That’s all it is. Four, short words.
When others inquire as to why I began this new entrepreneurial venture, my mind keeps coming back to those four, short words.
Losing weight is easy. Everybody and their brother (or sister, or cousin, or mother……) has lost weight before. Everyone. We’ve all been there. We promise to “eat less, move more”, and drudge our way into the gym daily, for hours on end. And we lose 20 pounds. Our clothes fit a little bit better, there’s a pep in our step, and we end up smiling just a little bit more.
But it seldom lasts.
There are so many myths out there. Half-truths. And occasionally, flat out lies.
There’s a facade in the diet and fitness industry. It’s a dirty, little secret. Everyone believes finally losing the weight – and keeping it off permanently – is complex. Tricky. Difficult. Painstaking.
And I’m here to let you know, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ve been through this before. I’ve tried to “eat less, move more”. I’ve lost the same 20 pounds on five different occasions over a decade. I’ve gone through time periods where I’ve averaged 25-30 hours of working out per week in an attempt to lose my ever-growing love handles and borderline man boobs.
Didn’t work.
It wasn’t until I started taking subjectivity out of my daily life that I began to truly see real results. I stopped being so vague. And I began to utilize the art of sustainability. And use the biggest constant we all have in our battle of the bulge: time.
I liken it to your retirement investments. Do you take 95% of your paycheck each and every week and put it into your 401k? Of course not. It’s not sustainable. You can’t keep that up forever. Unless you’re a fan of walking to your job while living in your parents’ basement.
So what do you do? You only invest what you can afford to invest. You try to pick an amount you can live with. Or without, as the case may be. And you begin to realize something: After awhile, you don’t even notice it’s gone.
And what happens? Well, if you begin these investments at an early enough age, you’ll have quite the nest egg once you retire.
We need the same mindset with our diets, our fitness levels, and our health. But we are flooded and inundated with fast results, quick losses, The Biggest Loser, and Shaun T. Do those approaches work? Of course. Are they sustainable? It’s debatable, at best.
As humans, we always try to follow the path of least resistance. It’s human nature. Should your training program be hard? Absolutely. It should push you intensely while you are undergoing your workouts. But should it be an insurmountable time investment? Nope. My clients rarely spend more than 3 hours per week in the gym.
We focus on optimizing our results while minimizing our time investment.
But guess what? It’s all you need.
And if a client follows along with the nutritional plan – which contains zero supplement requirements – they always tell me those four, short words.
I want my clients to lose fat. I want my clients to gain muscle. I want my clients to experience increased vitality and an overall sense of well being. I want my clients to be the best “them” they can be.
But most importantly, I want them to realize how truly simple it is to remain lean, strong, fit, and vibrant – for a lifetime.
And every single one who has completed the program thoroughly confides to me those four, short words.
“You changed my life.”
Those four, short words are all I need.
It’s what makes it worth it for me.
-Jason