Weight loss can be frustrating. Many times you think you are following the plan perfectly but are not the results you want because of hidden calories that you do not even notice.
It has to be the diet right?
What do most people do in this situation?
Most end up stopping the lifestyle change all together or go back to their initially bad habits because they think nothing is ever going to happen.
You know you’re not eating the ‘wrong’ foods, and you’re sure that you’ve been hitting your fat loss macros.
So what gives?
You’re probably consuming hidden calories that you don’t even know about…
Have you ever been offered something to eat by a friend and thought, “that looks good, I’ll track it later” only to forget when you get home? Or upon reaching the day’s end with a slew of leftover macros, you decide to throw caution to the wind and eat roughly what you’ve got left?
Chances are, neither of these situations will make a huge difference to overall progress, but if you’ve hit a wall and you’re stumped and confused as to why you’re not progressing, then these untracked or loosely estimated calories could be the culprit.
“That looks good, I’ll track it later“
This is why it’s so important to log everything, and not just rely on your intuition. This is especially true the closer you get to your goal.
2. You Eat Out Too Often
Eating out can (and should) be part of a flexible diet. After all, what kind of life is it if you always have to say no to friends and turn down invites to dinner?
But the thing is, there’s a lot of room for error when eating out. It’s not easy to accurately estimate calories at restaurants, and the larger and more junk-like the meal, the further off you’re likely to be. Not to mention you have almost zero control or knowledge on how the meal was made, how much it was made with etc. This is especially true with beginners (people beginning their new habits generally do not know how to intuitively eat just yet)
You’ve got strategies you can use to help you hit your macros when eating out, such as asking for sauces and dressings on the side, picking simple dishes to make estimation easier, requesting that meats be grilled rather than fried, and looking at nutritional data on websites. But chefs can vary in how they prepare your dish, and you still don’t have total control over how your food is cooked.
3. The Macros are WRONG
Shock, horror! How can macros be wrong? Aren’t there laws about the information that goes on food packages?
When you learn that labeling laws allow for “caloric rounding”…
There are, but manufacturers are sneaky and there are loopholes they can get through. Take the popular sweetener Splenda for example:
While it’s listed as calorie-free, each packet actually contains around 1 gram of carbohydrate and 5 calories! This means that if you have a couple in your morning oatmeal, one pack in every coffee you drink throughout the day, a few more in some Greek yogurt, and so on, you can rack up an extra 15 to 20 grams of carbs and close to 100 calories.
The same goes for calorie-free sauces, spray butter, sugar-free jello, and similar items. The suggested serving sizes are often so small that even though the label says ‘calorie-free,’ but the actual amount you have is closer to 15 or 20 calories. While there’s no need to ban these items, you need to realize that they do still have calories. If you eat a lot of them (as many dieters do in an attempt to combat cravings) then your calorie count will start to add up.
Be on the lookout for sugar-free gum, diet drinks, and even some protein bars too, as these can often list ‘net carbs’ which is the total carb content minus the fiber. To hit macros precisely, you should be tracking the total carb content, fiber and all.
4. Drinking Your Calories
Coffee doesn’t need to be counted in your macros if it’s black. If not, you’ve got to count it.
We’ll leave out coffees like cappuccinos, mochas, and frappuccinos that obviously have calories in them for the moment, but did you know your plain old coffee made at home can increase your calorie intake without you realizing it?
When you add anything to your coffee, be it milk, half-and-half, or other assorted varieties of creamer, that’s calories you’re adding in. These macros should be counted.
5. Mindless Snacking
When people mindlessly snack, they really do not even pay attention how much they are eating. They eat 2 oreoes here and a handful of popcorn there and so on. This causes a massive amount of calories because everything adds up (not too mention, "snacks" are usually not that healthy). Here at Strive Fitness and Performance we do not use the word "snack". Most people think of "snacks" as an apple or a piece of cheese.
Instead we want to think of each moment we eat as a meal.
How would you make the "snack" into a meal?
By counting the macros in the meal. Take the apple. It is a carb. So what is missing? Fats and proteins are the missing component in the equation. In order to make this "snack" into a more nutritious meal, we could add some peanut butter (fat) and a protein shake (protein). Now not only are we getting enough food, but we are also more full, which eliminates cravings in the long run.
6. You Are Eating From A Bag
We’re all guilty of this one:
You eat a handful of trail mix, nuts, chips etc. No measuring, no portion control. This may sound harmless, but
A. You have no idea how much you actually just put into your mouth
B. You never really stop with just one handful
C. Think about how many mindless calories the many handfuls throughout the day will add up to.
So what are we saying? That you can never eat out? That you have to weigh your veggies to the precise gram? That you must enter every single packet of Sweet n’ Low into your tracking app?
No, not at all…unless you’ve hit a plateau.
Plateaus are going to happen during any fat loss diet, and the go-to step is generally to either reduce calories or add cardio so you stay in a deficit and carry on progressing.
However, if you’re already on low macros and struggling to see why your body isn’t changing in the way you want it to, the first step should be to make sure you’re being honest with yourself and not eating any hidden calories that aren’t being accounted for.
Around the New Year, The masses start to make "New Year Resolutions" and begin to think about how they can make the next year better. One of the most common "New Year Resolutions" is to get healthy and this leads to a large surplus of people joining gyms. While these new go-getters are certainly well-intentioned, sadly for the majority, the motivation doesn’t last. Quora.com reports that 80% of resolution gym goers will stop attending by the second week of February.
There are lots of reasons, and many of them are specific to the individual, but one overarching reason is that for most people, a gym is simply a place to work out, and that isn’t enough to entice most to make it a regular part of life. People join gyms and become a number and are not provided with direction or even acceptance in some cases. If you stop showing up, no one else notices or cares; and soon, your yourself stop caring, because the space adds no value to your life. After a few weeks, once the fire of the new years resolution fizzles out and the desired results have yet to show up, it’s difficult to drag your butt out of bed at the crack of dawn (or before) to go to a place where you are alone, physically uncomfortable, and nameless to the other bodies sweating next to you.
Here are four reasons why it’s important and in your best interest to join a gym – or enroll your kids in a gym – that is more than just a gym.
1. A gym that is more than a gym helps you train to become better, not just workout…
…and yes, there is a difference, both between working out and training, and a gym and a training center. Any local gym will be a decent fit if you are the type of person that enjoys exercise in itself – the discomfort and the exertion wrapped up into one 60-minute sweat fest. Some people think exercise is fun, and this direct pay-off is sufficient to propel them to create their own discipline and accountability. But for most of us mere mortals, the individual sweat sessions are just not enticing enough. And if you are just hitting the gym with no direction or the latest Pinterest workout in hand, the sessions start to seem disconnected and purposeless, making you question if the discomfort is really worth your time.
That’s why it’s important to join a gym that is, specifically, a training center. Meaning that the institution has a mission statement that hinges on coaches who come alongside you to help you focus and adapt your sessions toward a clearly defined goal.
is the key idea here. We would all laugh if, while we were driving, we saw a man in a field throwing darts in different directions, aiming at nothing. Throwing darts only becomes meaningful and recognizable as a sane activity when there’s a target involved. This illustrates the distinction between working out and training. It’s easy to quit showing up if you’re not sure where you’re aiming. Working out is simply a task; training is a goal-oriented process, spilling over and reaping its benefits into other areas of life.
A great coach helps you identify and define that target, articulate WHY it’s important in your life, and then works with you to create a path for your journey and helps you form tactics to adjust when hardships come about. A training center operates daily with the purpose of helping its clients embrace an improved quality of life, whereas a gym simply exists to make money. In short, a training center cares about YOU, while a gym may not.
2. Such a gym can become a second home
A gym that is a second home is composed of staff and members who create community by fostering and maintaining meaningful relationships. If you join any local gym, chances are, you’ll see the same people a few days per week...You may say hi or introduce yourself....but you’ll never actually get to know them and connect. It is no more to you than space with weights and faces that have no significance.
As a coach on the floor at 5:30 every morning, I relish the opportunity to be the first positive interaction in a client’s day. As Strive coaches, we focus our efforts on staying in tune with every important aspect of our clients’ lives – family events, work changes, surgeries, and victories both inside and outside of the gym.
At most gyms, you’ll walk in and out of the door without anyone acknowledging your presence. Make sure you find a gym that can also be a second home.
3. Community creates accountability
Belonging to a gym that feels like home entices you to make training a habit. Community fosters accountability. Period. When you know you will be missed, you are more likely to go. You are far less likely to skip when you know a coach will be calling or emailing you, checking up to make sure everything is okay if you don’t show up.
Here at Strive Fitness and Performance, your coaches are just as serious about your goals and training as you are. They are consistently positive and relentlessly demanding, and they, along with the clients who have become your friends, will remind you of what you really want even when you don’t feel it. They’ll help you maintain focus when your own vision of your target gets blurred by other life stresses or periods of low motivation.
The truth is, we aren’t wired to be our best on our own. We need accountability where discipline wanes. Join a gym that fills that need.
4. Enrolling your children in such a training center provides them with positive role models
If you want your child to become a more well-rounded athlete, seek out a training center with coaches who are positive role models. Sending your kid to the gym might make them stronger and better at their sport, but being regularly under the guidance of coaches who are relentlessly positive, demanding, as well as caring, will reap a much vaster benefit. Kids adopt the habits and mannerisms of people they look up to, so placing them under the guidance of coaches who are excellent role models is a move that has the power to transform the way they think, see, and conduct themselves on and off the field.
For parents with young girls especially, it’s a great moment when your fourteen year-old daughter comes home from her training session and says, “Mom, I want to be STRONG,” instead of “Mom, how can I look like a Victoria’s Secret model?” Entrusting your female athlete to the care of coaches who emphasize the importance of feeling strong instead of being skinny – both through their coaching and their own habits – has the power to reverse the damaging societal norms associated with female body image.
If you want your child to get stronger, buy them a gym membership. If you want your athlete to become stronger, more inspired, increasingly confident, and a better teammate, entrust them to a training center with coaches who are positive role models.
Contact us Today and set up your FREE Success Session
Committed to your success,
Derek Ledwidge
The holidays are always a main focus/dread for people when they think of weight gain. People are always wondering how to stop the holiday weight gain and are stressed out over what are they going to eat, is it too much etc. It is very stressful and chaotic time to begin with and then you add the stress of losing all the results of your hard work.
I don’t believe people just magically lose their motivation during the holidays, you lose your momentum.
You have worked hard over the course of the year. Became better at your major lifts, lost some inches, began to eat better and form better habits.......ALL HARD WORK AND COMMITMENT!!!
So what happens during the holiday season?
Our motivation is always there....Our momentum seems to slow down due to all the other things going on.
Your time will be at a premium, your stress levels may be a little bit higher than normal, and those things can legitimately effect your momentum.
Here are 4 steps you can take to maintain your momentum:
1. Plan your workout schedule NOW.
Seriously, if at all possible don’t play it by ear during the holidays. I’m going to maintain my schedule to a T, and make sure I get every training session in during that time. I may have to do it earlier or later than normal because of family commitments, but I’m going to make it happen.
2. Pick a mini goal between now and the end of the year.
This might go back to the motivation side of things, but pick a mini goal. Is there a Santa Shuffle, or Turkey Trot you want to run, walk, or ruck? Is there a little getaway where you want to look and feel your best with your friends and family? Is there a huge weightlifting meet the week after Thanksgiving? That mini goal can help hold you accountable internally, while your gym family at Strive can hold you accountable externally.
3. Join us for our HOLIDAY ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP
Starting after Thanksgiving and running through the New Year can be the tough time. Family parties, staff parties and get together's with friends can get overwhelming. Here at Strive, we put on a HOLIDAY ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP during the season of chaos. This group is a lifeline for many people during this time to get a hold on the holidays and is a resource for healthy recipes and new habits. LEARN MORE HERE
4. Commit to a de-stressed holiday season
This is a big ask I always tell myself before the holidays that this year I won’t get stressed about family member X, or if there are enough desserts.
Repeat it with me…there are always enough desserts, there are always enough desserts- it can be our holiday mantra. Enjoy the time with your family, or the relaxation of no work that day, and let the stress roll off your back.
Try out the 4 part Momentum maintainers. Your motivation is still there, just keep rolling!
Committed to your success,
Derek
