‘5 Biggest Nutrition tips for Fat Loss’.

We have a special blog this week as we have a video blog. Coastal Bodies founder ‘Dan Henderson’ has had incredible success with a number of clients losing significant amounts under his guidance. Check out his ‘5 Biggest Nutrition tips for Fat Loss’.

5 reasons why you’re not getting the weight loss results you want!

You know the drill. You get excited to exercise, and maybe even join a gym or a new program. You go well for a while and get some good results and then your motivation drops. Why does that happen? Your mindset is the KEY that determines your results. Here are the 5 mental mountains that prevent you from being motivated!

1. You’re only motivated by NOT being fat

When you think about your body you focus on the fat bits, and wish you could squeeze them out, to get rid of them pronto. You look at slim people and wish that you were like them and could easily stay slim. You desperately want to change your body and hate it the way it is now.

The thing is, motivation works in two ways. You are either motivated to get away from something painful that you don’t want (being fat), or move towards something pleasurable that you do want (becoming slim). If you are only focussing on losing weight and being less fat, you are only using half the motivation equation. If you’re only motivated by what you’re moving away from then the slimmer you get, the more your motivation will wane ( because you’re not fat anymore). The key to keep motivation up as you get slimmer is to focus on the slim, healthy you that you are moving towards and becoming more every day. Get really clear about imagining in vivid detail your moment of success.

2. You think “all or nothing”

When you get started you do everything perfectly! You keep your food diary, weigh your food, count your calories and train like a demon. Then you have a crisis at work or with your family and don’t go food shopping, get caught out somewhere starving hungry and eat a giant muffin, then say to yourself; “I’ve blown it” and go home and eat a packet of biscuits. You want your program to be perfect and so when you slip up it’s all over.

The truth is you don’t need to be perfect for it to work. In fact, it works better if you accept it’s not going to be perfect and just do the best you can at each and every meal and training session. Aim for 80-90% of your plan and accept sometimes you slip up, that way you can stay on track and get back to it straight away.

3. You replay your past failures and beat yourself up

Whenever you do something wrong, you tell yourself you’re a failure and remember all the other times you did stuff wrong and replay those memories over and over and over, on a loop until you feel bloody awful.

Remember, your past cannot affect your future unless you let it. You are in charge of your thoughts. Instead of replaying and visualising all the ways things went wrong, play out in your mind and imagine all the ways things could go right and you can succeed.

4. You don’t feel worthy of success or slimness

Every time you get close to success you sabotage yourself with a binge or a blowout, because deep down inside you’re a bit afraid of what would happen if you actually got this. It would change things in your life and even though you want it, there’s a part inside that’s afraid of that change and what it would mean for the other areas of your life. These fears are often unconscious, but if you sabotage yourself and have been struggling with your weight for a long time, they’re there.

Investigate what’s really behind these fears, think about them and analyse it critically. They are not true. You have just been believing that it is, based on your past experiences or decisions. You could simply decide today that you are worthy and that you will have the life you deserve. You can overcome any obstacles and you will enjoy the new slim life that is ahead of you. Let the past go and create the future as you want it to be. You have within you all the inner strength and courage to overcome these obstacles!

5. You haven’t connected with your core reason WHY you’re doing this

When your trainer asks you why you want to lose weight, you reply, “to feel better”, or “to fit into my jeans”, “look good at my sister’s wedding” etc. These reasons are ok, but they’re not the real reason why. They’re not a core, emotional reason that will help you get up and train when it’s raining, or when you’re tired and you don’t really feel like it. The truth is, sometimes you’re going to need to overcome that inertia to make a change. To do that you need a powerful reason why.

You need to discover your true motivating reason. What is it that you really want? How would your life change when you have overcome this and can be slim and healthy every day, without thinking about it? What other possibilities will open up for you? What else can you achieve after that? Write out 100 reasons why you want to get slim and healthy and discover the core reasons that make you emotional when you think about them. That’s a start. If these sound familiar to you then you need to make a change to your mindset in order to begin getting the results you really want and the most out of your Personal Training sessions and Gym Memberships.

You can change your mindset and release these negative thinking habits with Mindset Coaching. I am a specialist Weight Loss Motivation Coach. I utilise Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Meta-Coaching, and Hypnosis to help people overcome their self-sabotage, cravings, emotional eating and lack of motivation. When you change your mindset then it becomes easy to follow your trainers’ advice and keep yourself moving toward your goal. You will find that your lifestyle changes become effortless when you have a clear goal, a strong compelling reason why and you have cleared out all the negative and sabotaging beliefs and thoughts.

That’s what happened for me when I lost 25kgs over 8 years ago, within 3 months, after struggling for years with my weight. I found the key to changing my mindset and once I did, everything changed. The fat just dropped off because I was finally doing all the things I knew I should do all along!

Article by Kylie Ryan. Expert Weight Loss Motivation Coach.

Get your Free Massive Motivation E-book and hypnosis session www.MyMindCoach.com.au

Implementing diet change for long-term health and improved body composition

Most of us have had success with diet and exercise programs where we lose body fat in a short space if time. We then get hit with a major plateau and the body fat moves slower and slower. This is a very common complaint from a lot of my clients who are trying to lean up. It can be reasonably easy to lose a few kilos by cutting the obvious bad bits from your diet and becoming more active, but losing the fat that you have spent years putting on will require a little more strategy. Since diet makes up such a large contribution to your body composition it’s now time to be a bit more structured with your diet, and step beyond simply cutting out all Big Macs and fries!

The first thing to do is to reconnect with your goal. You need to be reminded every day of what you’re trying to achieve, so that you’ll find it easier to choose something good to eat whenever you’re faced with a decision. Things like putting an old picture of yourself, or a pair of your favourite jeans that you wore 10 years ago on your door are a couple of ideas.

It is then time to implement changes in your diet. The first step is eating smaller portions. If the food you eat doesn’t contain much protein and quality fresh fruit/vegetables then you will struggle to feel full or satisfied. The poorer the quality of food means the more you need to feel satisfied. So increase the quality of your meals and reduce the size!

Next is to implement one of the following rules into your day or a single meal with the mantra ‘food is my fuel and nourishment, it is not my entertainment’.

Rules of healthy eating for optimum health and body composition:

1. If it has sugar added don’t eat/drink it
2. If your great grandmother wouldn’t recognise the ‘food’ you’re eating then avoid it
3. Don’t get sucked in by ‘low fat’ foods. Fat is not the enemy, processed carbs are. eg bread, pasta, cereals.
4. Drink at least 2-3 litres of water every day
5. Eat fresh fruit/vegetables and protein with every meal
6. Alcohol can sabotage all your good efforts
7. Snack on real food. Eat walnuts, carrots, apples, bananas, rockmelon, fresh young coconut (water and flesh), tuna/salmon/sardines in a can, mixed bean mix with chopped onion, pesto, etc.

Choosing one rule at a time will make the process of solidifying a habit much easier than trying to do everything at once. Once you have one of the rules ingrained as habit for one meal or the whole day (water, no alcohol, good snacks), then try 2 meals or apply 2 rules to one meal. For example to start out drinking 2-3 litres of water every day, once that feels easy to do try not eating anything with added sugar in your breakfasts, then if you want to really step it up make your dinner so that it only contains protein and vegetables. The key is doing things in small steps by adding just one rule at a time. Remember if done slowly these eating habits will be with you for the rest of your life, so there’s no rush to do them all at once.

If you’re stuck getting started then just remember what Aristotle said. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” Which rule would you like to make a habit first?

My Experiences with Exercise and Depression

There is a good chance that you know someone that has or had depression or you may have even suffered with it yourself. Depression is a terrible illness that affects one in 5 women and one in 8 men. The illness still has a terrible stigma which magnifies the impact even more so. I have been very close with the illness as I love many people that have suffered with it at some stage.

The most encouraging part of my work is seeing people conquer this illness with the assistance of exercise. I by no means believe that exercise is the saviour here. The illness requires a comprehensive approach for success but exercise certainly plays a part.

One of the big challenges for people suffering depression is that they don’t feel like exercising. Depressed people only exercise half as much as people who aren’t depressed. It is a vicious cycle as a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of depression and depression increases the likelihood of a sedentary lifestyle.

The toughest part is that first step. It can seem like a monumental mountain to conquer and unbearable at first. My encouragement is to take that first step because you will undoubtedly feel a lot better for the experience. You will be making a great step in boosting your self-esteem and you will be improving your body’s chemical profile. Exercise not only burns up stress chemicals like adrenalin but it also boosts serotonin, the happy hormone.

Encouraging someone you know with depression to exercise and assisting them is a kind and loving action. However, you must also be patient and sympathetic as there will be times when exercise might just feel too much and totally overwhelming.

The type and amount of exercise is secondary. The most important thing is movement and taking steps to recovery. Choosing activities based on enjoyment is far more important.