think about it. The MORE you think about it!
It’s like if I say to you, don’t think of a pink pig. What do you think of?
Let’s talk about planning and meal prep…
One of the things I tell all my clients is that they must plan what their food at least a day in advance and they must do a weekly food shop where they get the right foods in for the week.
This can often be expressed as a massive hurdle and planning, unless you are a natural planner, is something I lot of people don’t do very well.
It takes time. AND, yet again, you have to think about food.
However, let’s face it, you do need to become more mindful of food and be conscious (remember that word because I’ll come back to it later) of your choices as you start to build new habits.
So let’s go back to my run this morning…
It’s mostly a flat route with one pretty big hill in the middle and a nice downhill towards the end.
So when I was on the uphill I had to use a lot of mental energy to stop myself from giving up.
I had to focus on MOTIVATING myself to keep going.
I’d say things to myself like
“you got this!” “keep going!” “one step at a time.” “almost there!”
A little cheesy perhaps but I do this stuff because if I thought…
Gosh this is so hard…. I hate running…. Why am I doing this… it’s fine, just walk….
It would be so easy to give up.
However, what I noticed on the downhill is that it took very little mental effort. Instead of having to self-motivate my mind drifted and I had the freedom to think about all sorts of different things.
So what does this little story have to do with weight loss?
A whole lot!
You see weight loss is all about creating sensible and sustainable habits.
If your weight is stuck right now or you have yo-yo dieted or “started a diet” more times than you have fingers and toes, I am sure you will agree that you probably need to try something different that you haven’t tried before.
Trying or doing something different requires you to get out of your comfort zone, learn something new so that you can grow.
That growth is required to get the result – weight loss!
The beginning of change is your uphill…
You have to be focussed.
You have to think about it a lot more – it will take a lot more mental effort, but you shouldn’t be obsessing about food 24/7 (see note below)
You will need to think positively (you got this! vs why can’t I just eat pizza!?)
You will need to plan and prepare – the planning and preparation should actually help you to think about food LESS (provided you are on the right plan). If you plan each week what you’ll have for your meals and you buy that food in a big shop once a week, all you have to do is follow the plan. And if you need help with planning, that is something else I can blog about – just holla!
Note:
If you are on a diet that requires massive amount of will power or all the time, you might be on the wrong diet!
If you eat each meal and start counting down the hours until the next, unless you are entering a body building show, you are probably on the wrong diet!
If you are on a diet where you feel restricted and continuously think about all the things you can’t have, you are probably on the wrong diet!
But the downhill is when it all clicks into place…
Your repeated behaviours from the mental effort your applied [to the right program] in the beginning, become habits. It is the creation of these habits that move you from being consciously incompetent (thinking about it a lot) to consciously competent (thinking about it a lot) to finally unconsciously competent (where it becomes effortless)
Prepping and planning soon become natural.
You shouldn’t have to obsess over grocery lists and recipe books each week – if you are smart, you’ll probably just do an online shop and click “repeat” when you find what works.
If you learn moderation, not restriction, you won’t need to reply on will power to get you through the week.
If you enjoy a birthday party (and the cake) and not let it become a slippery slope of self berating
Then you can be mentally free. You can then focus on other things that life has to offer (not just getting to the top of the hill), look around and enjoy the view!
So, some questions you might want to ask yourself are…
Am I following the right plan? is my resistance, resistance to learning or is it a warning sign for the wrong plan?
What am I learning from my struggle? if you aren’t learning, you aren’t growing and if you aren’t growing then you probably aren’t doing that something different that we already established you need to be doing to get a result.
Are you relying on will power alone [and then failing miserably]? Then your approach is most likely to wrong one. Losing weight doesn’t have to be restrictive or hard. Having the right tools and guidance to learn moderation is very important.
If you feel that you would like…
more support and accountability
a sensible solution, not a short term fix
top quality coaching from qualified professionals
to lose weight and keep it off
Then take a look and apply for a FREE Break Through Call where we can chat through where you are right now and create a future vision of where you would like to be and how to ACTUALLY get you there.
Happy Hormones is a 12 week online training which you can work through in your own time to teach you everything you need to know to natural balance your hormones, lose weight and achieve better health.
If you would prefer to watch rather than read this information, click here.
Something I often hear from the women who I speak with is;
“I have PCOS, therefore I can’t lose weight”
Or
“I have PCOS, therefore it’s so much harder to lose weight”
I would say the second statement is true. It can be harder to lose weight if you have PCOS, especially if you don’t know what you are doing.
BUT, you CAN lose weight, you just need to get the right information and actually implement it with consistency.
For the most part, there is not a lot of good information immeditaely available to women who are in need of natural solution for hormone balance.
BUT
There is actually a lot of good information out there, you just need to know where to find it.
Many women with PCOS struggle with weight loss because they may be more insulin resistant than some other women.
Yet, this doesn’t mean that you can’t lose weight.
It also doesn’t mean that you can’t eat ANY carbohydrates!
It just means you have to be more mindful of how many you eat and what types.
But this is actually quite normal behaviour for anyone who wants to lose weight; you have to be more sensible than you were before.
I’ve recently finished working with a client suffering with both endometriosis and PCOS who is getting married this month.
In the whole time we have been working together she has still eaten carbohydrates, on average around 100g, if not more, per day. This is the carbohydrate equivalent of ½ a kilogram of sweet potato per day!
Everybody has a different body and this is why I am a fan of personalisation.
What works for one person will not necessarily work for you. Or maybe you need it tweaked so it works as best as it possibly can for you.
That said, there are a few commonalities that I have found to be successful in helping women with PCOS and other hormones imbalances on their weight loss journey…
1. Follow a calorie controlled diet with personalised amounts of proteins, fats and carbohydrates
2. Consume a diet which is high in good fats especially oily fish, avocado, olive oil and nuts/oils high in specific nutrients; pumpkin seeds (zinc), brazil nuts (selenium), walnuts (vitamin E).
3. Ensure good digestion by avoiding common irritants such as gluten and dairy and consuming fermented foods
4. Seed Cycle –
Seed cycling is when certain seeds are eaten at certain times of the month. The beneficial fatty acids in each specific seed works with the female body to promote a healthy cycle. Although there is not much research behind it, anecdotally many clients have found it invaluable.
Consume 1tbsp ground flaxseed and 1 tbsp ground pumpkin seeds from day 1 to day 14 of the cycle. For additional benefits, supplement with fish oil during this time (see recommend supplements on bottom pg).
Consumer 1 tsbp ground sunflower seeds and 1 tbsp tahini/sesame seeds from day 15 to day 28 of the cycle. For additional benefits supplement with evening primrose oil during this time.
5. Exercise, but not too much. With Said client, I actually had to put her on a HIT ban as I had a feeling that too much high intensity training was sabotaging her results – I was right!
6. Manage stress and get enough sleep.
7. Take supplements appropriate to personal needs. Some of the ones I commonly recommend for hormonal balance are zinc, b-complex, curcumin, DIM, fish or krill oil, vitex agnus castuc, milk thistle and maca powder
Although personalisation is a factor, these are some basic tools that produce a significant difference in female hormones, whether you are suffering from PCOS or just PMS all of the above would be a good place to start when looking to achieve a lean and healthy body with balanced hormones.
If you want to learn more about balancing hormones naturally, you may be interested in knowing more about my Happy Hormones 12 Week Program. See here for more details…
This month in the Ladies that Lift Women’s Weight Loss Coaching Program we are doing a “love your gut” challenge.
It is all about digestive health.
The rules are simple, there are 3 teams;
Team A: Keeping it simple aiming to eat 1-2 servings of fermented food per day. This could be raw sauerkraut, kimchee, kombucha, kefir or live yoghurt
Team B: The diversity challenge aiming to eat 100 different foods across a week. You can read more about the importance of diversity for gut health here.
Team C: Are following the elimination challenge focussing on whole foods and eliminating gluten, dairy, sugar and alcohol – definitely the most challenging of the 3.
Members pick a team and then as a team motivate and encourage each other and we give a prize for the member who demonstrates the best personal growth across the month.
You might be thinking that this sounds like a lot of extra work.
I thought this was a weight loss program, where does digestion factor in?
We surveyed every member of our program since it started and 90% of our clients were suffering digestive issues when they joined.
This could be anything like bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, smelly flatulence, heart burn and acid reflux.
So again, what does this have to do with weight loss?
A whole lot actually!
Modern life is stressful, we eat suboptimal foods, we take painkillers and antibiotics not to mention other medications, we drink chlorinated water and alcohol.
All of these things can negatively affect the balance within our digestive system.
When we have a disrupted digestive balance, not only do we experience unpleasant digestive symptoms but it also affects our ability to lose weight – who would have thought!
Its also really important to note that just because you have no obvious gut symptoms, doesn’t mean you don’t have any gut problems. We all have stress, bad food and alcohol from time to time.
Without getting all sciencey on you – to lose weight, simplistically, you want to be burning more calories than you are consuming, however I have met many, many, many women who are doing this and not seeing results.
There are many, many, many reasons why, digestive health is just one of them.
Many women have food sensitivities which they aren’t aware of. It is not until they cut these foods out of their diet with consistency that they realise how these foods are affecting them.
Everything from improved digestive, to better looking skin, to more energy AND…
Weight Loss!
The reason being when are immune system is so busy reacting to the foods we are eating, it creates changes in metabolism which make us more likely to store body fat, especially around the middle.
There are a lot of things we can do about this but the main things are:
Eating a diverse diet of plant based foods
Regular consumption of fermented foods
Avoiding common trigger foods like gluten, dairy and in some cases eggs, corn and soy (although we can react to anything!)
Eat a diet rich in whole and unprocessed foods and eliminate sugar and alcohol which may affect the balance of good bacteria in the gut.
So if you suspect that your digestion might be giving you some problems with your weight loss, why not give our challenge a try OR apply to be part of our coaching program and do it with the guidance and support of a like-minded group of women.
If you’d prefer to watch rather than read this post, click here.
Many women will say:
“I want to lose 10, 20 or 30 pounds and then…
I’ll be happier
Or healthier
Or more confident
Or more loved
Or life will just be better…
And yes, this is very often true.
When you arrive at your weight loss goal it can feel amazing. Your clothes fit really well and you have a new level of confidence and a spring in your step.
But something important to remember is that you don’t fall asleep one nigh 29 pounds lighter and wake up 30 pounds lighter and say
“Hooray! Now I can be that person I wanted to be”
Setting a goal, be it in weight loss, fitness, professionally or personally is never about achieving the goal.
It’s about the person that you become as you change the behaviours you need to change to achieve that goal.
To lose weight you might need to change the way you are eating.
You might need to change the way you are exercising.
You’ll need to start to think differently.
You might have to become the person who is dancing on the tables in the early hours of Saturday morning to
the person who has one drink, some great conversations and call it an early night because you have to get up for your gym session the next day.
You might have to be the person who sets a higher standard for yourself and asks if you can eat at a different restaurant so you can make some healthier choices.
Now this doesn’t mean you have to stop doing everything that you enjoy, but you might have to do some of the things you think you enjoy a little less.
You probably want to be asking yourself:
“If I was the person I think I want to be, what would I do?”
How do I spend my weekends?
What books do I read?
Who do I hang out with?
What restaurants do I go to?
Where do I go on holiday?
Am I the lady you will find at the office vending machine at 3pm and later falling asleep at her desk at 4pm?
Or, are you the lady who is fuelled up on good food, smashing through her work so she can leave the office on time?
You see, weight loss has nothing to do with the numbers on the scale. It’s about the person you want to become.
You can lose a lot of weight in short amount of time but if you don’t give yourself the time to shift your identity and continue to set higher goals, you will quickly find yourself back at square one.
This is the epitome of yo-yo dieting.
Quick fixes just test your will power, they don’t shape you as an individual.
If you want to lose weight so you can have energy, be more confident and feel happier and more loved, then now is the time to embrace these things.
Don’t wait until you reach your goal to have these things in your life. Celebrate every bit of growth every bit of the way because your life is an amazing thing that needs to be celebrated!
This will save you a whole lot of self sabotaging, the downfall of many.
If you eat a cup cake or have a binge mishap, tomorrow you will still have your new identity and all the foundations you have laid. The cake will just be a last minute change in the plot along the way from which you can learn and grow.
The best way to create this identity shift is to find someone who has achieved what you want to achieve, who has what you want and model them.
This essentially means copying.
What do they do?
How do they act?
What books are they reading?
How are they training?
How do THEY spend their weekends?
I do believe that each person is an individual but this is a good place to start and mentoring is an excellent way to achieve results if you want to do it sooner rather than later.
It’s going to take time to make these changes. Sensible and Sustainable change is not a quick fix.
For this reason, as of May we have changed the game in the Ladies that Lift Women’s Weight Loss Coaching
Program.
We used to offer 3, 6 and 12 month memberships.
Not more.
The minimum commitment for anyone who wants to work with myself and my team is 6 months.
We’ve noticed that for many of our clients, after 3 months, we were only scratching the surface of their potential. Not to mention to fact we see them tripping over their own feet and self-sabotaging because they feel the need to rush the process.
It’s taken you how many years to get to this point?
At least give yourself a little time to work through making some changes.
We honestly believe a MINIMUM of 6 months is required to create a long lasting transformation of health and happiness (not to mention weight loss).
If we come back to this idea of identity; what are the women who “have their sh*t together” doing?
It’s not the latest quick fix or 21 day sugar detox.
It’s getting their heads in the right place and being willing to change from the inside out to get a long lasting result and grow as an individual along the way.
It’s not often we have a guest blog on the website. The following was actually written by a client of mine as a Facebook post in our Ladies that Lift VIP Supergroup. Charlotte has hit the nail bang on the head with her tips for surviving the busy London social life while still making progress in her health, fitness and body comp. 
