Weight loss and exercise have to be some of the biggest resolutions I see every year, with the obvious exception of “get rich quick.” It’s clearly important, and since healthcare is a field I’ve worked in for a long time, I have some select criteria for dieters and future gym rats I think have been very helpful both to myself and my clients.
Tip One
1) Select your personal trainers with care. Obviously you need to get along with your trainers, but along with your typical post session fatigue, you should also leave every session with a solid understanding of how you can transfer what you are doing into your own independent program. Do you leave knowing good form for your exercises and how to self correct? Does your trainer explain why you are doing various exercises so you can alter or maintain your program when you are ready to go o
n your own? Do you leave understanding the rationale for how to select the right weight, sets, and reps? These are things that take time to learn, and are of course the reason we have these professionals, but you should feel well educated by a short period in, and ready to only see your trainer once in a while in very short order!
Tip Two
2) Make sure the diet you select has foods you enjoy! I’m not saying go with a diet that tells you to eat pie all the time, clearly someone there is lying, but you should feel like you could keep up with your diet without “missing out.” One large reason people often fall off the wagon is that they start to feel so restricted by missing out on big things that they just break. I get it! If you tell me to live my life without cake, every day is going to become cheat day! However, if you give me a diet that lets me enjoy myself once in a while, and I still actually like my daily meals to boot, I’m far more likely to stay on board. You can eat very healthy food and still have it be delicious, so why miss out!!
Tip Three
3) Find a way to make yourself accountable. A lot of people choose rewards systems for when they are successful, and this is a great idea if you are very committed to only accessing those rewards once earned. But, if you know that you have a difficult time with that, make sure you have someone you trust you can put in charge of this! Do you have someone who can look at your workout tracking and go with you for that big item you’ve been holding off buying? Great! Put them in charge of that. Accountability is certainly hard, but we can make it very doable in the long run!
Nothing too crazy complicated, right? It shouldn’t feel that way!
