In the UK 58% of women and 68% of men are overweight or obese. Obesity prevalence has increased from 15% in 1993 to 27% in 2015!

Obesity continues to rise and it’s ruining people’s lives. Apart from the detrimental physical effects: diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, it also places a huge amount of stress psychologically.

What My Experience Says…

I’ve been in the health and fitness industry for 10 years now, during this time i’ve worked with hundreds of obese/overweight men and women. Over the past decade i’ve completed over 8,000 1-1 personal training sessions, attended multiple training courses and have read hundreds of books on the human mind and body.

Most of my work has focused on helping people to lose weight and improve their mindset, so that they not only get results but are able to sustain them. My ultimate goal with every client is to create, and positively reinforce healthy habits/behaviours so that eventually they become totally automatic and a normal part of their life.

What I 100% know for sure is that weight gain most of the time is a mental issue, not a food issue…

Fix the mind…

For most people they spend years yo-yo dieting and trying all sorts of desperate, quick fix strategies. They look at their weight as the problem instead of looking at their out of balance existence and how food is used to repress the facts.

A lot of the time “your weight is ultimately tied to your feelings of unworthiness”.

For most who overeat, extra weight gain corresponds to unresolved anxieties, frustrations and depression, which usually comes to down to some fear we haven’t worked though yet. It’s easy to submerge the fear in food instead of feeling it and dealing with it. We basically repress uncomfortable feelings and emotions with all of the offerings from the fridge.

Weight loss is about conquering your fears and addressing the issues holding you back. It’s about peeling back the layers of addiction to food and figuring out what’s causing the issue in the first place.

Building a connection with the mind and body…

To successfully lose weight you have to exercise and follow a calorie controlled diet but in order to follow both the training and nutrition you need to have the mental discipline to follow them through! You could have the best personal trainer in the world and the perfect diet plan right in front of you, but if you can’t follow them then they are useless!

What you need to do is work on both…

1. The Body (exercise and nutrition)
2. The Mind (emotions, feelings, habits and behaviours)

Working on the body is pretty self explanatory, exercise more and control calories. Working on the mind can be a bit trickier. Although there are many things you can do, here are some things that have really helped the clients i’ve worked with over the last decade…

4 Mindset Building Strategies…

#1 Keep A Journal 

One of the best things to do is acknowledge your feelings, regardless of how you feel, try to become aware of what it is you are feeling. Is it anger? frustration? confusion? Note how you are feeling and write it down. Keep your diary private and don’t hold back, be completely honest and let it out. This exercise is amazing for releasing tension and often just by acknowledging your feelings, you feel so much better.

#2 Meditate 

I’ve talked about this in my previous blog posts, but meditating for just 10 minutes per day can dramatically boost your mind, body and spirit. The intention of mediation is about allocating time to be with yourself and your own thoughts, to sit back and observe whats going on in your psyche.

#3 Gratitude Anchor 

Everyday I wear a bracelet and whenever I put it on I go through 10 things that i’m grateful for, for example…

“I’m grateful for waking up today”

“I’m grateful for my beautiful fiancé”

“I’m grateful for the warm shower I had this morning”

Etc. etc

By putting yourself in a grateful state you will change the hormones in your body and put yourself in a frame of mind that is conducive towards feeling good. When you feel good about yourself and life you are more likely to go to the gym, eat well, sleep well, and just generally have a better life experience.

#4 Focus On What You Want 

When you are unhappy with a certain area of your life, it’s easy to dwell on it and focus on how bad it makes you feel, or how frustrating it is that life is this way. This type of thinking only reinforces the things you don’t want.

Instead of focusing on how fat you look or feel, focus on how good you want to look, the clothes you want to wear and all of the tasty nutritious foods you can eat. Focus on taking small steps and give yourself a pat on the back for each one. At the end of each day write down all of the good things you’ve done e.g. drank plenty of water, went for a walk with the dog, did my meditation, filled out my emotional diary, etc, etc

Thanks for reading,

Nick 🙂

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Who Wants A Workout Plan to Follow At Home? 

Not everyone likes going to the gym to workout, for one they can be expensive (£180-£600 per year!) and it’s not always easy to find the time to go.

By the time you’ve travelled to the gym, got changed, worked out and then driven home you could be looking at 1-2 hours!

Not many people have 1-2 hours spare each day, especially mums, hardworking dads or anybody with lots of time consuming responsibilities.

Gym’s can also be sweaty and intimidating –  a bunch of bronzed men and women looking sculpted and wearing tight lycra pants!

One of the best ways to get fit, without spending a fortune and taking up too much time is to workout out from home. All you need is some basic equipment, like resistance bands and dumbbells and you can great results.

Lots of my 1-1 personal training clients prefer to workout in the comfort of their homes and they get just as good results.

Due to this demand I’ve designed an 8 Week Home Workout program which you can follow yourself.

The plan is suitable for both men and women and suitable for all fitness levels (there’s a different program for beginners, intermediates and advanced trainees)

The plan includes…

• An 8 week exercise plan
• 4 different home workouts
• 20 different exercises with full demonstrations

and everything you need to know to get fit and lose weight without spending hours working out!

In fact, the workout(s) only take 30 minutes per session! and you only have to train 4x per week! That’s just 2 hours per week out of 168 hours (1.2% of your weekly time!)

If you were to have a workout plan written up by a personal trainer or gym you would be looking at a minimum of £30 but i’m making this plan available for a small fee of just £3.99. 

If you’d like to shift some weight and get fit then swipe up your copy by clicking the blue button below…