Over the last several months, I’ve had many responses to my post, “Found At Last! The Two Reasons Why Exercise and Diet Programs May Not Be Working For You.” Questions like: What diet works the best? How can I lose weight the fastest? How many days a week do I have to workout? And statements like: “I thought you’d tell me what to do”, and “You left me hanging”, filled my e-mail inbox daily. I’m sorry I am taking so long to answer, I was busy moving my Clearwater personal training business for Chicago for a few months. But now I’m ready to answer these pressing questions.

I’m sure these are just a few of the questions most of you have asked yourself at some point. And chances are you heard or read “low-fat”, “low-calorie”, “high carbohydrate”, “low carbohydrate”, “don’t eat after 6”, “no carbohydrates after 3”, “The cabbage soup diet”, “train HARD”, “train daily”, “train infrequently” just to name a few. Well…which one DOES work the best?

Here’s the secret! Are you ready?!?!? THERE IS NO SECRET!!!

What most people do is they go on a diet that is not something they can stay on, and so starts the rollercoaster of lose weight/gain weight…eat healthy/splurge…get healthy/feel horrible. What I frequently see is someone go on some totally restrictive diet (very low cal, starvation, liquids, fads, etc.), lose the weight and then start back on the same patterns after they’ve lost the weight. Sound familiar, huh?! I thought so. The weight comes back and then it’s time to repeat the weight loss cycle…Except this time you don’t get the same results because you’ve already played the game and it’s not nearly as fun or effective.

As far as exercise goes, training hard and training smart are two different creatures. So many people quit programs because they train TOO HARD and get crippling soreness (real fun, huh?). If being sore is your main focus during a work out, then you could run into a brick wall and achieve that same soreness in a much shorter period of time than working out. No pain…no gain is antiquated thinking. Crawl before you walk and walk before you run. We’re looking for constant and gradual progress, NOT inconsistent overtraining.

Often and frequently overlooked is the definition of goal. My favorite definition is “DREAM WITH A DEADLINE!” I’ve found the easiest way to achieve your goals is to focus on what you want, create a plan, and then work backwards. If you want to lose 20lbs in 8 weeks, you know you have to lose 2 ½ pounds a week starting now. By the way, it IS ok to hit your targets and be ahead of schedule.

Above I mentioned there was no secret, but if there was…Here it is!

EAT FEWER CALORIES, SLEEP AT LEAST 8 HOURS DAILY, DRINK AT LEAST 1/2 GALLON OF WATER DAILY (PREFERABLY 1 GALLON), MOVE YOUR BODY MORE AND GRADUALLY INCREASE THIS.

If you need assistance in creating or following a program just drop me a line. I PROMISE it’s very SIMPLE reaching your goals!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 10th, 2010 at 10:51 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.