The biggest lie in the health and wellness field is that the first 10 pounds of body weight loss is easier than the last 10 pounds you need to lose. This couldn’t be any more wrong! If you are losing 10 pounds the wrong way, which most do, that’s a different story. If you want to lose weight the right way, the mental and physical changes from the start are the hardest to set the pace of your long, sustained, and evolved journey. Once the mentality is put on the right level, everything else falls into place.
The better you get, the easier everything is to manage. The overwhelming part about weight loss is that the better you become, the more aware you become of what you may do wrong. We tell people to embrace this, thinking that it is a constant evolution of learning and conquering. There are always projects to work on to improve their health and wellness. This is a total philosophy and way of living that is fun, engaging, and satisfying.
Fitness and nutrition can be overwhelming regarding where to start and what to do. We so often want to be just led and told what to do. Still, unfortunately, there is a personal responsibility in the learning health instinct, and individually, we must all establish it. The truth is what works for one person is not going to work for another. Everybody responds differently to exercise and nutrition, and we have to understand what intensity ranges and variability work for each person, as well as understand what foods help or hurt us.
Our best advice is to start so simply. If you have been drinking one bottle of water for the last 15 years, then you must drink two bottles of water for a month before you go to the next level. If you have been taking 100 steps a day, then you must go to 250 steps and see how your body reacts before trying to run 5 miles a day. Too often, we try to change too quickly, and not only is it not sustainable, it’s too much of a shock for our bodies. Even though you are making changes for the good it’s still a stress for the body to go to that healthy state after living in a protective bad state for such a long time.
Some of our best changes have come from simple accountability and guidance. When clients get frustrated, we talk them down. When clients happen to get too excited and fast-paced, we pull back the reigns to keep balance and sustainability. If you truly can embrace the idea of 1% better each week, life gets very simple in health and wellness. This philosophy also produces way better results!
