Today begins the final week of January 2020. Seems crazy right?
So did you lose your 30 pounds yet?
Did you even lose 20 pounds yet?
Please don’t tell me you’ve only lost 10 pounds so far?
Now of course you cannot tell by my tone since this is just words on a page, but there is A Lot of SARCASM in the previous paragraph!
Reason being is so many people set their expectations so high every new year, only to fall off track within the first 2 weeks and never look back.
That is until March and April starts to warm up and fitness becomes top-of-mind again during spring break and once again, everyone will rush to a new fitness program eager to crashdiet their way to a lower weight on the scale.
➡️ I feel my job as a trainer is to… make sure our clients are pushed safely, provide continuously evolving workouts and evenly dispersing the workload to the entire body to avoid burnout and injuries.
➡️ I feel my job as a coach is to… make sure our clients set realistic expectations, know the effort that is required to meet those expectations, and keep them accountable so they can maintain consistency throughout the duration to achieve those outcomes.
The problem is everybody wants to listen to the trainer part, and no one wants to listen to the coach part!
Managing expectations is one of the hardest spots I am put into in a weekly basis.
People watch shows like The Biggest Loser, see weight loss teas and patches on Instagram, and automatically think that if they do the same thing that they will have the same results.
WRONG.
It doesn’t work that way, or at least not with the effort that you are willing to put in.
When starting with all new coaching clients I write this equation on the board…
Expectations = Effort + Consistency = Outcomes
Everybody always sets their expectations high and expects big outcomes, yet they do not want to put in the effort or the consistency in the middle to achieve them.
Now let’s think about this in the big picture of an entire year…
An amazing pace to burn fat, consistently would be one pound of fat per week for 52 weeks.
In a perfect bubble this is possible and in 2017 we actually had 2 clients lose more than 52 pounds and keep it off for the year.
But let’s see this equation all the way through to see if this is even possible for you…
So say you lose 52 pounds of FAT for the year, but you also started a new exercise program so you gained an additional 12 pounds of NEW LEAN MUSCLE.
X Already the scale is down to only a 40 pound weight loss for the year.
Now lets say you went on vacation for a week once and 2 weekend getaways for the year that you decided to ‘take off’ from working out and dieting.
XX You’ve now stop momentum at three different points throughout the year, most likely bringing your weight loss on the scale down to only a 28 to 32 pounds for the year.
Oh wait then there is also New Year’s Day, Gasparilla, Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Cinco de Mayo, Fourth of July, kids going back to school, labor Day, Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas once again.
So let’s just say you ONLY took those 14 days off, and were perfect on your workouts and meal plan in the days before and afterwards.
XXX That most likely brings a scale down to 15 to 20 lb for the year because of all the interruptions in momentum and an additional two weeks (minimum) away from your healthy fitness routine.
Now none of this accounts for birthdays, anniversaries, kids sports, concerts, events, nights out with the girls or anything else!!!
When it’s all said and done, you only have about 26 uninterrupted weeks per year to make progress towards your weight loss goals.
My point of this whole message is to start giving yourself a little bit of credit, and also to stop setting your expectations so high. YOU ARE HUMAN!
- If your goal is only weight loss it’s a long, frustrating an emotional road.
- If your goal is better health and habits, then weight loss, lean muscle and a consistent loss of unhealthy body fat is your reward.
It’s a marathon not a sprint.
It’s a RELATIONSHIP with yourself.
1.) In the beginning it’s like talking on the phone or texting trying to learn about the person.
2.) Then you start dating and getting a little bit more serious, seeing each other a little bit more often.
3.) Then you decide this is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with and you make a commitment to them.
4.) And then 50 years down the road you look back and think of all the happy memories and how fast the time went!
Start making your fitness decisions out of love for yourself, not out of hate for yourself that has been created by false expectations that are not a reality for YOU.
You live a real life, you have real daily challenges and you aren’t paid to take pictures on Instagram.
So start being the boss that you are, take control of your actions and be accountable for your outcomes.
Expectations = Effort + Consistency = Outcomes
You’ve got this. I’m here to help.
Committed to your fitness success,
Derek Kuryliw, your fitness Yoda
