As a coach, it’s very important to me that I not only continue to learn and grow my knowledge base but also to practice what I preach.
Why would I coach my clients to do something if I am doing something different?
How can I be sure a strategy works if I haven’t tried it on myself?
I am my own guinea pig.
In January, I had decided that I wanted to lose a bit of weight.
In order to do that, I needed to put myself in a caloric deficit, yes, but I also needed to look at my own eating habits and behaviours.
For example, snacking in the evenings. I love cereal. Giant bowls of cereal. And when there is too much milk left, what is the only option? Add more cereal, obviously. Duh. And I don’t go for the light weight cereal like Rice Krispies or Special K. I love Vector and Natural Harvest Granola. Both of which, a giant bowl can push 600 kcals. Sometimes more if you’re going back for a top up (because heaven forbid I waste half a cup of milk).
Rather than cutting it out, I started using a smaller bowl, and weighing and measuring how much I was going to have. I would put the box away and only have what I measured out. Did it work every time? No. But did it make a difference? Absolutely.
I had a look at my breakfast… I would usually have eggs, egg whites, and two pieces of toast with Fatso peanut butter and jam. I switched to one piece of toast.
When I had snacks in the afternoon, I chose an apple or and orange, or both. Did I do that every day? No. But most days? Yes.
I didn’t change the food that I ate at lunch or dinner much. I still had bread, and pasta, and rice, and Vietnamese on Fridays.
I still ate salt and vinegar chips and drank a glass of wine on the weekends.
After a while, it actually felt like I hadn’t really changed that much. I didn’t feel deprived or restricted.
Another change was that I actually was working out LESS. Rather than personalized programming for 2 hours a day, I was doing a 60 minute CrossFit class.
I stayed off the scale for about 2-3 months by moving it out of our bathroom. We moved it to the kids’ bathroom, where it’s not as easily accessible. It stopped being part of my morning routine, because it was out of sight.
I wanted to pay more attention to how I was feeling, rather than seeing the number on the scale and letting THAT be the factor that dictated how I was feeling.
In a way, I forgot that I had actively started to try to lose weight at the beginning of the year. My new actions became automatic; they became habitual so I didn’t really need to think about it.
I tracked my macros starting in January for a few months and then my eyeball became pretty well calibrated to determine the quantity of food I wanted to eat at each meal.
I weighed myself last week, because someone had mentioned that they thought I had lost weight. So out of curiosity I checked.
I was down 9 pounds! From between 163-165 to 156. I haven’t been below 160 since shortly after I started CrossFit.
Small changes that didn’t really feel like changes after a few weeks.
That’s where the progress comes from.
It DOES work! So that’s fun.
