I work with many clients who come to me when they are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
They come expecting me to 'fix them' or to give them the 'magical secret' of weight loss.
First we take a comprehensive medical and lifestyle history and I explain the benefits of being fitter, how great it feels living a more vibrant life and why Body Composition matters more than 'weight loss'.
I also emphasise that it is far easier to set up your environment to support your health and fitness goals, rather than to rely on will-power alone.
The truth is, no one is motivated all the time.
And you can't out-train a bad diet.
Then we get to work.
The MET Fitness 6 Week Challenge gets you thinking about how you nourish your body and you learn how much you are able to influence your body toward a healthier state.
Managing blood sugar levels, the amount of sleep you get and how much exercise you do all impact the way your body uses and stores energy.
Most people want to see results in a week and I remind them that it's a 6 Week Challenge for a reason. You WILL notice significant and predictable results, and changes to your body, based on your commitment to the program.
This program teaches you HOW to structure three healthy meals each day and gives you the skills to make healthy decisions at parties, dining out, other situations that life inevitably brings.
If you have been overweight for a long time, you may have tried loads of diets, programs, pills, shakes and found that none of it worked.
This is NOT a diet.
Dieting is unsustainable and leads to even greater weight gains once you 'go off' the diet, as you have trained your metabolism to store fat rather than burn fat.
Remember that Magical Secret I was talking about?
Well here it is - you are the product of your habits and behaviours.
What you do every day leads to results over time.
Eating for reasons other than hunger creates results that show up in your body. Driving to work to sit at a desk, driving home to sit on the couch will also lead to predictable results.
Including fresh vegetables and adequate protein in every meal, going for a walk every day, doing some basic strength exercises a few times a week will also produce predictable physical, mental and emotional results.
Let's be clear, if you are unhappy with yourself, losing weight will not make you happy.
Be happy now - and from there take the necessary steps towards your health and fitness goal.
Set up your life to meet your goals, surround yourself with people who value their health and fitness and start to think of your health as a precious gift you give yourself.
It starts with a decision. It starts with you.
And when you need to check in, be accountable or simply outsource your motivation, I'm here to help.
Conscious Fitness
Starting a training program can seem daunting at the beginning, there is a lot to learn about the exercise techniques, how to perform each movement, even how to breathe for optimal results.
Your body may move in ways you have not experienced before and you may feel uncertain, even anxious about what you are being asked to do.
Training with MET Fitness is more than just moving your arms and legs about and calling it exercise; our programs are designed to improve your strength and posture and teach you to be more conscious of how you move in your training session and in everyday life.
We often dissociate physical activity from our thoughts and feelings, but as many MET Fitness clients will attest, they notice profound changes in the way they think and feel in the whole of their lives, as a direct result of participation in their training program.
The word whole comes from the same root as the word health and by inquiring into deeper causes of our health problems, not ‘what’ but how we eat, drink, exercise and go about living our lives, we give ourselves the ability to influence our health in a profound and lasting way.
Increased personal neglect contributes to increased reliance on symptomatic ‘fixes’ such as drugs or surgery. What is required are new ways of thinking, feeling and being in our bodies with an awareness that we operate as whole rather than a collection of our parts.
Criticism vs Cooperation
By confronting learning opportunities with wonder instead of fear and being comfortable with the idea of not knowing while we are learning, we give ourselves the space to observe, receive feedback and alter our habitual patterns, creating new ways of moving and being.
We usually think that controlling ourselves is the best way to effect changes in our lives or improve ourselves, when what is needed most is cooperation.
Overemphasis on knowing, as opposed to learning, makes looking good in the short term more important that being good in the long term.
A new perspective is required.
Cooperating with ourselves
At MET Fitness we focus on deep learning on a physical level that allows us to embody new capabilities for effective action and movement. This embodiment is a developmental process that continues over time, in a continuous cycle of action and practice.
The impatient quest for improvement often results in superficial changes that leave our deeper patterns untouched. Conscious action is critical for transforming our will, thinking, emotions and body; we must be fully conscious to be fully effective for deeper learning.
Deeper learning often produces fewer obvious consequences for long periods of time.
In order to embody new competencies we have to practice continuously for periods of no apparent improvement. In Chinese, learning is expressed by two symbols: the first stands for Take In, the second stands for Practice Constantly. In the West, we are so focused on results that we have little time for Practice Constantly.”
Learning is a lifelong process that doesn’t end when we leave school; it can feel dangerous or scary not knowing and many people prefer the safety of this, rather than questioning, exploring or experiencing anything new in their lives.
We humans are complex beings, we need to experience the unity of our system as a whole, working with our breath and being fully present in our body, to experience conscious activation of the correct muscles for the job.
What we tell ourselves about that feeling can stop us in our tracks and prevent us learning something new and delightful about ourselves, our bodies and our relationships.
There are no mistakes with learning. You cannot do it wrong. Just keep going.
