Good morning!
I hope you guys are doing good.
For once, I have time to write a full journal, and I will do my best to live up to that.
It's been a busy couple of weeks, which is a good thing. Food choices have suffered here and there, but overall I am doing good.
I see more and more potential clients showing interest in my weight loss services and systems, and I love it!
I started up a new client yesterday, and starting one up again today.
The business is now growing to a point where I am starting to see that I need to consider restricting "business hours" a little, if I want some time off too. I'll get all that worked out. For now, obviously, it is more about getting all the clients I can, to fill up my calendar.
I'm having so much fun with this, and I love seeing the progress my clients make.
...
Yesterday, I showed some interesting pictures in my classes, and I figured I'd share them here with you guys too.
I have shown one of them before, but I think these are so important to remember - especially for those of us who do strength training.
It's a shocking thing to realize the first time, but... strength training makes you GAIN WEIGHT!
I see it at the gym all the time, especially with the ladies.
Everyone is SO focused on the number that the scale gives us. We focus on how much we weigh, and look less at body composition.
When you work out and do strength training, then you burn calories. If you are eating with an overall calorie deficit, you WILL lose body fat. However, if you life weight at the same time, you WILL build muscle.
And muscle is heavy. Very heavy.
To get a visual, take a look at this:
This is 5 lbs of fat, vs. 5 lbs of muscle.
What I am saying by showing this, is that we will look slimmer by losing 5 lbs of fat, and gaining 5 lbs of muscle. We won't see any change on the scale though.
To push it a little further in understanding, here are three pictures of the same girl. The first picture shows her as "skinny fat" (low weight, but mostly from lack of muscle) to "toned" (low fat percentage, but muscular).
What looks better? What feels better? Just because she is lighter in the first picture doesn't make her "thinner".
I hope it makes sense to you guys. I think it's SUCH an important thing to understand.
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I'm very happy with the muscle build that I have accomplished. I constantly surprise myself when I look in the mirror, putting on a shirt and see the arms flexing. I never thought I'd reach a level where I would look like this.
Sure, it's hidden by a little too much fat, but there is zero doubt that the muscles are there. I just need to tone up a bit.
This is the challenge for me. And this is the one I am working on.
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I see that going too hard and heavy on the deficit has been killing my motivation a little bit. I tell everyone left and right to NOT go too hard, but I tend to do it myself. Weird.
I have allowed myself a few hundred extra carb calories, and I hope this will make it a little easier to constantly stay on track.
Mind you, it's not like I don't eat a lot. The volume of foods that I NEED to eat to meet my nutritional goals is often astonishing.
My new client, who started up yesterday, was very surprised by this.
He was expecting a hard core diet that would take a LOT of effort and a LOT of restrictions, and I gave him the exact opposite. He loved the thought of it all "being math", and could see the idea 100%. He'll go far, I know this.
And the great thing about it is that it IS all math. I see it constantly. The issues come when our emotions get in the way of the math. Then we forget the math.
As I see it, most times it's a matter of INCORPORATING the math when the emotions run crazy. Once we learn to do this, life gets a whole lot easier.
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Today, I'm thankful for:
- New clients!
- Wife!
- Morning coffee!
- A nice workout soon! I'm looking forward to it!
- A fun day ahead of me, meeting several clients.
Have a fun day, everyone! Life is good!
