At AdMac Fitness, when we work with clients our goal is to create consistency around good, positive habits. Having been professional personal trainers for a long time, we’ve learned that the most effective way to help people lose weight and improve their health is with a steady approach, focussing on simple behaviours that collectively bring about amazing results.
The research in the nutrition industry backs up this approach too - we know for a fact that crash diets don’t work in the long run. Our goal is to create fit and healthy people; not someone who looks great for a weekend and then a fortnight later is back with unhealthy habits that will lead to long term weight re-gain!
Our one-step-at-a-time approach helps people to ease into their health improvement journey. Rather than overwhelm people with a huge amount of behaviour changes and instructions, we work on one or two habits at a time.
The habits we introduce are personalised to the client. In some cases we may start them off simply by drinking more water in their day. Others we might set a steps target. In some it’ll be a minimum protein target, or fruit and veg target. A bit like learning to drive - you don’t learn to drive on a motorway on your first driving lesson!
We know from research that the best diets are ones that can be stuck to for the long term. That’s how we work - we pick habits we know that our clients will be able to stick to and use those as a platform for the improvement of other aspects of health.
Psychology of Improvement
Long term health improvement is about progress, not perfection. Real life happens - you’ll have days where you don’t hit all of your health targets, but that’s OK - it needn’t spell disaster for your progress!
If you can stick to doing the right thing 90% of the time, you’ll be able to have the occasional treat and not have to worry. Going back to what we mentioned earlier, the best diets are the ones that can be stuck to for the long term. We can’t all live like monks, avoiding all alcohol and treats!
If you think about the maths of weight loss, you’ll have a more tangible idea of progress, not perfection.
In 1lb of fat there are 4,086 calories. We work this out by multiplying 454 (grams in 1lb) by 9 (calories per gram of fat).
To lose 1-2lbs per week, we try to create a daily calorie deficit of 1000, usually a combination of reducing our daily food intake by 500 calories and increasing our energy expenditure by around 500 calories via exercise. Collectively, this adds up to around 1-2lb per week of weight loss, although this figure can be slightly higher or lower depending on water retention etc.
One Bad Day Isn’t a Disaster!
Some people allow a single bad day on a diet to be an excuse to throw all progress away. You may have even done this yourself, where when on the back of a bad day you think “ah well, the diet is ruined, I may as well eat what I want”. That’s not a great attitude because a bad day is easily corrected. Even if you have a lot to eat and drink, as long as you get back on track the day after you won’t have done much damage to progress.
More maths…
If we were to take a typical man, about 5’10 tall and 13 stone, his BMR (basal metabolic rate) is around 2000 calories per day. That means without moving, just carrying out basic functions his body is burning 2000 calories across a 24 hour period.
If that man was to have a HUGE binge - eating and drinking a lot of food in the day and doing zero movement, he might consume around 6,000 calories. If we take off the 2000 calories of his BMR, we’re down to 4000 calories, or put simply…
1 POUND OF FAT!
Completely giving up on your diet or beating yourself up because of a bad day is crazy, because you’ll have thrown away a lot of good work over a single pound of fat!
You could correct a bad day quickly by getting back into good habits the day after. Perhaps diet a little stricter and train a little harder for the rest of the week and I promise you that you’ll offset the slowing down of your weight loss because of the binge. One bad day isn’t a big deal, just don’t make it a habit!
It’s All About Perspective
Next time you think about throwing away your progress because of a bad day, put it into perspective! A bad day might result in a single pound of fat gain. You can easily correct a bad day. Correcting a bad month is a lot more difficult!
If you want to let us help you lose weight, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!