Author: jleenaarts

Coming off the heels of last week’s detour, writing about Britney Spears (interestingly one of my most popular articles of the year), I got caught up in a social media thread about my Top 30 albums.

I was able to fly through the first ten to fifteen rather quickly and then it all started to get messy. The easiest thing is to rattle off thirty albums one truly loves but once you’re getting towards the last four or five, you start playing mental gymnastics about which album, which genre, what if you never heard another song from this artist again?

Music inhabits a place where you can escape for 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 70 minutes and be transported. It’s not that a book or a movie can’t do the same, but the time invested in those forms of expression is much longer.

Do I commit myself to three hours of The Godfather because it’s a cinematic masterpiece or do I turn on Led Zeppelin II and lose myself for 40 minutes?

Give me enough time and I can spout off 100 albums I can’t live without and still have room to flex and breathe with more. That doesn’t mean that the same 100 will apply to you. We may be of different eras, we may fall in love with different sounds and, if you can connect an album to a concert experience, how does that change the way the album sounds when you revisit it?

Concerts aside, music can transport you to a kiss, to a long-distance drive, to the time you cried so hard at the steering wheel you thought you’d get lost on the way home…

Music, for those who can appreciate it, will dig into your soul and change you. It will alter your life perspective, it will change the way you communicate, it will inspire the way you make love.

One of the most surreal experiences is hearing music for the first time and knowing that before the song is over, you’re going to be playing that song on repeat until it makes your ears ring.

Conversely, some music takes longer before it worms its way in. There are bands and artists that I’ve heard hundreds of times, always reaching to turn the dial (or hit skip) because I don’t (or didn’t) want to listen to them and then, all these years later, I come back and think: How was I so deaf to this?

And so, like a lightbulb switched on, you devour every note, every syllable, every melody and you can’t get enough until…

Until it’s time to cleanse the palate and change the groove.

There are bands that you’ll listen to and they can’t possibly stay in the same place twice. If you hear one album and you love it, they may never make another album like that again. Fortunately, it’s there for posterity and you can always go back.

And there are bands who can’t seem to get out of their own way and continue to make essentially the same music but with different lyrics or a different producer.

Who am I to say which approach is right or wrong?

Good music, timeless, classic music will never leave you. It may get remastered over the years and repackaged with lots of extra goodies for the next generation to consume and appreciate but it is always there, faithfully lingering waiting for you to just “press play”.

You get your pick too: will it be the purist’s pick of vinyl or the always flawless sound of a compact disc or the digital code of an mp3?

No matter what you choose, music is your passenger or your driver, it can lead the way or it can be your co-pilot.

And, wrapping this back around to the health side of things I typically write about, music can make you want to conquer your workout or it can be the driving pulse to your run.

Years ago, I thought the only way to work out was to listen to loud, aggressive music like punk, rap, or metal. Then, a coach friend was telling me that he intentionally listened to slow jams because it made him focus more on how he was lifting and his tempos. Initially, I thought he was crazy, until I tried myself and, I’ll be damned, he was right. Lifting to softer music can indeed make you focus more on the quality of your reps rather than wanting to demolish every weight that’s put in your face.

Music has been my most cherished therapist, it has figuratively saved my life, and, on more days than not, I tend to wake up first thing in the morning with a melody rolling through my brain.

Alas, I fear I’m wasting your time because the more time you spend reading this, the less time you’re spending listening to something spectacular.

Go find that song, drop the needle or just press play.

Pictured below, three albums I admittedly came late to the party over: (Steely Dan-Aja, Joy Division-Unknown Pleasures, and The Stooges-The Stooges)

Those who know me know how much I love music. I’m often unfairly opinionated and I know that taste is subjective.

I have never cared for Britney Spears’ music.

I have never listened to one of her albums.

I have never seen her in concert.

I, like many of you, have heard most of her hit songs because, in her prime, they were all over the radio or on TV, and it was hard to escape her when she was at the peak of her popularity.

I was working in music retail when her first few albums came out and we sold those albums like crazy.

I also was not much into the boy bands of the era either with the exception of NSync because it always seemed to me as if they had more talent than Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, or any of the lesser popular knockoffs around that time.

Of course, when Britney started dating Justin Timberlake, it only made sense. Here were two of the most popular pop stars of the time who became romantically linked following their tenure together in the Mickey Mouse Club.

I have also not generally been the type of person to find pleasure in watching someone’s train wreck of a life. So, when Britney’s story became more televised because of controversy than because of her music, I wasn’t interested. I knew something must have been wrong, but just like rubbernecking when you see a car accident, at a certain point, you don’t want to see the damage that’s been done to the bodies.

And, maybe you know where this is heading.

In case you didn’t know, Britney’s autobiography came out last week and it’s been making a lot of headlines.

Initially, it didn’t strike a chord with me, despite the fact that I love music biographies and autobiographies because there are so many artists and artist stories that I’m drawn to.

The trajectory has always fascinated me.

However, despite the fact that I never was a fan of Britney or her music, there was something about her that drew my attention.

It was the fact that there always seemed to be something darker under the surface.

Much like Madonna, but in different ways, there was something controversial or unsettled behind the scenes of Britney’s popularity and the things that happened in her life after she and Justin parted ways.

Perhaps this is a reason why I have an irrational dislike for artists like Taylor Swift, who, despite her talent and jaw-dropping popularity, she is, in my opinion, the epitome of what I struggle with in modern pop music: she is safe, she is saccharine and she is completely sanitized.

Harken back to the 80s, the 90s and even the early 2000s and the most popular stars of those eras always had something lurking beneath the surface that made you feel as if they were slightly dangerous, slightly different than the rest of us: from Michael to Prince to Madonna to George Michael and to Britney. Only two of those are still alive, mind you.

Despite my initial leaning, once the book came out, I purchased a physical copy so I could have it on my shelf, but I listened to the audiobook (which was brilliantly narrated by Michelle Williams).

Bear in mind, this is not fine literature. You won’t read this and consider Britney to be a mindblowing author. But that’s not the point.

What you may find, is that this is a woman, who grew up in a very small town in the South, had a very unfortunate and often traumatic upbringing, shot to a meteoric level of fame, had, without question one of the most public and visible relationships in modern popular culture, and when it ended and blew up in her face, she (and Timberlake) were only 21 years of age.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I knew where my life and maturity level were at the age of 21 and if my life had been magnified and scrutinized the way theirs was at that age, I probably would have had something of a breakdown as well.

When you look back, as Britney takes you down that road of those personal and professional decisions she made, those otherwise strange decisions have a slightly different perspective. She admits, in her own way, that she was often confused, aloof, shattered, taken advantage of, and on some occasions under the influence of a substance (sorry, I’m trying not to ruin the book, should you decide to read it).

Her father, perhaps the most notorious and damaging influence in her life, reminds you of another tyrant father in music history, Joe Jackson. The father to not only Michael Jackson but that entire family of talented children. What you see is children, who became ungodly wealthy, and parents who stood to become wealthy too, as long as they could manipulate and guide their children no matter what it took to do so.

Like any autobiography, what you’re getting is Britney’s perspective. Maybe she left some salacious details out and maybe she was spot on. We may never know.

What is apparent to me, as someone who is not a fan and will not be going back to devour her music like I might with someone else, is that much of her story is tragedy and tragedy in a very public and embarrassing way. The silver lining is that she appears to be a very loving and devoted mother, that she still loves to perform, and that the adoration of her fanbase and the #FreeBritney clan may have been her salvation.

You’ll hear stories in the book that will break your heart. You’ll also hear stories that give you clarity for how people can make the choices they do when the paparazzi are breathing down their necks all for the sake of a juicy headline.

I know that I normally write about nutrition, training and mindset topics and, I’ve given Britney Spears’ life more attention over the last week than I have over her entire career combined. But this isn’t just about her, it’s also about mental health and the attention, we as a very curious public tend to give it.

When A-list celebrities struggle with aspects of their mental health, it’s easy for them to become the punchline of jokes. Those punchlines, then, in turn, make others question their own mental health. It can lead to people wondering if they should see a therapist, if they should even speak about their mental health struggles and how/if they would be viewed if they didn’t handle every situation in their life perfectly.

For me, the book highlighted a lot of what’s wrong with the public when they turn to celebrities simply for the need to watch the trainwreck. I don’t know where Britney’s life will go after the release of this book. I don’t know that I’ll be drawn to any new music she decides to release.

What I do know is that I have a profound amount of respect for what she’s overcome. I don’t need to follow her on social media, I don’t need to buy tickets to her concert. I just have a lot more sympathy for someone who took the time and effort to put much of the good and bad of her life into the pages of the book so that all of us could take it in.

On that note, but a far more tragic one, Sinead O’Connor’s autobiography is also worth your attention. Sinead herself narrates the audiobook and it is absolutely worth diving into that version.

It’s a reminder that for our entertainment, stardom comes at a price.

Who’s paying admission for the show?

(Photo edited from the cover of her book “The Woman In Me”)

I’m kicking off the soft launch of my first online group coaching program “Fat Loss Simplified” this week.

If you missed the intake, I’ll be firing it back up for the official launch in January 2024.

The first week of the 8-week program is centered around mindset and for good reason.

I believe that once you get clarity on where your mindset will be in the framework of fat loss, all of the other variables are “simple” by comparison.

Within the mindset module is one area I intend to kick everything off with: the words “good” and “bad” in the vocabulary.

Contrary to the title of this post, it doesn’t just affect women, it affects men too.

However, most of my clients are female, so I’m positioning this article with them in mind and it absolutely has a carryover to men.

If there is any perspective with regard to how we view our food choices, our food quantity and how we view ourselves in relation to those factors, it’s that the words “good” and “bad” need to be dismissed.

They are, arguably, the most counterproductive words we can use.

You are not “good” when you eat a salad.

You are not “bad” when you eat a cookie.

You are not “good” when you eat in a planned deficit.

You are not “bad” when you accidentally or purposefully overeat.

You are not “good” because you are leaner.

You are not “bad” because you are in a larg(er) body.

You are not “good” because the scale went down.

You are not “bad” because the scale went up.

You are simply a person who has to navigate food, work responsibilities, child rearing, marriage/long term relationships, caregiving, illness, stress, lack of sleep, lack of coping skills, work, genetics, and a social life.

You are allowed and expected to not be perfect.

You have permission to be imperfect.

Your success at fat loss can come as a direct result of that imperfection but that still gives you room for improvement.

And we are ALL trying to improve.

The words “good” and “bad” don’t just affect people in larg(er) bodies, they are also front of mind and tip of tongue for people who are at or near their ideal weight.

No matter how they’re used, they come with cinderblocks for shoes as dead weight, that we will only be “good” if we achieve an arbitrary ideal.

Instead, I’d like to posit a very simple spectrum.

You are HERE and where you want to be is THERE.

A straight line exists between each.

The choices you make with regard to your food, the quantity of your food, whether you work out (or not), and how you manage your self talk gets you closer to or further from where you want to be on that spectrum.

It’s not “good” or “bad”, it’s “closer to” or “further from”.

What I’m asking of you is a BIG ask. I’m asking you to change the verbiage that has been a part of your life for years upon years. I’m asking you to change verbiage that you will hear people around you say.

I’m putting the onus on you to change those words in your mind and your vocabulary.

If you want change, YOU are in charge of implementing it.

That doesn’t mean easy to do.

It means necessary.

Because what “good” is the body you want, if you’ve wrecked your mental health to get there?

(Photo courtesy of AllGo)

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to update everyone on all of the services we’re able to offer here.

If you’re local to Stow, Ohio, we’d love for you to come to the studio and train with us. We’ve been a semi-private personal training studio since I opened our doors in 2009. Per session our rate is $35 and there are no contracts to sign or hidden fees associated with membership.

Not everyone is geographically close to us and that rate may not work for every budget, so I’d like to give you a breakdown of everything else we do that can help people via virtual/online programs.

If you already have the equipment you need and you’re comfortable with the way to perform most exercises, I can customize a monthly training plan for you based on what you have access to. That option is $69/month with no term commitment. You can cancel at any time.

If you already have the equipment you need, but you’d like the flexibility of being able to send me videos for form checks, a personalized training plan can also be made for you. That option is $109/month with no term commitment.

If what you need is personalized nutrition coaching, this option is $199/month. This includes weekly checks-ins, video feedback, full access to direct messaging, and the option of one 30-minute Zoom call each month. There is a 3-month minimum commitment on this program. After 3 months, you can cancel at any time.

If you want access to both a training plan, with form checks and nutrition coaching (as referenced in the previous two paragraphs), this option is $299/month. There is a 3-month mininum commitment on this program. After 3 months, you can cancel at any time.

Lastly, I’m in the process of launching my first 8-week online group coaching program called “Fat Loss Simplified”. This first go-round will be a soft launch before everything offically launches in January 2024. This is not a fat loss contest or a fat loss challenge. It’s a way for me to give you as many tools as I can to help you succeed with fat loss on your terms. The deadline for sign ups is this Friday, October 20. The fun begins the week of October 23. If you miss this launch, you can always join in next year but the price will jump up about 20%. If you sign up by October 20, the price is $109/month for two months.

No matter which option you choose, I’d love to get the chance to help you get closer to your goals.

Just like Coach Sebastian (below), everyone needs options to succeed.

Thinking back on our vows, it’s easy to let time corrode what you promise to give one another.

It’s easy to get complacent.

It’s easy to let a flame go out.

It takes work to keep things going, through good and bad, and be able to look at your partner and say: I’m still in this, I’m still with you, and we’re going to do this together.

Maybe when we picked “Come Rain or Come Shine” by Ray Charles as our wedding song, those lyrics would become more profound with each passing year.

October 11 will mark nine years since we tied the knot.

Marissa asked me last week, what I recall with the most fondness from our previous year of marriage (from year eight to year nine).

And I remarked that this year seemed like one year in particular where we seemed to be focused on everyone else around us “almost” more than on each other.

This past year was one where the health of family members took priority, where parenting became more of a focal point than a focus on the marriage.

And that may sound like a bad thing, but I don’t think it was.

We (re)built a foundation that allowed us to put our focus on the people who needed it, when they needed it, and knowing our marriage would not only survive but thrive.

It’s also been a year where we’ve had to renew the focus on our own personal health.

I started the year getting updated bloodwork to see how my own health was trending. Fortunately, anything that required attention was an easy fix with some simple diet tweaks and some supplementation. At this point in my life, I don’t need to be on any medication and I’m thankful for that.

Marissa has also been struggling with some health issues as well over the past couple of years, and we’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into trying to get that resolved, too. Unfortunately, she’s had fewer obvious solutions which requires us to go further down the rabbit hole of specializations and tests upon tests, to get the answers that she/we need.

We made a pact a couple of years ago that if we were going to put our money somewhere, it would be in how we feed our family. We can’t afford (physically or financially) to let our health slip out of control if we can help it.

Some illnesses will come up that we have less control over and we have to find the right people to help along the way. That’s the beauty and privilege of a medical system that can work towards answers.

We’ve reached an age where it’s not just about caring for our health, but it’s trying to live the best lives we can for the benefit of Jackson and Sebastian and to help care for and care with our own parents who are inevitably growing closer to an age where they need help we can provide.

If there’s a bit of advice I can give you, based on our lessons learned from this year, it’s to stay up with your bloodwork and the advice of your doctors so that nothing slips past you beyond a point where you can change it. We weren’t meant to live forever but I’ve yet to meet the person who isn’t trying to add quality to their years in this world.

And to my wife, to another year of love, of teamwork and support, of parenting and growing together. It’s been another unique year to a love story that has continued to show resiliency.

Ray said it best: I’m gonna love you, like no one’s loved you, come rain or come shine.

There appears to be two opposing forces in our lives:

The one that begs you to hustle and grind and the one that urges you to pause and find calm.

Both have value but it’s a delicate balance trying to find when to switch one off and turn the other on.

Our phones, our inbox, and our itineraries make us slaves to convenience and urgency.

There is the call to be efficient, and hyper-productive as a badge of honor to wear around those who rely on what we do and do well.

On the other side, we need the gravitational pull of stillness, of quiet, and reflection to ease the chaos.

This happens in our professional lives and our personal lives.

Several years ago, I recognized these two forces with my work and it reminded me that I needed to split our day into two training blocks: an A.M. shift and a P.M. shift with a handful of hours as downtime in between.

It was the best way to have the hustle and grind bookending the work day with a strategic calm in the middle.

There had to be a way to honor and recognize both needs.

Of course, it’s easy to get busy being busy and it’s easy to fill up time in the white space of a daily planner not taking the time to recharge but only finding more places to do more.

Much like our smartphones, we get a lot of usage and mileage out of a day, but if you don’t get back on the charger you don’t have much life to offer others.

Some people use meditation.

Some people use prayer.

Some people use apps and websites designed to turn off our computers or phones and block distractions.

I have to remind myself to find the calm, especially when I sit down and eat a meal.

One of my most counterproductive eating behaviors is to eat a meal at a frighteningly fast pace.

It’s a conscious act to slow down, set my fork down, and stop…savor…breathe.

Of note, this is one of the best tips I can give you if you’re struggling with your weight.

Slow Down.

Many of the foods we fill our cabinets and freezers with are custom designed to be consumed and consumed quickly, long before our bodies register any feelings of satiety.

What works in our lives, both personal and professional, works with (or against) our diets and affects our stress levels and sleep habits.

So, take a moment after reading this and look at the areas in your day and your week where you’re rushing from one task to the next, not pausing to find the calm.

If need be, schedule that time.

Life will rarely slow down on purpose.

When you make the time, show appreciation for it.

The time to grind can wait.

(Photo courtesy of Melissa Askew)

There are some scenarios that stay with you for a lifetime.

For me, I was sexually abused by my babysitter sometime around kindergarten and first grade.

Not having the emotional or mental maturity to handle it back then, I managed to stuff the experience away until I was in my late teens when a friend of mine and I were discussing a similar incident for her and it flooded me with memories of what happened in my own life.

I didn’t know it then, but that experience had been affecting me in ways I couldn’t understand or appreciate.

I began identifying with elements of depression and suicidal ideation shortly thereafter and went to our family doctor to start addressing it.

That began a process more than two decades in the making and reached a relative conclusion just over the past couple of years.

By saying conclusion, I don’t mean that the experience no longer affects me. I believe it will always affect me.

What I mean is that, I feel I’ve reached a point in my life and my healing process where the event which took place all those years ago has less of a chance of negatively effecting me or the people I care about.

Here are the seven steps I took to heal:

1-I acknowledged that the event took place. By reaching out to our family doctor all those years ago, I recognized that something was wrong. I had vivid memories of what happened and I was trying to make the pieces fit in my mind so that I could get help. Our doctor encouraged me to write about it, express my feelings about it and, perhaps, to confront my abuser. The former suggestions were relatively easy to do. I realized that I had already been writing about the event through poems and songs as a way to understand what I was feeling. It was the confrontation that took more effort.

2-I confronted my abuser. I worked up the nerve one night in college to see if I could track my abuser down. Fortunately, he still lived in the same town where the abuse took place. I called the operator, asked to be connected to him and was able to reach him late one evening. Initially, he denied what happened by saying that he didn’t recall the events. To his credit, 13-14 years had passed since the incident. However, there were details I could provide which made it indisputable. He knew what he did and he knew that he couldn’t deny it.

3-I forgave my abuser. I was in an interesting place spiritually when I made that phone call. My abuser was at a point in his career where he realized that I could ruin everything he had worked for. I believe, that when he started crying and apologizing on that phone call, that he expected I was looking for some type of retribution. I wasn’t. I knew that I needed closure and I was hoping that the phone call and confrontation would give me that. I told him I forgave him. At the time, I believed it. I’ve never spoken to him since then.

4-I recognized that the event was still affecting me. Fast forward over twenty years, and despite surviving a decade of hard drug abuse, and burning more bridges around me than I could count, my marriage was falling into a rut. I went back to therapy in my 40s so I could understand why something I felt was no longer affecting my behavior was still lurking in the background. My therapist helped me understand that I had never fully processed the trauma that had occurred. What I had succeeded in doing was finding every other maladaptive coping skill to numb my feelings rather than sit with them and understand them.

5-I wrote a letter to my abuser. One of the things my therapist asked me to do was to write a letter to my abuser. The letter never needed to be sent. It was a way to document how I was feeling at that time, to express anything I felt needed to be said, especially since the event was still having an effect on me whether I accepted it or not. Truth be told, it was an easy letter to write. I was angry, I was hurt and I was frustrated that I was still having to deal with the fallout from something that had happened so long ago.

6-I wrote a letter to myself. This was another strategy my therapist gave me. He asked me to write a letter to myself at the age the event took place. More pointedly: What would I say to myself right after it happened? I knew this would be far more difficult to do. I had to put myself back into my shoes as a father. What would I say to either of my sons, if God forbid, a similar event happened to them. When I finally came to grips with how I would do it, I decided to make the letter public.

7-I changed the narrative from victim to survivor. My therapist gave me a handful of books to read. He wanted me to see how similar events affected others and to draw a link to what I was experiencing. He knew that I needed to find a way to not feel so alone with what I was going through. The fact is, there will always be someone who “had it worse.” However, by saying that, that doesn’t allow me to heal my individual pain. When you accept the role of victim, it keeps you down. You don’t recognize a way out, a way to heal, a way to process or to feel whole again. When I changed the verbiage in my mind from victim to survivor, I had hope. It wasn’t that my abuser had me fearing for my life. It’s that the emotional fallout from the event nearly killed me. I was a survivor. I AM a survivor. The words we use to describe ourselves can paralyze us or free us. I was no longer going to live in paralysis. I was no longer going to actively numb out the pain I was feeling.

Every time I write these types of articles, I feel like I leave of piece of myself with it. What I can’t accept is that more people (men or women) don’t feel they have the space to confront and heal their trauma. Maybe they hide it because they don’t want to feel vulnerable or weak in front of others. For myself, it’s not only to remove the stigma of talking about it, it’s to remind the abusers who live among us that they’ll be discovered; that no person should ever experience abuse and, hopefully, bringing it to light could save someone’s life.

Each time I write something like this, someone I know confesses to me that they lived through a similar experience. Often, they haven’t thought about it in years and the subject brings a lot to the surface. I see far too many clients struggle with their body image and their diets because of a trauma like mine (often referred to as Big “T” Trauma). Diets don’t heal trauma. Therapy does.

So, if you’re struggling, start your process. Get help.

Most importantly, find your voice, because these things can’t keep happening.

When I started RevFit back in 2009, I knew my mornings would start early.

Clients wanted to be able to train before they went to work, which meant that training would start roughly around 5-530am each weekday.

Early mornings (with a 20-25 minute commute from home) meant going early to bed so that I could get a decent night’s sleep before the next day began.

Back then, I probably woke up around 4am each day.

Years later, a buddy of mine was talking about a psychological “trick” he would play with himself where he would set his alarm about 5 minutes before the hour he needed to wake up. He wanted less of an opportunity to snooze his way through the start of his day.

The trick seemed worth trying so I pushed my alarm back to 3:55 for a period of time.

Then, I wanted a bit more time to try and add some meditation to my day, and ten minutes of meditating seemed a reasonable amount of time.

This pushed my wake time to 3:45am and it stayed that way for over six years (long after I put meditation on the backburner).

As a result, my sleep time would average 6.5-7 hours each night, sometimes restful, sometimes not.

This is certain: since 2009, the one thing I haven’t done is gotten younger.

The days are still very physical and depending on the span of the day, sometimes the mental work is more draining than the physical.

So, about two months ago, I changed my alarm from 3:45am to 4:15am to see how/if the extra half hour would help me.

So far, the answer is yes.

It does affect how much time I have to get my mind right in the morning before work but I’ve realized that I need to prioritize sleep. If my sleep isn’t right, the rest of the day (and potentially the week) won’t be right either.

I’ve written about time management several times on this site. For many of my clients, time management affects the decisions they make about food and the decisions they make about when or if they can fit in their training.

However, sleep influences those things as well. How we sleep influences our stress levels, our food cravings, our ability to recover from workouts and our cognitive functions.

Maybe sleep isn’t your challenge.

Maybe you work too many hours and you can’t fit in your training.

Maybe you spend so much time chauffeuring your children around that you have no time for yourself.

Maybe the lure of four hours of an addictive, streaming show is too great for you to have a self care routine.

I realized I wasn’t doing myself any favors by rigidly adhering to a wake time that was no longer serving me.

And as you fight for time, where does your energy go?

Is it going to waste?

(Photo courtesy of Morgan Housel)

I love questions. I love questions that get to the heart of problems. I love questions that guide you to the solutions of problems. I love questions that can be uncomfortable and questions that may spark an emotion.

With fat loss, there are countless questions to ask and, as a coach, I love asking them. It will never be as simple as “eat less, move more.” Rather, why is it so difficult to eat less and move more?

I wrote this week’s article inspired by a post I put on Instagram last week which was only ten questions. I realized that I had far more than ten questions to ask and, to be fair, I could do another post like this one as a companion and come up with another 99 questions to ask.

But this post is for you, the person trying to lose fat and for coaches who want to dig in deeper with their clients. Keep it, share it, but most importantly, WORK through it.

It may make you uncomfortable. It may stir things up in you that you haven’t considered or thought about in ages. These questions are presented without judgement and I encourage you to answer them without judging yourself.

If I had any wish, it would be that these questions point you on a path to success.

1. Why is fat loss important for you?
2. When you answer #1, why is THAT important?
3. Do you have a history of an eating disorder?
4. If the answer to #3 is YES, have you worked with a therapist to heal and repair that?
5. When do you recall starting your first diet?
6. What do you remember about that experience?
7. What is your earliest memory of how you view your body?
8. Who influenced that opinion?
9. Do you still have the same opinion now?
10. How do you accept and acknowledge compliments about your appearance?
11. What makes you feel good about your appearance?
12. Would you value yourself more if you weighed less?
13. How would fat loss impact your health?
14. Would your workplace performance improve if you lost fat?
15. Do you turn down invitations to social events because of your current weight/body shape?
16. If the answer to #15 is YES, what scenarios do you turn down?
17. Would succeeding at fat loss make it easier for you to play with your children, grandchildren, or pets?
18. Is fat loss something that you desire for yourself or has someone else asked you to focus on fat loss? If so, who?
19. Who are the people you are closest to that influence how you eat? Consider your spouse, or the person you are romantically involved with, parents, siblings, children, friends, and co-workers.
20. Who buys the groceries for your home?
21. What foods can you successfully moderate the intake of and what foods do you feel you are unable to currently moderate?
22. Does the person who buys the groceries know about the foods listed in #21?
23. If the answer to #22 is YES, how often are the foods that you are currently unable to moderate purchased for the home?
24. Do you frequently or seldom use food as a reward?
25. Do you have a list of coping mechanisms that you can utilize when you are stressed out?
26. If the answer to #25 is YES, how often do you use that list?
27. In looking at the list of people in #19, who do you believe sabotages your fat loss efforts?
28. Does that person/those people know that you feel that way?
29. If the answer to #28 is YES, has the behavior improved? If the answer to #28 is NO, how do you plan to inform them of your feelings?
30. Who is the most supportive person/group of your fat loss goals?
31. How do they successfully support you?
32. Do you feel that you struggle more with diet adherence during the week or during the weekends?
33. How can you improve the days referenced in #32?
34. How many diets have you tried in your life that you can recall?
35. Which diets were most successful?
36. What do you believe made them successful?
37. Would any of those diets be successful for you now?
38. If the answer to #37 is YES, which ones and why? If the answer is NO, why would that be?
39. Do you have a consistent, restful, sleep schedule?
40. If the answer to #39 is NO, what contributes to that?
41. Do you feel that your life is currently more stressful than normal?
42. What’s contributing to your current stress level?
43. How do you effectively manage stress in your life?
44. Are you currently taking any medications?
45. If the answer to #44 is YES, have you spoken with your doctor to see if those medications have a tendency to cause weight gain, weight loss or are they considered weight neutral?
46. How many days per week do you engage in cardiovascular activity? Also, how many minutes on average do you dedicate to that activity?
47. How many days per week do you engage in strength/resistance training? Also, how many minutes on average do you dedicate to that activity?
48. Do you believe that you burn a considerable amount of calories with your workouts referenced in #46 and #47?
49. If the answer is YES to number #48, how many calories do you believe that to be and how do you measure it?
50. Do you believe that your relationship with food is influenced by trauma in your life (either as a child or as an adult)?
51. If the answer to #50 is YES, have you/are you working with a therapist to develop coping skills for the trauma in your past?
52. Do you have an ideal weight you’d like to be at?
53. Why is that number important?
54. When was the last time you were at that weight?
55. If it’s not realistic that you could reach that weight again based on current life demands, what is a weight that would be acceptable to you?
56. If you were going to start losing fat today, what’s the first change you would make?
57. Is the answer to #56 an easy change to make?
58. What do you believe would be one of the hardest changes you’d have to make to be successful at fat loss?
59. Based on the answer to #58, what makes that so difficult?
60. Do you engage in any body-checking?
61. How do you compare your body against others? In other words, do you compare against individuals of the same age, same gender, same social class?
62. Do you have any diagnosed problems with your thyroid?
63. Do you have lipadema?
64. Do you have PCOS or PCOS with insulin resistance?
65. Do you currently have Type I or Type II diabetes?
66. Have you successfully counted calories or tracked macronutrients?
67. If the answer to #66 is YES, do you enjoy the data aspect of tracking food?
68. How often are you comfortable weighing yourself?
69. Do you actively practice body appreciation?
70. If the answer to #69 is YES, what do you appreciate about your body and what it’s capable of?
71. What conversations about fat loss, dieting or body image do you have in the home with your family?
72. What dieting method (vegan, intermittent fasting, ketogenic, etc) do you feel most closely aligned with?
73. Based on the answer of #72, is that a fairly easy diet to adhere to in your life?
74. Also, based on the answer of #72, does anyone in your family follow that diet? If the answer is YES, who is that and did they influence you in starting that diet method or do they follow it in efforts to support you?
75. Do you have any food allergies? If so, what are they?
76. Do you have any food intolerances? If so, what are they?
77. Based on the answer to #76, can you have small doses of those foods or none at all?
78. If you are in the menopause transition, have you noticed any sensitivities to foods that didn’t exist prior to the transition? If so, what are they?
79. Do you feel that you snack a lot, very little or never?
80. If you snack a lot, how can you improve that?
81. Do you drink alcohol? If so, how much and how often?
82. How much do fluids (aside from water) contribute to your daily intake? Consider any juices, carbonated beverages, energy drinks, alcohol and protein shakes.
83. Do you take any supplements? If so, which ones?
84. In looking at your daily food intake, would you say that your meals are mostly balanced or are some meals significantly larger than others? If the latter, can you describe how they differ?
85. Do you engage in any sneak eating behaviors? If the answer is YES, how many calories do you believe that contributes to your day?
86. Do you frequently, seldom or never reward yourself with food based on what you believe you burn during exercise?
87. What do you believe is a reasonable amount of weight/fat to lose per week?
88. If you were unable/unwilling to count calories, how would you approach fat loss for yourself?
89. Do you keep a record or journal of how you feel when you eat certain foods?
90. Do you periodically purge your social media accounts and unfollow people or pages who don’t make you feel good about yourself?
91. Are there certain topics related to food that you find you’re drawn to such as: organic, clean eating, toxins, genetically modified, or “fat burning”? If the answer is YES, which topics interest you and why?
92. What is the average amount of time you can successfully follow a diet plan before you start thinking it isn’t working?
93. Who do you follow for advice on nutrition? What are their qualifications?
94. What are the most satisfying foods for you to eat which reduce your feelings of hunger?
95. Do you enjoy cooking your own meals?
96. When was the last time you used measuring cups, measuring spoons and/or a food scale for intake accuracy?
97. How do you practice gratitude for your health?
98. What do you love most about yourself?
99. What’s the worst that could happen if you never lost another pound?

(Photo courtesy of AllGo)

At risk of titling this article in a misleading fashion, what you’re about to read is not necessarily for individuals who are looking to maximize building muscle on their bodies.

Rather, I wanted to write something about strength in general and how food can help.

Look everywhere around you, and if you had to judge a book by its cover (which is often foolish), you could jump to conclusions about how food is affecting a given body.

Some people eat too much.

Some people eat too little.

Some people look fit.

Some people look frail.

And for any of those examples, nutrition plays a crucial role.

We eat in times of happiness and sadness, when we’re bored and when we’re celebrating, we eat to fuel a marathon, and we eat to lose fat.

The last couple of months have reminded me of a bitter side to life which is what happens when people stop eating.

We see how people eat when they feel weak and when they feel sick. When food is neither comfort nor pleasure.

We see people near the end of their lives where their appetite has all but left them.

I spend so much of my professional life coaching people to eat for better health, how to eat to achieve their physique goals, and how to simply treat food as if it is an ally and not an enemy.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: look everywhere around you, in every aspect of your life.

We are not afforded the luxury of weakness.

And because we’re not afforded that luxury, the alternative, the most viable alternative, is to be strong.

But strength is not created from nothing.

It requires energy.

And the food we consume is energy.

Strength is mental.

Strength is physical.

Strength is emotional.

Young people strive to attain it and older people fight like hell to keep from losing it.

If I impress nothing else on you, I’d only wish that you read this article and ask yourself:

Am I nourishing my body in a way that supports my strength?

I ask you not to overanalyze it, I ask you not to focus solely on calories or macronutrients.

I want you to take the decades of understanding that you indisputably know about nutrition, because you have fed your body countless times:

Do my choices make me stronger so I can conquer all that life throws my way?

(Photo courtesy of Ben White)