How Long Will This Take?
As a fitness coach, this is probably the question I get asked the most. Or the potential client will have a particular timeline in mind, and they will ask if it’s possible to achieve a particular weight loss goal in that time. There is no easy answer to the length of time it will take to reach a particular fitness goal. It will take as long as it takes.
Some fitness coaches will guarantee certain results in a period of time, but those results are not guaranteed to last. In fact, I bet they won’t last. Some fitness coaches will encourage clients to jump on to fads or trends to lose weight, but those same trends and fads won’t be sustainable.
I encourage my clients to pursue goals that are realistic and sustainable. On average most folks will lose about a pound or two per week when in a long-term calorie deficit. If you are looking to lose a significant amount of weight, you will see more rapid results at first, but those large losses will taper off over time. If you are looking to put on a lot of muscle, you may see some rapid results at first, especially if you haven’t lifted weights in your life. But those results will again taper off over time.
Sustainability
Whatever you are focused on whether it is weight loss, muscle gain, or even maintenance, you have to find something that is sustainable for you. If you’re wandering around saying “I can’t wait to stop this” you are not going to be able to sustain it.
You actually don’t have to make wholesale changes to your nutrition to lose weight or even to gain muscle. You may have to focus your efforts on eliminating some food or drink, but in most cases you don’t have to switch over to brown rice and baked chicken breast for every meal.
One of my first clients really couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t losing weight. Her food habits were great. She crushed most of her workouts when she trained with me. But she just wasn’t seeing the scale move very much. Finally I asked her, “Do you drink coffee?” She said she had a friend who worked for Starbucks and she got free mochas whenever she stopped by. I asked her how many a week did she guess she drank. She said at least one a day and sometimes two. Mystery solved.
We decided she would cut down her free mochas to small ones with no whip and nonfat milk. We eventually got her to only getting one a month. She hadn’t realized that a large mocha with whipped cream and whole milk was almost 800 calories give or take. She drank 4000 calories a week just in those vistis to her friend alone.
I tell this story because even if she ate Big Macs and fries every day, just taking out the calorie dense coffees would have helped her lose weight. If you drink one regular can of Coke a day, you’d be drinking almost 1000 calories a week. Switching to Diet Coke or just water even, you’d start losing weight based on those calories being eliminated. You could still have Cheetos and Snickers at every meal and you’d still lose weight.
These are extreme examples, but I use them to illustrate the point that you can make small changes that don’t really take a lot of effort, and still find a way to lose some weight. The same holds true for those who are looking to put on some weight to build muscle. Take what you’re eating now, and add calorie dense foods to your diet. Lean on healthy fats from avocados or nuts, eat some peanut butter with everything, have some heavy cream in your coffee instead of milk. When it comes time to try and go into a deficit, you can easily cut these things out and not really think about it.
Where do I start?
In general for weight loss take a goal bodyweight and multiply that number by 12. For muscle gain multiply that number by 14. It’s not an exact formula, and it’s one I got from Jordan Syatt and it seems to work pretty well.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that you are able to eat more than you think and still lose weight. I was one of those people. I was raised to think that I have to eat as little as possible to lose weight. Which I did try a lot. I am a giant human. I do need more calories than the average individual to survive. But I thought, “Eat 3000 calories and I’ll lose weight? Impossible.” But when I really broke it down and focused on eating more nutrient dense foods and hit my protein goals, the weight started coming off. And I was eating on average 2800-3000 calories per day.
I’m not a dietician or nutritionist, so I can’t give you a diet to follow. Nor would I want one. If you’re looking to lose weight, what you’re doing isn’t working for you, but you don’t have to do Keto or The South Beach Diet in order to lose weight. You just have to look at what you’re doing now, and start making those small changes that will last over time.
Contact me
I’m happy to get you started on your journey. Whether you’re looking to add 5-10 pounds of muscle or lose 10-15 pounds of body fat, I’m here to help you with the guidance you need and the accountability you want.
Until then, keep checking out my page for tips and advice and feel free to reach out on social media if you have any questions you’d like to ask. I’m always around to help.
Chat soon!
Sean