Following my first week working with 2 of the lovely ladies who won #supportwitheverystep, below is a summary of the highs, lows, and learning points myself and hopefully, Emma and Meera have taken!
Working with me with your nutrition can be akin to falling from you bed onto a hard wood floor. Your bed is the comfy area of nutritional ease and comfort, I am the hard wood floor, unforgiving and a loud wake up. Like falling onto the floor people often expect an immediate impact but learning about nutrition, changing habits and adopting a new approach takes TIME. As a coach who prides himself on getting results I push and ask a lot from my clients, which doesn’t make us friends (at first anyway, out of work life I’m a treat, honestly!).
Through extended dialogues, particularly with Meera, we have worked to find a middle ground from changing as many habits as possible, but still finding solutions that can be kept to. The best plan is one YOU can stick to. How many areas of change you can accommodate is entirely up to you. My job as a coach is to find the alternative options where it isn’t a sacrifice to you but still generates results.
For Meera, the devil is in the details. Reducing milky lattes and smoothies, from what I consider excessive amounts but to levels Meera can still feel like it’s not too restrictive was a good example of this finding a resolution. Hardly the United Nations but we probably spoke for as long some days!
If this leads to success then fantastic, Meera is still enjoying her life without feeling too restricted, however if not then another area of her nutrition will need improving. The improvements and effort she has made over the first week has been impressive and her willingness to work with me through dialogue has been extensive, yet rewarding both from a progression standpoint for her and improving as a coach for me. Less Taurean bull headedness would be the order of the day for myself!
For Emma the key to unlocking future success is preparation. Week two has started in near perfect fashion. Words not often ushered from my mouth. Last week may have been the shock to the system I was describing in the intro and life does get in the way often. This is often what I encounter when people tell me their nutrition is sound and then looking at a full food diary what from the outside looks like healthy choices to those with a more solid nutritional understanding is massively deficient. The media is to blame here.
Yoghurts, fruit, bread, pasta, handy snack pots and smoothies. All sound good on paper but when you look at what the human body NEEDS (want and needs are often miles apart) the protein, fats and fibre are vital for function and fat loss are nowhere to be seen but excessive sugar, lack of filling ingredients and surprising hidden chemicals are present in abundance. Often the argument comes back that yoghurt contains protein, fruit is good sugar, brown bread is ok. They are all “not the worst options” but does that mean you should be consuming them? Are menthol cigarettes better than cigars? Yes but if your concern is your health I’d say don’t bother!
Food is exactly the same and this is a BIG mental shift for people. These handy choices all come about from one root cause. A lack of preparation. Batch cooking, slow cookers, having healthy options to hand or just working on the willpower to go into tesco and buy salad, meat, nuts rather than a sandwich, a bag of crisps and a fruit juice are often the small steps people need to make their dreams reality or at least the first steps on the path to success!
It’s easy to pressurise yourself when dieting. Everyone wants results yesterday, no one has ever complained to me about getting results too fast. We are especially bad for seeing the results in front of their eyes and wanting a little bit more. Half a pound a week is nearly 2 stone a year. Small, manageable progressions will lead to longer lasting results, and who doesn’t want that?! It’s only been a week but I’m very proud of the diligence shown by the ladies and the progressions I’ve seen have been fantastic. Making small changes that last is the best method to success. This is easy to forget when you want everything right now. Both as a client and as a coach!
Joe
http://sustainnutrition.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/sustainnutrition/?fref=ts
This is Meera’s Hello Fresh Delivery this week!
