I recently surveyed my mailing list to get an idea of what they were struggling with and how I could direct my knowledge to solve their specific problems.
This statement stood out loud and clear: I feel like I have tried everything and nothing works!
And I thought, yes, I can addtess that! So here goes.
Part 1
Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote this.
When I read it back, it all holds true and you should read this as you think about what 2017 will bring…
Running an online business marketed almost exclusively via social media you have to portray an image of what your target audience wants to be.
Fit
Healthy
Happy
Lean
Toned
etc.
I have prided myself also on being authentic. You will not see me completely shredded, showing my abs and glute gainz, wearing next to nothing on Instagram. If this is the look you are after, well then I am probably not for you.
I still have my wobbly bits and cellulite that quite honestly is never going to go anywhere. If I bend over or sit down there will still be some (small) fat rolls that appear.
These are the things that I can’t change (or at least I am not prepared to change due to the massive social sacrifice for minimal contribution to my happiness).
But there are things about me that are not perfect that I CAN change.
Things that would add to my life, not subtract from it, if I did.
I consider myself to be a balanced person. I think I have my sh*t together (well… at least most of the time).
I eat well, I exercise regularly, I practise yoga, I get enough sleep and I (mostly) manage to think about stressful situations in a rational way.
But I also…
Spend too much time sitting at a desk
Indulge too much on social media
I travel a lot (what has recently felt like too much) but don’t take enough holiday
I work almost every day (even if it’s just a little bit, its never a “day off”)
Although I get enough sleep, it isn’t good enough when you are “switched on” in every waking minute
I forget to moisturise because I am rushing to check my emails. My skin is always dry!
My legs always seem to be 2 weeks (or 4!) overdue a wax (not to mention my bikini line!)
I don’t chew my food properly (this is one of my character flaws I dislike the most but can’t seem to crack)
I eat at my desk
I don’t take breaks (even when my productivity declines and I am not achieving anything!)
The nail polish on my toes always seems to be in need of a touch up
I always book to go to the hairdresser when it is way overdue
I haven’t been to the dentist in almost 3 years! (Edit – I have in fact been to the dentist three times this year! A habit which I finally cracked thanks to my hygienist, who is awesome, who came me some straight talking tough love about my inflamed gums – “You have great teeth Miss Marsh but your gums are not good!”.
I check my phone too much (sometimes at the expense of being present with those people who are most important in my life)
So, although I look after myself in terms of eat, sleep and exercise, which are excellent foundations, there are some MASSIVE gaps in terms of my self care regime.
Perhaps YOU are not even as far as the eat, sleep and exercise part.
Perhaps you are thinking about a New Years Resolution…
Perhaps you are thinking that this year you are going to diet and exercise and lose weight?
How about we think about this a little differently?
Bear with me for a second…
Ask yourself:
Is going on ANOTHER diet and depleting your body of energy and good food self care?
Is beating yourself up in the gym every day and then burning yourself out after two weeks because you actually needed a hot bath and a good night’s sleep self care?
Instead of putting your New Year’s Resolution in the “weight loss box” this year, what would happen if we put it in the “self care box”?
Could it be possible that in the first place, your eating problems could be coming from a lack of self worth, self confidence and self care?
Why not choose this year to nourish your body with good food?
Good food that in the right amount that gives your body what it needs to thrive but not hold onto excess weight?
Why not choose to breathe deep into your lungs, go outside, get some fresh air, get your blood pumping into the nooks and crannies of your body that it hasn’t been to in a long time!
Move your body in a way that builds strength, tone and a confident posture and doesn’t leave you broken and dreading the next session, but rather get’s you excited about tomorrow.
Why not choose to put sleep first?
To cut out the people who bring you down and embrace those that make your laugh and feel awesome!
To take a bath, catch up with all your medical appointments, paint your toenails and treat yourself to a trip to the hair dresser or maybe a massage or acupuncture session for all the work you’ve done in the gym.
To chew your food properly and pop your mobile away and be present with the people you love?
So instead of choosing “I want to lose weight” as your New Year Resolution, why not choose to love yourself, to look after yourself and to listen to your body and put it’s needs first?
If you want some help with this, I’ve got your back with all of it and much much more in The Sustainable Slim Down.
The Sustainable Slim down is my online weight loss course that I created to help women form sustainable habits, one step at a time, to create healthy weight loss and an improved understanding of what it actually means to eat a balanced diet.
It is a database of the exact tools my high end coaching clients are using to drop pounds and inches (without restrictive or obsessive behaviour) and cultivate self love.
>>> More information via this link <<<
Wishing you an amazing 2017 filled with health, happiness and tonnes and tonnes of love!
You are enough, a 1000 times enough!
This week is the last week of the stress series. We’ve looked at some science and I’ve shared with you some lifestyle solutions.
I would like to share a little bit on nutritional support.
I’ve already mentioned that I had lost my mojo a little earlier this week. This actually led me to doing an adrenal stress test (which measure stress hormones) myself.
I got the results on Saturday morning and I was quite surprise. Here they are:
I actually wasn’t expecting a high response. Typically we associate elevated cortisol with being wired. More of an energetic state of stress. I thought this result would have come back low due to the feelings of poor energy I was experiencing.
Interestingly, I have been seeing a lot of my clients coming back with a similar result.
The first step with any of this is to address lifestyle balance. If you read my previous email on mojo rehab, this is the stuff we are talking about.
There is also a lot of support that can be given by food choices, exercise choices and supplements as the cherry on top.
It may not surprise you by now that the food choices help to balance stress are the SAME food choices, help with weight loss too.
To relieve stress induced by diet, balanced meals are a must.
It comes back to the simplicity of the food plate:
The following will NOT be supportive:
All of the above have the ability to disrupt blood sugar and increase stress.
Calorie restriction can also be a stress on the body. This is why, when I work with women, I prefer to keep them in the sweet spot where their calories are as high as they can be and still lose weight. For most this is around 1700 to 2000 calories per day depending on size and exercise levels.
If you feel tired and stressed with low energy, checking your calorie intake may be a good place to start.
Exercise has what we call a “hormetic effect” on the body.
Not exercising and moving your body won’t be good for health. However, too much exercise can actually be more damaging than too little.
In my coaching program I am working with women who are struggling just to get off the sofa, but also women who are chronically over-exercising in a (failed) attempt to shift excess weight.
We want a calorie “sweet spot” for weight loss and we also want an exercise “sweet spot”. Just enough to create the necessary physiological adaptations but not so much that the body is under undue stress.
If you are someone who is stressed but inactive. Adding in regular exercise should help you manage stress levels better.
If you are stress but already doing lots of exercise, stripping it back may have a beneficial effect.
Most women are afraid to drop back on exercise for fear of weight gain. I teach my clients how to balance their nutrition so that this doesn’t happen and the resultant effect is more than likely, weight loss!
Before I talk about supplements I must say:
Please do not take this as medical advice, always check with your doctor or health care professional before starting a new supplement regime and supplements and medications can interact so if you are on any medications for stress and anxiety or depression, always work with someone who will check for any interactions.
When it comes to stress I am a major fan of herbal adaptogens. These are herbal products that can improve the connection between the brain and the adrenal glands or between stress hormones and the receptor.
When I work with my clients I prefer to run a test (as seen above) before making any recommendations.
If stress hormones are high, certain products may be more effective. If stress hormones are too low, often indicating burn out, other products may be beneficial.
Liquorice root and Holy Basil are my favourites for low cortisol
Ashwaganda, Rhodiola and Ginseng are my favourites for high cortisol
(please do not supplement without professional advice)
You can also up your intake of natural adaptogens by adding fresh herbs like Rosemary and Sage into your cooking.
You may also remember this diagram when we looked at stress, mood and comfort eating.
Other useful supplements in this case would be: (I’ve added food sources too)
More real food support can be found by eating cabbage family and onion family vegetables, green tea, chocolate (of course!) and red wine (in moderate amounts not the whole bottle!).
So in summary:
I run a small Online Women’s Weight Loss Program that offer a personalised nutrition and exercise support to produce life changing and life-lasting results.
If you want to give up the guessing game and have someone just tell you what to do and hold you accountable to actually doing it then this is probably exactly what you have been waiting for.
Life doesn’t get better by chance, it gets better by choice. Now you have a moment where you can choose to take a step towards a very different future and join the community of like minded women who are not just losing weight, but transforming their lives, filling them with happiness and health.
To find out more about how my coaching program can help you, please fill out the application below to book a complimentary breakthrough call and find out out about working with me in more detail.
I run a small Online Women’s Weight Loss Program that offer a personalised nutrition and exercise support to produce life changing and life-lasting results.
If you want to give up the guessing game and have someone just tell you what to do and hold you accountable to actually doing it then this is probably exactly what you have been waiting for.
Life doesn’t get better by chance, it gets better by choice. Now you have a moment where you can choose to take a step towards a very different future and join the community of like minded women who are not just losing weight, but transforming their lives, filling them with happiness and health.
To find out more about how my coaching program can help you, please fill out the application below to book a complimentary breakthrough call and find out out about working with me in more detail.
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 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:
BONUS TIPS THAT I LOVE: Consume one to two servings of fermented foods per day and get enough sleep.
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.
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.
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
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.
| 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.
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
The other day I took this picture.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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…
I’ve been doing a massive amount of reflection on the fitness industry lately. As my business grows and I work with more women I have been putting more and more thought into what ACTUALLY works for people and why.
I’ve been questioning my own coaching program, it’s effectiveness and wondering how I could improve it and increase its success.
I’m sure if you follow me on social media you have seen I’m a little cynical about the state of the industry. Instagram is full of six pack abs and dramatic before and after photographs from 12 week body transformations. The more I work with women who are so desperate with their weight, I realise that a six pack is not quite meeting them where they are at…
I am looking at the weight loss that some of my peers are promising prospective clients (12-25 pounds in 4 weeks!). And while yet a small (very small) handful of my clients might achieve this, we usually recommend this amount of weight loss in 3-6 months.
Perhaps I have just shot myself in the foot here because now, why would you want to work with me if I am promising you that you will get results SLOWER than the competition?
This is why.
In our Ladies That Lift Coaching program we tend to work with women who have already done the above. Lots of restriction which is totally possible in 4 weeks, but what happens later?
All I am really doing in my coaching program is teaching women how to eat properly after years of dieting which has created so much confusion, messed with their own awareness of their bodies, their body image and their relationship with food.
What!? You want me to eat MORE food!? I’m here to lose weight you know!
[I hear this at least once a week but I am telling you, those that follow the program get results]
Anyway, I digress.
So there are a few reasons why we see slower results in our program. Here are the top 3:
Starting a program like mine is like holding a mirror up to your life and having it reflected back at you. I see so many women who come into the program with stress and overwhelm and they blame the program.
But what is actually happening is that the program is reflecting back on them what is already there. Their life is already stressful and overwhelming!
Some people will take this reflection and put the steps in place to work with it. Taking these steps to simplify life takes time. It is probably the fact that these steps have never been taken before, that this person has failed or rebounded time and time again.
I would probably recommend that everyone who joins my coaching program joins for a minimum of 6 months. Three months to get their sh*t together and 3 months (at least) to follow the nutrition and training (however I appreciate for most people, the idea of that commitment is pretty scary!)
The ones that don’t do this will often spin out of control, give up, move on, start searching for the next thing that will magically work for them and then find themselves stuck again because they haven’t dealt with what is really going on.
They are not ready yet to look at that reflection because it might be too uncomfortable.
The second reason is that we feed people.
Yep, we teach you how to eat yourself slim.
Most women are either restrictive dieting or overeating on calorie dense foods. How we approach things is to get you to eat large amounts of nutrient dense foods and for most of our clients this means that they are losing inches (but necessarily scale weight) on 1800-2000 calories per day.
What this does for the body is that is preserves muscle mass (keeping the metabolism up) while facilitating fat loss.
When you lose 12-25 pounds in 4 weeks, I can guarantee you that a good amount of that is also muscle tissue, which means your metabolism rate drops.
If you can lose inches but not that much weight, you are maintaining muscle tissue which means you don’t see that screwed up metabolism you get with most diets.
This means that if you go away for the weekend and you eat and drink a bit too much, you will easily find that you don’t see the massive fluctuations in weight that you would normally punish yourself for.
We see clients go from eating 500-800 calories a day, wondering why they aren’t losing, to eating close to 2000 calories, and feeling strong in the gym and leaning out.
I find that most people have stressful lives. Most people are time poor.
Therefore, adding more depletion into an already depleted state is not helpful to one’s health and vitality.
We don’t recommend huge amounts of intensive exercise, 3-4 sessions a week combining resistance training and maybe a little cardio with a good diet is plenty. It’s sustainable and it will help build good habits for the future.
So, in summary, it’s not about dropping 2 dress sizes in 12 weeks or whatever, it’s about the journey.
I cannot hammer the message in enough. Stop chasing the quick fixes, stop looking for the cheapest deal, stop pushing your body so damn hard with restriction and stress.
Have the courage to hold that mirror up and look at what your life is reflecting back at you and ask yourself, can you see yourself doing what you are doing for the next 5, 10 or 20 years?
If the answer is no then I’d love to invite you to apply to be part of my coaching program.
If you aren’t sure what you are in for check out the Success Stories page on the website (you may want to especially look at Rou and Adriana’s testimonial)
If you’d like to move forward and embrace making some sensible and sustainable changes in your life (not just your weight!). Then please apply.
You will need to be ready to take this seriously.
You will need to be ready to invest in yourself and commit to yourself.
In exchange we will commit to giving you the results you deserve. We guarantee that if you follow our program and you do not see results you can stay in the program free of charge until you do.
You will get a nutrition plan personalised to you.
You will get a huge amount of support with a one to one kick starter call, group forum and the option the attend 3 calls A WEEK to speak with me personally.
If you are ready, apply below.
Anna x
This weekend something happened.
It was like a penny dropped and a started to understand a few things that I think I had understood before. But now I understood them differently.
Two things
1. All the things that you do but don’t want to do and all the things that you don’t want to do but you do, are driven by fear.
2. Fear is a state of stress and stress is a state of fear. And when we are in this state we are out of alignment and we act in a way which is unhelpful to us – like jumping into the cookie jar and eating all the cookies!
One of the things I continuously stress to my clients is that, when they sign up to work with me, the THINK they are buying a nutrition plan. They THINK that I have some magic eating formula which is going to change their life.
In some ways this could be true but what they are actually buying into is the tools to address the two things listed above.
1. the ability to change their state
2. the ability to change their story
And yes, with the right strategy, this all comes together and creates fantastic weight loss results. But what am I really going on about?
I had a call with a client today who basically admitted in the first minute of speaking with me that she had not been doing what she was supposed to.
She knew what she should be doing, she just wasn’t doing it!
[I am sure that this may sound familiar to some of you reading this]
Her question was;
“What do I need to do to get back on track? Do I need a diet plan which is more strict? Do I need to take progress pictures and share them with the coaching group?”
My answer was;
No.
Dieting harder and making yourself accountable only works to a certain extent. At some point, we need to address WHY things are REALLY going wrong.
It is not a lack of willpower. It is not that you are lazy. It is not that you are not committed enough.
And even if you are some of these things, it’s the reason behind these reasons.
9 times out of 10 it is emotional.
Emotions which are essentially driven by stress or fear.
So I started chatting to the client a little more. Trying to find out what was going on in her life.
And there was the answer.
There was a lot of stress. Stress that was being created by being a new mom, possibly suffering from some post natal depression and conflict in the house hold between her and her husband.
THAT was what needed to be dealt with to get her back on track.
I won’t go into the details of our full conversation. I will tell you she went away happy and focused.
The key thing was, we needed to bring her back into alignment. She was so stressed, unhappy with no time for herself.
This was in conflict with the vision she wanted for herself which was to be a happy, healthy, balanced and supportive mum. Because of this conflict between her actions and her intentions, she was reaching for the biscuit tin to make herself feel better.
The only problem was, that then she felt guilty.
It wasn’t the biscuit that was the problem. It was the constant hammering of her self esteem that happened afterwards that made her feel not good enough to set aside the time she needed for her.
Because she felt guilty taking time for herself she was exhausted and burnt out, filled with negative thoughts and lacking fulfillment.
The entire cycle was being played on repeat.
The funny thing was. I had the same conversation with the next 3 people I spoke to!
I speak to women every single day who want to lose weight. Women who are super hero’s; mum’s, wive’s, friends, girlfriends, career women, carers, you name it!
None of whom understand that putting yourself first is not being selfish. In fact it’s the opposite. You cannot be the best possible mum, friend, girlfriend, wife, employee, boss, carer, you can be if you do not look after you first.
This is because you are out of alignment. You are burnt out, stressed, unhealthy and overweight.
So how do we bring you back into alignment?
You take the time to focus on you.
You remove the stress (or learn better ways to cope)
You start a meditation practise
You take up yoga
You write a gratitude journal
You find that thing that brings you back to being YOU.
If you have dieted before you know you have to eat well every day. So if your emotions are why you keep failing you have to nourish them EVERY DAY, just like you would your body.
[I’m going to write this again because I want you to actually hear that this is the whole point and purpose of this incredibly long email]
If your emotions are why you keep failing you have to nourish them EVERY DAY, just like you would your body.
I have plenty of tools that can help you do this. You just have to get over the fear which is stopping you (because it is ALWAYS fear stopping you from doing what you really want to do), take responsibility and jump!
Anna x
PS. If this makes sense to you, then I want to work with you and help you change your life. All you need to do is ask for the help.
It was a sad day today, I was training this morning in the gym and I dropped a 16kg dumbbell on my note book, crushing the ring binding and my special Ladies That Lift Pen 
On a more positive note, I actually had a really good, even great, session!
You see, I have been struggling a bit with my training mojo lately.
There are a few reasons for this.
The past 2 months have been pretty intensive with lots of travel in the name of personal and business development and a cheeky one week holiday too. This means that since I’ve come back I’ve been really focusing on my business and I love it!
I love it so much that I feel so excited in the morning to get going and start the days tasks that I don’t want to be held back by going to the gym, showering and eating.
That’s actually the second part of my mojo problem.
You may know I work in women’s weight loss and there are two sides to this coin.
Side 1: There are the women who are overweight because they just don’t have the right calorie balance. They eat too much, they don’t exercise and the reasons why are NOT because they don’t know that chicken and vegetables are better than pizza and that doing some exercise is probably better than sitting on the sofa.
It’s because there is other stuff going on; emotions, stress, family commitments, unhappiness at work. Often these women don’t have the right tools to manage their lives and the self belief that they are even worth it!
So that’s one side of the coin. I love helping people like this. Helping them find their self worth and happiness in their lives. And of course if this is something you want help with, you can apply to work with me here. But this is actually not the best blog for these type of people today. But if you are one you can still read this because you might still find it interesting – and hopefully scare you off doing any stupid restrictive diets!
Side 2: The other side of the coin is the women who are overweight because they under-eat. Or maybe even not even particularly overweight, maybe just feeling like there is “room for improvement”.
Since getting back into a proper routine and being busy and excited about new projects I have learnt something new about myself…
For over a year I tracked my calorie and macro intake and this has been something that was game changing for me in terms of achieving my best body composition.
In July I let the tracking and counting thing go because I just felt that it was time. I know what good food looks like, I know roughly what a balanced meal is. I don’t need to lose weight and yes, the tracking was helpful but I feel that I have moved past that now and life is too short to be weighing your food long term.
This served me pretty well during the months of July and August when life was all over the show and I was in foreign countries and the attempt to weigh and measure food would have just been impossible anyway.
But now, since coming back to normal life, a busy work schedule and hitting the weights in the gym. It actually doesn’t serve me as well.
One of the biggest changes I noticed when I started tracking my food – eating right and eating more – was a massive jump in strength, recovery and better sleep! Before I would train one day, then feel too tired and achy to train the next. This has started happening again.
This is because my default mechanism is to be lazy with carbs. Unless you are eating bananas (and there are only so many bananas one can eat!), when you are in a rush, it’s a bit time consuming to be boiling potatoes and rice. So I just leave them out. This means that my diet which used to be anywhere between 150g and 250g of carbs a day, is not not even making 100g.
Now my weight has stayed exactly the same! My body composition has stayed the same too. The under-eating has not served me in any way!
A few times I’ve put my food into My Fitness Pal, just to “check”, and I’ve probably been sitting around 1600-1700 calories.
This is too low for me.
So eating less calories and eating less carbohydrate has not done ANYTHING for me. In fact, I generally sleep well but I’ve had a few nights of poor sleep, waking up hungry and feeling particularly susceptible to the effects of coffee, especially if I drink it on an empty stomach.
The best shape I have been in this year was when I was eating up to 250g of carbs on some days and able to train hard because I was properly fuelled.
All of the above are just different forms of stress.
I do encourage all my clients to have stress management strategies. I’ve been practising yoga and meditating 4-5 times a week. But sometimes that hour a day just isn’t enough to combat all of the above.
So last night I said to Ben (my fiancé) – I just feel like “dirty chocolate”.
Dirty chocolate is what most people call “normal chocolate”. The stuff that isn’t 70%+
Ben is a bit of a sugar junkie but I mostly manage to keep him under control. So he jumped at the chance to enjoy this little indulgence and between the two of us we polished off 200g of Lindt milk chocolate each.
And hence – my workout today was awesome! All the lifts felt easy and I was able to note in my (now crushed) log book to increase the weights across the board next week.
Now I am not saying that we should all be gorging our faces on Lindt Chocolate and in fact if you are quite heavily overweight maybe you do have to, in the short term, sacrifice some performance to facilitate fat loss. However, there are a few take aways here.
I certainly won’t be scoffing a box of Lindt every night but I will do what I tell my clients – plan better. Pre-boil rice and potatoes to throw cold into salads and if necessary top up on extra simple carbs post workout.
Often women tell me that they find they can stick to their eating plan just fine and then, come THAT time of the month, they get hungry, they crave carbohydrates, their energy dips, making them crave sugar even more, they feel bloated and fat, which makes them seek comfort in food, not to mention the hormonal flurry of emotions which can also drive us to seek solace in whatever we can find in our kitchen cupboards.
We step on the scales and the numbers we see reflect the way that we feel. Fat, bloaty and retaining water like a sponge.
All that hard work down the drain because we have gained 4 pounds since yesterday! Since yesterday!
It just ruins everything, doesn’t it?
Did you know, it doesn’t have to be this way?
Now, I am not saying I can wave my magic wand and all the pre-menstrual blues will disappear. But there is a lot we can do to manage this situation. Here are the most important:
PLAN
If you have a regular cycle, mark out the last week in your calendar so that you are mentally prepared for what is about to happen. So many times I have been caught off guard. Why do I feel like this? Why am I so hungry? Why do I just want carbs? Why is my digestion off?
A few days later… oh that’s why…
[I am sure you can identify]
If your cycle is not regular, it may be worthwhile spending a little time working on why this may me. A lot of women I work with on the Ladies that Lift program have reported increased cycle regularity and return of their cycle after a period of amenorrhea, when we get them eating and training right. Stress is a major contributing factor and although I really feel that diet and exercise can be major players in someone’s stress load (I see so many women under eating and over training), there are other factors to consider too.
BLOOD SUGAR BALANCE
Pre-menstrual cravings can sometimes be a sign of insulin resistance. Did you know that 1/3 of people may present with some insulin resistance? So it’s likely (but not definite), if you experience very bad cravings, you could be experiencing some cyclical insulin resistance or insulin resistance generally. Personally, this is something that I do not experience every cycle, but it can be much more noticeable on some cycles compared to others. There are a few factors that can make this worse:
I think you get the picture. So if you can plan ahead, make the last week of your cycle one when you really prioritise sleep, meditation, positive mental attitude and make sure that you are not over doing the exercise and under doing the carbs.
Interestingly, and I have commented on this many times before, with the popularity of high fat and low carb diets I see a lot of women over doing it on the fats. There is a lot of bacon, eggs, lamb, nut butter, peanut butter, nut based meal replacement bars, full fat yoghurt, coconut products, butter and cream in many women’s diet. There is usually a much smaller amount of oily fish, flaxseed, chia seeds, green and leafy vegetables, hemp, olive oil, olives and avocado. Just because it is primal does not mean you can eat as much of it as you like. You would be surprised how quickly these foods add up and a surplus of fat can contribute to this overall picture of insulin resistance and inflammation.
Again an observation, but some people do better on a higher fat diet and others just don’t. It’s all about learning what your body needs and what works best for you.
ADJUST YOUR MACROS
Prior to menstruation and ovulation we see a rise in oestrogen and in doing so the body may shift slightly towards a greater reliance on carbohydrate for fuel. When my clients say they get carb cravings related to their cycle I just tell them to eat more carbs! It’s what your body wants right? But what we do is drop off fats or proteins a bit to keep total calorie load the same.
There can be an increase in energy expenditure at this point in the cycle so adding in an extra 50g of carbs (250g of sweet potato) is actually only a small amount of extra food, 200 calories. What is more, an increased carbohydrate intake may positively affect serotonin, our happy hormone, and alleviate negative changes in mood.
WORK ON HEALTHY OESTROGEN METABOLISM
As described above, it is the surge in oestrogen around the cycle that can drive carb cravings. Although this is a normal part of being a women, those women who tend towards oestrogen dominance, having a higher level of oestrogen to progesterone, would experience this to a greater extent than those within a better state of hormone balance. Discussing the in’s and outs of hormone balance is a major discussion point and if you would like to know more you can download by eBook on the topic. But generally speaking we want to focus on:
BE PREPARED FOR WEIGHT TO CHANGE
Some months I can get more symptoms than others, the more stressed and sleep deprived I am, the more likely this will be. Last cycle I did feel particularly “fat”. My digestion was off and I just felt bloated. I think this was partly aggravated by the fact that it came just after Easter and I had eaten way too much bad quality chocolate.
I weigh myself a lot actually out of interest. I always advise my clients not to get too caught up in scale weight but I am fascinated by how much and often it changes and in response to different things. It is much more a case of “observing with interest” than having any emotional attachment to being a certain weight.
This particular cycle my weight went up about 2 pounds over night and 4 pounds over the course of a few days. I was the heaviest I had been in about 6 months or more! If I didn’t know better I would have freaked out and blamed the Easter chocolate (I did eat a lot!) but by the same time the next week I was 5 pounds down. Crazy stuff.
It is really impossible that one can gain 2 lbs of fat over night. There are so many things at play, mostly water. Therefore, if you are eating well, sleeping, and training in a balanced way, just let go of the emotional attachment to the scale and be patient.
MAINTAIN A POSTIVE MINDSET AND DEAL WITH UNDERLYING EMOTIONAL ISSUES
If you are an emotional eater, it is likely that you could expect to see an increase in this tendency around this time of the month. Emotional eating, similar to balancing female hormones, is a major topic for discussion. This should ideally be tackled daily or across the whole month with greater awareness during the final week of the cycle.
Most people will tend towards emotional eating when stressed. Therefore, the advice to emphasize stress management in the final week of the cycle may in itself help with eating emotionally.
Whenever one of my clients falls off track with their diet there is ALWAYS something else going on. It could be a relationship issue, a work related stress, family politics, social pressures or even pressure that we place unnecessarily upon ourselves. The key is getting to the root cause of that issue and finding coping mechanisms other than food.
I recommend all my clients meditate daily for at least 10 minutes. Learning the practise of daily meditation is a useful tool to teach focus and empower you to take control of changing your own emotional state instead of using food to do it for us.
IN SUMMARY
If you feel that you want more support with managing your nutrition, training and lifestyle, apply to work with me by completing the following form
I took a week’s holiday at the beginning of August which I chose to spend at a Yoga Retreat in Turkey with a teacher that I loved to practise with in London.
Most people wouldn’t choose to spend their time off practising 5 hours of yoga a day, staying in a little wooden hut in 40 degree heat, no air con with very few modern conveniences, even if the surroundings are beautiful. But for me, it is a gift I give myself.
It is the one time each year when I can completely disconnect from my laptop, my tablet, my phone and technology generally and totally immerse myself in a simple life. It feels amazing.
However, even when the technology has been left at home, my brain is not as easy to turn off. Throughout the whole retreat I was constantly drawing parallels between the art of learning yoga and the art of losing weight.
Tick, tick tick…
When I came back I had a call with a couple of ladies in my coaching group and I had some very interesting conversations with both of them. One was very eager, despite making good progress so far, to see MORE progress, faster.
Another had been doing what we call a reverse diet. She had come from a background of eating very little for a long time and continuously struggling to lose weight. Our goal for her was to build her calories slowly up to a healthy level while keeping her weight stable to give her metabolism a boost. It was working, she was almost at 2000 calories and she had not gained any weight, yet she was anxious to see the results and wondering what was going to happen next. When could she start taking them away again?
It was perfect, I could use a yoga analogy to help them.
They were probably rolling their eyes with all my post yoga retreat philosophical lessons but I think what I said made a lot of sense. I asked:
Why are you in a rush?
Where do you want to get to?
What happens when you get there that is so important that it needs to happen NOW?!
Often we rush because we are not happy to be in the present we are constantly trying to get somewhere else because where we are right now is painful. But we need to be comfortable in the present and develop the right focus because this will make the journey so much easier in the future.
You see, on my yoga retreat, we were learning arm balances. I have been working on my arm balances for a while. Balancing on my forearms and trying to kick my legs up above my head whilst not taking out the furniture in our small living room.
What I learnt on retreat was, although I felt like I was doing something useful and maybe getting there,this was pretty much a waster of time I was never going to get anywhere doing it like this.
Because I was rushing.
I needed to take the time to lay my foundations. To develop the strength and mobility in my shoulders.
To learn to engage my core properly and to make the whole movement less about momentum and more about grace and balance.
Unfortunately this means going back to some pretty painful and pretty boring and much less impressive progressions. The end result however, will be that when I am ready I won’t have the bad habits which in the long term would result in shoulder, neck or back injury, setting me back months or even years.
So what has this got to do with weight loss?
Everything.
If you are chasing the results with quick fixes (extreme carb restriction, calorie restriction and excessive exercise)…
You might not get anywhere. The equivalent of me kicking up and falling back down again… and again… and again…
[this is what it looks like, it’s not pretty]
[PS. picture on the left was taken in the 1 second I actually did anything useful!]
If you take things to the extreme (shake diets, liquid meals, 500 calories a day or whatever it is) maybe you do get somewhere (like my 1 second of glory above) but you set yourself up for a relapse (the equivalent of a shoulder, neck or back injury) and you could see yourself gaining that weight back within a few weeks or months time.
So, just like my arm balance practise we have to lay some boring foundations. We maybe need to take it a little more slow, we have to set your metabolism up right (like we were doing with the reverse dieting client), we have to get the foundations and the positive habits in place and then ease you into position.
Which would you rather be?
[Above: the beautiful Naomi Absalom doing arm balances as they should be done. Find our more about her here…]
