Weight Loss

Something I often hear: "I don't actually know what a healthy diet looks like anymore" There is SO much information available. A lot of it is conflicting. Is it any wonder you're confused! Here's how I help clients filter through the noise and find an approach which works for them long term: First, we talk about your situation - your history with diet and exercise, what you hope to achieve, your lifestyle, your preferences and what you can realistically commit to. We'll use that information to build a plan which is personal to you. We won't do every 'healthy thing' under the sun, instead we'll pick not only the most impactful strategies for you, but also the things you're going to be able to put in place consistently. We might go all in and make a lot of changes all at once, or we might go more slowly and make changes much more gradually - the information we gain right at the outset helps us decide the best way to start, but we can change at any time. Then, we'll carefully monitor the things we're doing. Are you able to maintain the changes consistently? Perhaps you're finding certain things easy and would like to refine your approach more - or perhaps some things are more difficult than we expected and so we need to slow down some areas. Are we seeing the changes you're looking for, or do we need to tweak things? How are you feeling? How is your energy, your sleep and your digestion? We'll work together to keep things heading in the right direction. We'll maintain a fluid approach to our plan - there's no 'good or bad', just a lot of opportunities to learn and adapt along the way.

Our brains love overthinking things. And food timing around exercise is an area a lot of us overthink. We can be sold into the mindset that having eaten, or having not eaten, is a reason that the exercise we were planning is not going to be as effective. But I'm here to tell you to just simply get on with what you'd planned regardless of how you timed your last meal because it's really not going to make a massive difference either way. Unless you're about to do some kind of activity which requires a good amount of effort for an extended period (running a marathon or climbing a mountain for example), you're probably not going to gain any particular benefit from eating or not eating before you exercise. Eating straight before exercise might even make you feel rubbish because food signals your body to move into 'rest and digest' mood, which is not quite what we're looking for when we exercise. While there is some benefit to getting some exercise done in the morning before you eat, the extra benefits compared to doing the same exercise after you've eaten are pretty small. Likewise, being hungry before you exercise is likely to leave you low on energy and finding it hard to perform in your workout. As usual, the right approach lies in the middle ground - just eat normally and don't allow your meal times to put you off a workout. If you want to exercise tomorrow morning, make sure you eat tonight and have a plan for a meal tomorrow - that's it. There's no need to use your eating schedule as a reason to skip a workout.

It sounds obvious. But, if you want to make progress, you've got to do the things you're not already doing. Of course, eating vegetables is good for you, but if you already eat plenty of veggies, the route to your goal doesn't involve focussing on your veggie intake. Likewise, if you're already walking lots, the route to your goal doesn't involve getting even more general activity. Instead, we have to look at the things you're not doing for whatever reason. We don't have to be perfect when we're aiming to lose weight, but we do need to make sure to be making steps to improve the key areas. This can be difficult, because often we don't know what it is that we're not doing, and if we do have an idea, then we might not realise the importance. Sleep quality is a great example here. Very often I speak to a client who brushes their poor sleep off: "oh, I don't sleep that well, but it's ok" But, if you're not prioritising sleep, your hormones could be off or your inflammation might be higher. You're also hampering your ability to build muscle even with the best training program. Less muscle means less energy being used to simply maintain your body, which means weight loss is that bit harder. It's a similar story for lots of different areas, so, by figuring out where your focus might be lacking and taking steps to improve things, you'll likely take a step closer towards your goals. Remember that perfection is absolutely not essential along your journey, but working to improve the overall picture of the things you're doing is only going to help you head in the right direction. This is another reason a personalised approach is so useful. We can hone in on the things…