Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working with a client by the name of Mark who has since moved away from this area. During our time working together, Mark had made a comment that has stuck with me ever since.
Historically, he liked to hit the golf course with his friends and afterwards enjoy a beer (or two or three) and have some chicken wings.
Knowing the way that friends have a tendency to rib each other after a few drinks, he had mentally prepared himself for one conversation that happens all too often with fat loss.
When one person is trying to improve their health and is trying to make better decisions around food/alcohol choices, someone will ultimately ask if they’re on a diet. Which then has a tendency to lead to some sabotaging behaviors from others along the lines of:
-You can have just one bite, right?
-One more drink won’t hurt
-You can cheat this one time, etc. etc.
So, Mark was ready for the dialogue on one particular outing when his friends asked him: “Are you on a diet?”
To which he replied: “No, I’m training.”
“Training for what?” his friends asked.
“Training to get off medication.”
And, by reframing the motivation, it halted the sabotaging behavior of his friends.
It should be of little surprise that many illnesses and diseases we hear about in the modern day are termed: lifestyle related.
In other words, if someone is a lifelong smoker, there is a greater potential of being diagnosed with lung cancer or throat cancer (to use an example).
With weight gain, over time, problems that may not have plagued us when we were younger may manifest into a greater problem as we age. And, ask anyone who is no longer a “spring chicken” how hard weight loss is when they’re older and they’ll be quick to tell you it is much harder with an eye on the past that they “wished they would have done it sooner.”
Which brings me to the recent success of one of my clients (and someone I’ve written about before), Pat C.
Pat’s daughter, Cherie and her husband, Roger, started training with me well over 5 years ago. Shortly after they started, Cherie received the news that Pat had been diagnosed with emphysema (shockingly, having never been a smoker).
That initial diagnosis led Pat to start training with us and she was initially very motivated to lose weight in hopes that it would help her breathing.
Throughout the time Pat has been with us, she’s had to watch her parents age in a nursing home (which was not easy in light of COVID) and she has lost a sibling. Those factors contributed to some ups and downs with her own weight until she received news from her doctor late last year that he would need to put her on some additional medications.
There was the belief that if she could reduce her weight, that she could discontinue the use of her medication and that became the catalyst for change.
Pat told me that she was renewing her focus on weight loss to see if she could reverse the path of the medications.
So, for the better part of this year, Pat has been steadily losing and as of just a couple of weeks ago, she reached a new all-time low since she started training with me over five years ago.
All along, she would patiently update me on her progress and make comments to myself and to other clients who might be training at the same time as her: “At my age, I’ll take any little bit of progress I can get!”
And it wasn’t just about the diet, Pat has been steadily rebuilding her upper body after a knee surgery kept her from using her lower body like she was used to.
I have always been very inspired by Pat. To me, she is another shining example at RevFit of someone who knows how to fight through adversity and keeps putting the work in. Success doesn’t have to come quickly, it just has to come (and sometimes it changes in definition).
However, Pat has also been a shining example of reclaiming her “why”.
–Why it matters that she loses weight this time
–Why it matters that she retains and rebuilds her muscular strength
–Why, even in the midst of COVID, she focuses on areas that can help her breathe better and live better.
Far beyond my description, Pat summarizes her work to date more succinctly that me: “I am proof that you don’t have to be 100% “good” on the diet to be successful”.
And she’s right, you don’t have to be 100% on point, but consistency, focused effort, and a guiding “why” certainly help.
For you, if weight loss is the goal, ask yourself similar questions:
–Why is weight loss important to me?
-Is this my goal or a goal someone else wants for me?
–What is motivating me to lose weight this time that makes it different than a previous time?
–How am I going to lose weight?
–What is my action plan when things don’t go the way I expected them to?
In this week, we celebrate not only our “Mama Pat” but the many other RevFit clients who are doing the same kind of work with similar purpose.
Congratulations on 22 pounds down (with more to come)…
“We Make Great People Greater”
