What if I could give you 3 things that will immediately provide you with gains in your fitness? And as we know fitness gains are also health gains.

I am going to get straight to it, here they are –

• track your weight
• decrease food portion sizes
• structure your training

EASY.

Let’s look at each of the 3 in greater detail.

Hack #1. Buy some scales and track your weight. The single most important fitness factor relating to health is weight. Put weight on and usually your health decreases (the caveat to this is unless your bodyfat is stable or decreasing while weight increases). Go ahead and search “weight related to health” and see what pops up. In the same way an athlete records times, an accountant tracks spending and the gauge on your car tells you you need more gas, your weight should be tracked frequently and using the same scales and at the same time of day (to ensure you get valid numbers). You could try checking it more frequently to better understand how it fluctuates through 24 hours especially as it relates to different foods and fluids.

I do hear clients and others tell me they don’t need to do it daily as it creates too much mental pressure to watch what they’re eating. This is a true story. You can understand then that people do have actual mental issues when dealing with food. There’s a lot of them.

This is the area I have to work most hard at with many clients.

As with all parts of the fitness framework the old adage always rings true, “if you ain’t measuring, you’re guessing”. Start measuring and recording the results, create at least a smidgen of self accountability. I love that word so much I linked a definition of it! By then measuring and recording over months and even years you are taking firm control over the number 1 cause of health related issues.

Hack #2. Portion sizing is an easy way to understand your body better and to help with the previous issue of measuring weight.

As a quick aside I do not favour spaghetti as far as foods go but I know many do. It’s not uncommon for my food journalling exercise with clients to reveal pasta dishes being frequently consumed. I am not an advocate of immediate elimination of foods, in some extreme cases it is warranted but generally I start with portion control of the foods clients are most familiar with.

In a study in 2018, participants were overfed for 28 days and all increased weight significantly, excess insulin playing a role in the weight gain. I have discussed the role of chemistry in food production previously and how satiety hormones can be bypassed enabling the consumer of the food to continue eating not realising that they’re already full. This makes food companies more money and the people eating the food fatter.

We must go back to basics by taking control of our portion sizes (plus other things but let’s start with portion sizes) and by doing so we can have a substantial impact on our weight.

In my eBook, Fitter Leaner Stronger in 90 Days I have a challenge for readers. The challenge is to eat 50% less for 7 days, so every meal they would usually eat and every time they would drink anything other than water, they are tasked with eating or drinking a half portion. I have done 3 7 day challenges on social media and with a pool of 40 people the average weightloss over 7 days has always been more than 2 kgs.

We overeat constantly.

Please also remember another old fitness adage – “you cannot out-train a bad diet”.

Hack #3.

Spend 15-30 minutes on a Saturday or Sunday creating your weekly training or exercise and then schedule it.

It really isn’t that hard – do you have my free eBook? This will help you in so many ways to do exactly this.

There is so much very poor information out there when it comes to fitness, to someone that is somewhat (defintion: more than a smidgen) qualified to evaluate the situation I am actually appalled at the quality of it. Physiotherapists love it of course because many broken people means more customers but for you, my message is don’t make your physio rich!

Get the solid basics under your belt and then start planning when and how you will do it! This is the link to my eBook so please request this and I will get it to you asap!

The rest then is up to you – go for it!