I have paid close attention to the areas that most people have difficulty with, the areas of life that present challenges and obstacles. In doing so, I know where people have problems, get frustrated or angry, or even throw in the towel. I also know how to help you avoid these challenges and focus on your success. To help you get on the right track from the start, here are 10 Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching Success Tips that I know will prove useful:
TIP 1 – MAYBE YOU DON'T KNOW.
One of the biggest pitfalls people falter over when they start a new fitness / nutrition system is what i call the “I know” syndrome. The best way to describe it is with examples.
Say you are teaching someone how to cook a meal. And that person keeps turning up the heat too high, burning and ruining the meal. They keep asserting that they're just not a good cook and you suggest that they will do better if they turn down the heat. What do they say? “I know, I know.”
Take a skinny guy who is complaining about being so skinny. His trainer tells him he's got to lift heavier weights and eat more. What does he say? “I know, I know.”
Take an obese woman who needs to lose weight. Her doctor tells her she needs to exercise more and eat less. What does she say? “I know, I know.”
We've all heard “I know, I know” so many times that we just blocked the words out. But if you really think about it, even though these people think they know to turn down the heat, to lift heavier and eat more, or to exercise more and eat less, maybe they don't know.
Maybe they've heard this stuff before. But the truth is, they don't really know until they have done it successfully and then repeated it. They might not even know something well enough until they've done it, repeated it and taught it to others.
“I know, I know” is a mental shortcut that enables us to shut off our brains, to stop thinking about the application of information and to avoid action. So, keep this in mind as you are moving through the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition process.
If you've got room for improvement, maybe you don't know - not yet anyway. If you really knew, you would be doing it. And if you were doing it, you wouldn't need Moxie in the first place.
TIP 2 – MATCH YOUR BEHAVIORS AND YOUR GOALS.
Another pitfall I encourage you to avoid is the problem of not matching up your behaviors and goals.
People fall short in this area all the time. A guy wants to lose 100 pounds. He joins the gym and exercises two times per week. He completely ignores proper eating habits. His goals: massive, life changing weight loss. His behaviors: small, inconsequential lifestyle change. The behaviors don't match the goal, so how can he possibly succeed?
In life, it's easy to set lofty goals. You want to lose 100 pounds of fat, gain 50 pounds of muscle, earn $120,000 per year and meet and marry a beautiful spouse. But those things aren't going to come to us simply because we want them and think about them all the time. They only come to us when we engage in the right behaviors, when we match our behaviors and our goals.
With respect to fitness and nutrition, if you follow the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Principles 90% of the time, you will see the results you're looking for. However, it's not enough just to think about the goal. You have to do the math. If you are eating four meals and snacks per day over the course of seven days per week you should be following the Moxie Nutrition Principles for about 25 of your 28 meals.
When it comes to exercise, if it's recommended that you exercise four to five times each week, that means you'll do your best to stay active and skip only a few workouts a month.
If the goal is changing your body in the fastest possible time frame, yet you are only following the Moxie Nutrition Principles for 14 out of 28 meals per week and skipping 2 workouts / exercise sessions per week, you are not exactly matching your goals with your behaviors.
Be honest with yourself as you are following the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition program. Ask yourself regularly if your goals and behaviors are matching. If so, keep going. If not, then adjust something. Either bring your behaviors up to match your lofty goals so that your behaviors reflect a big commitment or bring your goals down to match your moderate commitment. Either approach is just fine as long as your behaviors match your goals.
Of course, in the beginning, you may not exactly know which behaviors should be in place to match your goals. That's what Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching is here for.
TIP 3 – UNDERSTAND THAT YOU MAY SEE PEAKS AND VALLEYS.
You may be surprised to hear this, but I encourage you to relax your goals and behaviors from time to time. It's necessary and it's healthy.
For starters, not everyone has a “big” goal when it comes to health and fitness, so not everyone needs 90% compliance. I won't judge you if your goals are more modest.
After all, it's your responsibility to pick your own level of commitment and I encourage any and all steps that will improve on where you are at today. But once you pick your level of commitment, it's also up to you to realistically set your expectations.
To help you stick with your goals, consider using this strategy, just as we periodize your training you can also periodize your commitment.
Periodization is an exercise principle based on changing your workouts over time to achieve different goals. For example, one eight-week training phase might be devoted to getting stronger while the next eight-week phase might be devoted to getting faster. And in between these eight-week phases, two weeks might be devoted to recovery and rest. What works for exercise can also work for nutrition. Instead of killing yourself by pursuing hard-core fat loss for 52 weeks straight, why not periodize your commitment? You might try eight weeks of hard-core fat loss followed by two weeks of a more relaxed dietary commitment. And then, based on how your body has changed, you may decide to return to the fat loss plan or follow a maintenance plan.
This is a much better approach, both psychologically and physiologically. And the beauty of it is that you can plan your nutrition commitment around big events in your life. Let's say you travel extensively in June and July of every year. Well, why not ramp up your commitment during March, April, and May so that during June and July you can relax things?
Someone once said that reaching goals is like summiting a mountain. What we often forget, though, is that every mountain is surrounded by two valleys. In the journey of life, we have to come back down off the mountain tops to move forward. This means that we spend much of our lives in the valleys. The secret is in knowing that it's ok and normal to spend some time in the valleys.
Understand that when following the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition System, there is flexibility built in. It's ok to relax a little and make incremental improvements without putting huge pressure on yourself to be perfect.
TIP 4 – START SMALL AND SLOW IF NECESSARY.
This can best be explained by sharing an idea. Instead of making people change their entire way of eating and (maybe even living) from one day to the other it helps smooth things out a little bit for them and start changing some things only.
Let's say Mrs. Jones doesn't eat vegetables at all. Well, maybe I'll have her start with just one serving a day. After all, one is better than none.
And then I'll go through all the habits (a.k.a High-Impact Fundamentals) and use a similar approach. Over the course of a few weeks / months, this allows me to take this person from old habits to new ones without scaring them off. In my experience, unless i've got a very committed person, this way is easier and I think it will stick longer.
If your diet is far from optimal right now, if you are not exercising as often as you’d like, if you are slightly overwhelmed by all of this, or if you're the type of person who does better with small, slow change, you would be well served to take the advice above. Here's how:
Start by paying attention to your appetite and fullness cues; eating slowly and stopping your meal when you are satisfied, not stuffed. Then add in a bit more protein. Then add in some additional fruits and veggies. Then start using good fats. And so on. Making one or a few changes at a time, with the goal of implementing all the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition strategies, is a great way to eventually reach your goal if you are overwhelmed at first.
TIP 5 - START BASIC, THEN INDIVIDUALIZE
The Moxie Fitness & Nutrition System has become synonymous with individualization because I have prioritized matching my clients’ plans with their unique goals and needs.
The first few steps should be simple and basic. Following the habits until they are routine and built into your schedule is the best place to start.
However, that is not where Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching ends. Once you've been able to consistently comply with all of the habits for several weeks, we can begin to individualize your plan based on the following:
Your sport or exercise activity. If you are more physically active, you may require a different carb / protein / fat distribution than if you are less physically active. I will teach you how to alter your nutrition based on your activity.
Your body type. Your body type determines how you handle things like carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. I'll teach you how to determine your type and how to adjust your diet accordingly as you progress through the program.
Your response to the habits. With our biweekly measurement system, you'll be able to measure things and see both what's working and what's not. We will measure regularly and if things are working, keep doing them. If they aren't, it's time for change. I'll be there along the way to help you tweak the things that aren't.
As you can see from the list above, Moxie Nutrition isn't a single diet. It isn't high-carb or low-carb. It isn't high-fat or low-fat. It's a set of principles based on how the human body works and it is customizable for your unique needs.
If you are truly interested in improving your body composition, health, or performance, then Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching is 100% for you. And I mean that literally.
TIP 6 - IF YOU HAVE SPECIFIC GOALS, MEASURE THEM.
Changing our bodies and our health can take some time. And when we are really pressuring ourselves to see these changes quickly, we can get impatient.
So, it's easy to convince yourself that you are making no progress at all. And it's even easier if you don't have a good way of measuring the results of your efforts. You will have no idea whether a program is working for you unless you measure the important variables and keep track of what's happening.
Here are some of the measurements / assessments I recommend you keep:
Body composition (body weight, body fat percentage, lean body mass),
Body part girths (thigh, waist, hips, upper arm, etc.),
Athletic performance measures (strength, speed, power, endurance, etc.)
Blood variables (cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc.)
Regularly take note of what is happening in your body functions, energy levels, mood, outlook, etc
Regularly take note of how you are feeling (any significant thoughts, emotions, concerns, how you are feeling physically)
Regularly take note of any changes in symptoms or conditions
Regularly take note of any changes in sleep quality / duration
Although we can measure as little or as much as you like, I encourage you to consider the idea of tracking key measurement variables. Doing so will help you in three distinct ways.
First, it will help you see where progress is happening, if it's happening.
Second it will help you decide whether or not you should keep going as planned or whether changes are in order.
And finally, it will help you stay in the driver’s seat with respect to your body.
Staying in the driver's seat is the most important. After all, if you get a measurement back and it's moved in the right direction, you will likely be very happy and feel in control of things. Good news.
And if you get a measurement back and it's moved in the wrong direction, that's good news too.
That sounds counterintuitive but look at it this way: if you get a measurement back and it's gone in the wrong direction, you've just received valuable feedback about what hasn't worked. Now you can weave that approach out before it becomes a habit and try something else. Even a “bad measurement” produces something good. That's the scientific method in action.
TIP 7 - MEASUREMENTS AND EXPECTATIONS
Assuming you've got a specific goal and we have gotten the individualization process right; you will likely see good progress over a reasonable amount of time. In fact, you may even see weekly progress. However, weekly progress doesn't go on indefinitely, not even with my personal coaching clients.
The body doesn't always function in a linear manner. Successful bursts can be followed by stagnation. You may lose three pounds in the first three weeks, then nothing. Then, three weeks later lose another pound. Then nothing. And so on. This is nothing to get discouraged about.
Consider, for example, a fertile chicken egg. If you look at a fertile egg and watch it overtime, you won't see anything happen. You expect to see something – anything – but nothing changes. Then, one day, seemingly out of the blue, the egg begins to shake and a chick pops out. While the egg sat idle, things were changing under the surface.
We all spend too much time looking at the outside of the egg when we should stop and think about what's going on inside. We all get frustrated with lack of progress and that's fine, but oftentimes things are changing – just not what we can see or what we happen to be looking at.
Spread out your attention, measure different things, look to a number of different areas of progress and make sure you are not missing important changes. I'll help you with that later on.
But if you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing (and that's a big if – be honest with yourself!) and you still see nothing happening, keep in mind the story of the egg. From the outside, for a while anyway, you may not see change. But if you keep working hard, the internal changes will eventually add up and what you've been waiting for will emerge.
TIP 8 - THE NUMBERS PARADOX
Although I've stressed the importance of measuring results, here is the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching paradox: Numbers aren't everything. Time and again, I have seen people live and die by the numbers. And that's a mistake.
People often judge their happiness based on their numbers. They are happy if they lose a pound on the scale or a percentage point of body fat in a given day or week, and they are sad if they don't.
Remember that this isn't just the numbers game. You are also doing this to improve your health, longevity, performance, energy levels and any number of other qualitative measures. Keep in mind that sometimes the numbers lie. For example, you can radically change your body without gaining or losing a pound; this happens when you lose a lot of fat and gain a lot of lean mass simultaneously, something that happens to many people when they start eating right and training seriously.
If your goals are more modest, you may not need to rely on the numbers at all. You may simply want to enjoy the process and check the mirror from time to time to see how things are going.
After all, I'm assuming you're following the Moxie Fitness & Nutrition System to improve the way you look and feel. And in doing so, you are expecting happiness with your body as a reward. So, instead of waiting until you reach a certain number to be happy, which never works out like that anyway, it's important to find ways to be happy with your body right now.
Are you stronger? Do your clothes fit better? Can you see muscles you couldn't see before? Do you like your reflection more when you look in the mirror? Do you feel more athletic, more energetic? Have any other problems, such as headaches or dry skin subsided?
These are all things that will likely improve while following Moxie Fitness & Nutrition System, so make sure you're looking for these improvements too. I guarantee you will be happier than if you just watch the scale, like a hawk scouring the field for mice, waiting for the needle to tip.
TIP 9 - REASONABLE PROGRESS
So many times, clients come to me having lost 3% body fat in three months or six pounds in seven weeks and ask why things aren't working for them. This blows me away because those are tangible results! What exactly are these people expecting? Perhaps they need to do the math.
If you're a woman at 30% body fat and you're losing 1% fat a month, by the end of the year you'll be at 18% fat. That's defined as “athletic”. You will have gone from obese to athletic in just one year.
When you are waiting for these changes to happen, progress may seem slow and nonexistent. But over the long haul, both outcomes represent amazing progress. Understand what reasonable progress is and don't get impatient if things seem to be moving slowly.
One way to stay true to this is by acknowledging our “daily wins”. Most of us miss out on making a lot of progress, as well as enjoying much of the progress we are making, by failing to fully acknowledge the daily wins in our lives. These may seem small and inconsequential in and of themselves, but they add up to 1) a rich, rewarding, happy life; and 2) the momentum necessary to continue to grow and move forward in an easy stress-free way.
Generally, all that is required to take advantage of this powerful success factor is to begin writing down your ‘daily wins’ so that you become aware of them, as well as acknowledge them for the progress, and the gifts, that they truly are.
With that in mind, i encourage you to track your ‘daily wins’. Review them often. Celebrate them. They will keep you motivated when progress seems slow.
TIP 10 - MAINTAIN YOUR RATE OF PROGRESS.
For all those seeing quick results out of the starting gates, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is unlikely that you'll be able to maintain this indefinitely. If fat loss is your goal and you've lost 3% fat in six weeks, that rate will slow down. No one can continue to lose body fat forever. After all, you can't be at - 3% body fat.
As your body gets leaner, it will fight more to keep the fat, so you will have to outwit your physiology. To do this, you will eventually have to start monitoring your intake more closely. That doesn't mean you'll have to count calories, but you will have to establish a solid baseline of what you eat daily. Then, if progress stagnates, you will decrease your intake a bit every two weeks or increase your exercise volume, duration, or intensity a bit every two weeks. Don't fret about the details now, as this will all be laid out for you.
Following the same program without adapting it to your body is a recipe for stagnation. Even if you respond well at first to Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching, make sure you are prepared to make changes that will ensure your progress keeps moving in the right direction.
A FINAL WORD
As you go forward with Moxie Fitness & Nutrition Coaching, keep these 10 tips in mind and refer back to them every few weeks. If you want to succeed where others fail, you need to adopt the mindset and strategies that lead to success. If you ever feel yourself wavering, please reach out and talk it through with me.
IN SHORT
One of the main lessons is this: eating better and getting fit isn't about what you know. And it's not about what you do occasionally. Real results come when you find strategies for making great eating / exercise decisions consistently and reliably.
Note: Perfection isn't necessary. CONSISTENCY IS.
Another key lesson: You may find that a lot of the information presented seems familiar. You may have heard some of it before. And, at times, you may think, “I already know this stuff.” If that's the case, remember the point above. Knowing isn't enough. If you still have improvements to make, it's time to build strategies for applying what you know.