How to Change Your Lifestyle

Most of my clients nowadays are weight loss clients. They come to me when they’re not feeling confident about their body and their weight. They no longer fit into the clothes they used to wear, they feel camera shy, and they want the magic pill.

Even if such a magic pill existed, there would be no point in taking it because the pill doesn’t ACTUALLY solve the problem. The problem isn’t that the person is overweight. The problem is that they’re consistently choosing to make decisions that aren’t aligned with a healthy and active lifestyle.

So how do you actually solve the problem? How do you convince people to make decisions like a fit person would?

We have convince the person to go from choosing to make the unhealthy decisions to choosing to make the healthy decisions, and when someone has been making those unhealthy decisions every day for years, its a lot easier said than done.

After going through this process with a number of clients, I always start them off with just 3 actions.

3 Steps To a Healthy Lifestyle

1. Control Your Portions - as far as eating healthy goes, we have to start small by making the conscious choice to eat less. If we normally have 2 cookies for dessert every day, reduce it down to 1 cookie. If we drink a full can of coca cola with each meal, reduce it down to half a can. After controlling your portions we can slowly start replacing unhealthy foods with a healthier diet.

2. Just Show Up - You may not have been to a gym in years, and that can be intimidating. Many of my clients have been waiting for the perfect conditions to start going to the gym. They’re waiting for it to feel like a good day to go, not be too busy, have enough energy, etc. When we’re starting out, the goal isn’t to set new benchpress PRs. The goal is to just show up. Just get used to going into the gym and spending 20-30 minutes in there, even if you’re just walking on a treadmill. Get used to the environment, make it a part of your routine.

3. Track Your Key Metrics - as the famous business management educator, Peter Drucker, says, “what gets measured gets managed.” When we start measuring our fitness goals is when we actually start managing the inputs (eating healthy, physical activity) properly. There’s nothing more motivating than seeing the progress your making. Nowadays you can track almost everything with wearables and different apps, but to start I recommend keeping it simple. Start with tracking how many steps your taking, your weight, and the calories in all your meals using an app like myfitnesspal. Now I know tracking your meals can be tedious and annoying, but when you can see how many calories you’re eating with each meal it forces you to think twice about what you’re eating.

The principle here is to make a choice using our will power/discipline, and then track progress to start building internal motivation and desire to lead a healthy lifestyle.

I’ve found that clients that are able to commit to these three simple actions end up really embracing the fit lifestyle. It’s like they become addicted to seeing themselves progress and grow in their fitness journey, and it sure helps that my job as a trainer gets much easier after this point.

Stay fit,
Rafi Hussaini

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