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Back for the fifth time (see episodes #28, #118, #150 and #200), Leigh Peele is back as we deep dive into the dirty C word: calories. We talk about how and why energy matters for the purpose of weight loss, how it gets misconstrued and some of the pitfalls we can avoid so that we don’t get caught in a trap of not achieving our weight loss goals. To learn more about Leigh’s work, please visit http://www.leighpeele.com You can find out more about your host at http://www.jasonleenaarts.com and http://www.revfittherapy.com You can also like our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/revolutionaryou Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.

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Last year, I knew I was ready to write my second book. My first book (released in 2016) was written under a very tight and very short deadline. There were things I was immensely happy about that with project and things I wish I could have done differently.

Nevertheless, it’s out and there’s no changing it at this point.

I knew my second book would go much differently.

Over the years that I’ve hosted my podcast, I continued to gain more wisdom and inspiration from my guests. I would hear things during the recording, the editing and the playback of those episodes and I wanted more people to embrace the knowledge my guests were giving.

Podcasts aren’t for everyone. Some people choose to digest information from other means and maybe they just don’t want to take the time to sift through hours and hours of content just to get some guidance on their health journey.

After reading Ryan Holiday’s “The Daily Stoic”, I had a clearer idea of what I wanted “Book Two” to be. I wanted to extract quotes from as many of my episodes as I could and craft something of a daily motivation/meditation for the fitness enthusiast.

By the beginning of 2019, I had a plan.

I would take as much time as I could to go back through all 200+ episodes of my show and start extracting the quotes I wanted to use.

I knew that my time was limited so I made a vow to discontinue listening to other people’s podcasts so I could focus on my own. I also planned to spend less time listening to music for pleasure and reading so that I could devote more time to my writing project. I didn’t want to rehash the urgency with which I had to work under for my first book.

And I did get some work done…it just wasn’t enough.

I kept busying myself with a host of other tasks and pushing the book to the backburner.

So, January passed, as did February, and so on.

I made it to the beginning of August and realized I had barely made a dent in my project.

As you can deduce, it would take 365 quotes from each of my guests plus 365 of my own thoughts to complete each day in a book like this.

As of August 1st, I had just over 100 quotes pulled for the book and none of my own writing done.

For me, this was unacceptable.

The hope was that I could have the book ready for purchase by December of 2019. That way, anyone who purchased it could begin their own path with the book officially at the first of 2020.

So, I needed a new strategy to mark my completion.

I broke down into days how many quotes I would need to extract and reach the 365 total. Then I gave myself a goal for my own writing quota.

I also reached out to my closed community on Facebook.

I knew I needed to hold myself accountable to my goals and if I threw my obstacles out to my clients, I would be more inclined to get the work done.

With over 230 quotes I had to pull (starting from August 1), I completed them all by the end of that month. Each day, I blocked an hour off to just spend time listening back through episodes and extracting the quotes I wanted to use in the book. I knew that if I didn’t block the time off, I would find ways to waste time and not get my work accomplished.

After I pulled all the quotes, I spent roughly a week reaching out to all of my guests asking for permission to use their words within the project. The response was overwhelmingly positive. It renewed my fire and focus to keep my nose to the grind and not slow down.

Then, admittedly, I had a hangover moment.

I had worked so feverishly on the first part of the project that I felt completely uninspired to write my own portions.

But, as I mentioned before, the book had to be ready for purchase by December of this year. My own (undiagnosed) OCD wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, I took the advice I’d give to any client: Bring the work down to bite-sized chunks.

Each day, I write 6 pages. Nothing more, nothing less. It gets me to a finish line in November where I have time for edits and sequencing. I know I could write more than 6 a day but I want my mind fresh.

In comparison to blogging, where I can write as much as my heart desires, I’m forcing myself to be very brief in the book. I want the spotlight to be on the wisdom of my guests. I simply wanted to shine a light for added guidance and context.

While I am disappointed in myself for essentially wasting the first seven months of this year and not making the progress I had anticipated, I’m glad I got my ass in gear before it was too late.

When you look at your goals, how have you scheduled the work?

Are you procrastinating (as I did) and not making the progress you want?

Take your goals and start blocking off time to achieve them.

This could look like:

–Scheduled time for meal prep: Block off time each week to make easy meals that can be frozen/refrigerated so you’re less likely to leave your food choices up to chance. If need be, ask for assistance from your spouse/loved one if they have more time to apply to this than you do.

–Appointments set for exercise: When you treat your exercise (strength training/cardio) like you do your doctor’s appointments, you’re less likely to miss and cheat yourself out of the work you need to get you closer to where you want to be.

–Reasonable timelines for reaching your goals (such as 4-8 pounds of weight loss per month): Could you lose 20 pounds in one month? Sure. Is it worth it? Probably not. When you set realistic and reasonable goals for weight loss, you have a better shot at success that you can sustain. The goal is not just to get to “X” weight but to keep that weight off and look/feel the best you possibly can.

–Potential times to reset your goals and/or maintain status quo: Based on what is currently happening in your life with work, family, and friends, you may not be able to white-knuckle your way to your end goal. There may be certain points where you need to take a breather and maintain where you are to reduce the stress of your goals. Much like my aforementioned “hangover”, I needed a few days to reset and refresh my mind so I could get back to work.

–Keep yourself honest: Utilize a support group as I did with my closed community. Set a goal, break it down into achievable steps, and put the work in. I can only be held accountable to myself since the book will be self-published so the only metaphorical gun that will be held to my head is the one I hold. This means, the only person capable of reaching my goal is me. When you take that control back for your own goals, you have a clearer sense of autonomy.

Don’t let the tyranny of procrastination stand in your way.

“A Revolution A Day” will be released in December 2019.

“We Make Great People Greater”

 

 

In this week’s episode, I spotlight my longest standing client/friend, Mike Battershell. He’s been with me nearly nine years and we have seen each other through a lot in that time together. We discuss changes in his physique, diet, training and how he has adapted to all of the changes that have occurred during the evolution of this business. Mike’s own journey of self discovery is quite and inspiration and he talks about the importance of finding your why to be successful To learn more about your host, visit www.jasonleenaarts.com and www.revfittherapy.com You can also like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/revolutionaryou Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.

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When you were first being taught how to ride a bike, you likely learned in stages. It would have been some version of a tricycle and you had to learn how to move the pedals in effort to propel yourself forward. The risk of injury was low.

Then you progressed onto a “big kid” bike.

With that big kid bike came the option of training wheels. Now, you’re in charge of a much larger piece of equipment but with the safety measure of those smaller wheels so you didn’t have to worry about falling.

You still had to master the skill of maneuvering something bigger than a tricycle.

And then the day came where you took the training wheels off. It’s that first exhilarating moment where you were wobbly, excited, intimidated and well on your way to your fair share of bruised knees, shins and anything else that could be impacted by some hard earned tumbles trying to get your bearings with two wheels only.

Your diet isn’t much different.

Sure, we all learn how to eat long before we embrace a tricycle.

And, we can usually get away with a fair amount of dietary luxuries at an early age too.

But something changes as we get older. Maybe it changes when we’re adolescents and maybe it doesn’t change until we’re adults. But we just can’t eat the way we used to and expect to have the bodies we want.

That’s a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow.

Because there is something about eating that seems like it should be this natural, safe, instinctive behavior that just works for us.

Which is why it can be so incredibly frustrating to take a behavior or set of patterns like eating and stick training wheels on it when we’re 20, 30, 40 or even 60 years of age in attempts to change it.

What does that look like in practice?

–It may mean you have to track your food for a short amount of time to see your dietary trends.

–It may also mean that you have to measure your food to see what an appropriate portion size actually looks like (specific to your needs and respective goals.)

–You may have to reduce the frequency with which you go out to eat because it can be difficult to ascertain how many calories you’re consuming (even with a margin of error for places that are kind enough to post calorie counts.)

You’re essentially taking your eating behaviors within the framework of your life and putting training wheels on it again so that you can teach yourself the right way (and the safest way) to do it.

And that’s great for a refresher.

But at a certain point, those training wheels will have to come off.

You re-learn and refine a skill so that you can pull the trainers off and get back to riding. Or in the case of your diet, get back to living.

The biggest difference is that once you learn how to ride a bike, you basically never forget. You may be a little wobbly if you haven’t been on one in a while but the instincts come back rather quickly.

Navigating your diet is a more complicated skill to learn because (for most people) there is too much of an emotional connection to it. We eat when we’re happy, when we’re bored, when we’re stressed, when we’re tired, when we celebrate and even when we mourn.

Your goal, the ultimate goal, is to trust yourself with the way you eat. It’s to trust that you have coping skills in place to replace things like emotional eating when life gets stressful.

It’s also to remind yourself that you can’t do whatever you want with your diet and not have your body pay a relative price for it.

It’s okay to put your “training wheels” on periodically to adapt your way of eating to where your life and body is currently. What you could do when you were younger is likely no longer effective or it’s not as effective as it used to be.

That’s not just with diet, it’s the same for exercise too.

A body that has decades of mileage and stress on it doesn’t behave the same with activity and food as it used to. It doesn’t mean that you have to pivot 180 degrees, but change will occur.

Change HAS to occur.

Much like you learned how to ride a bike in those three stages referenced above, your diet will go through stages of change where you initially need more help and guidance so that you can develop the confidence and insight into how you eat to serve you (and your goals) best.

And just like bike riding, it may take some tumbles and spills before you get it right.

It’s all normal. Which makes you normal and it’s all a part of the process.

Below is Sebastian, showing you his first stage in riding. He’ll support you on your journey too. And yes, at two years of age, he can eat pretty much whatever wants and have no ill effects.

The same can’t be said for you and I.

Nevertheless, we’ll be rooting for you.

“We Make Great People Greater”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back for the second time and after nearly two years from her first appearance (Episode #96), coach Ruby Cherie joins me this week. In this week’s episode, we talk about different perspectives and tools for progress beyond the scale, a focus on better digestion and hydration, and taking the person you are today (not the person you were in the past) and learning how to move the needle forward for that individual to reach goals. To learn more about Ruby’s work, check out http://www.facebook.com/rubyreneecherie and on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/rubycherie.coachingspecialist To learn more about your host, check out http://www.jasonleenaarts.com and http://www.revfittherapy.com You can also like our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/revolutionaryou Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.

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When I moved back to Ohio to start this business in 2009, my Dad decided that was when he wanted to lose some weight. He didn’t have a lot to lose, approximately 30 pounds. I was trying to find a location to set up shop in and I needed a place to train in the meantime.

So, my father and I got a membership at a local gym that had a low monthly rate and opened in the wee hours of the morning so that we could get a session in and he had time to get to work after.

It took my Dad approximately a year but, slow and steady, he lost all the weight he wanted to and he looked and felt the best he had in years.

After he hit maintenance, he had back-to-back surgeries spread 6 weeks apart for carpal tunnel syndrome. The surgeon requested that he stop exercising for the time being so that no sweat got into the place where incisions were made.

My father did as requested and a strange thing started happening.

He kept losing weight.

He hadn’t made any more changes to his diet and he had drastically reduced his level of activity.

This was the first sign that something was wrong.

We would soon find out that he was dealing with effects of multiple myeloma.

We kept the news quiet for sometime and just within our close friends and family.

One day, a neighbor saw my Dad walking outside and he said something along the lines of “Hey, Paul! You should probably stop that diet you’re on. You look like hell!”

At which point, my father, ever the diplomat, informed the neighbor of his diagnosis.

*take foot…insert in mouth*

I ran into said neighbor sometime later and he apologized profusely for making an incorrect assumption about my father.

Not unlike people who ask a woman with some “extra” around her belly when she’s expecting, there are some things you probably should keep to yourself.

With my clients, just keeping the momentum is difficult enough in and of itself. Some people have to contend with the unsolicited feedback of others that can potentially derail their efforts.

It’s this part that I find especially frustrating.

From an outsider’s perspective, when you see someone who is trying to improve their health, weight loss to some degree is likely part of that conversation. If you’ve become accustomed to seeing someone at a higher weight, even drops of 10-20% below their starting point can show dramatic differences.

At some point, genetics take over and there may be more looseness of skin in certain places or simply areas that don’t get as firm as one might like (especially if you’re using strength training to combat this.)

But here’s the thing (and I say this lovingly): it’s none of your business how much weight someone loses unless their health is in jeopardy (which is determined through a doctor.)

I know there are those with legitimate concerns like anorexia nervosa but this article is not about that. For those individuals, please seek the guidance of a general practitioner and a therapist with specialization in eating disorders.

For the weight loss client, what they need to hear is words of support, words of kindness and words of empathy. Not words that potentially trigger sabotage or make someone feel like their hard work and effort in improving themselves is a lost or unworthy cause.

Below, you’ll find a picture of my client and friend, Laura.

Laura has been training with me for over 4 years and had already seen great weight loss before we started working together. She works a very active job and manages to fit in 3 days of strength training with me in addition to hiking frequently as weather permits.

As her wedding day was approaching, Laura got her game face on and focused on hitting her calorie goals to reach her desired weight goal. She was motivated, determined and consistent with her food intake and her activity level. She even had to overcome the obstacle of a freak injury that occurred outside of the gym just months before her big day.

We worked around the injury and kept her focused despite the fact that it would have been so easy for this to derail her hard work.

Even leading up to her special day, she had people tell her:

“If you get too skinny, your wrinkles will show more.”

“You don’t want to get too much muscle because it will look ugly.”

“I liked you better when you looked normal.”

Do I need to say it? This is unacceptable.

For some people, they’ve waited months, sometimes years and sometimes decades to achieve a body they can be happy with. To have anyone look down on them when they’ve neared the finish line is appalling.

But I’ll you decide for yourself. I think Laura looked absolutely radiant on her wedding day and I’m not the only one there who thought so. She lit up the room.

And as proud as I am of what she accomplished, she deserved more acceptance than what she got.

Anyone does who’s trying to improve themselves.

If you want to be helpful, be helpful. And as the adage goes: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

But as for us, we accept everyone, we applaud everyone,  we help our clients get to their goals because they earn it.

“We Make Great People Greater.”

 

For this week’s bonus episode, I get to spend time with trainer Oonagh Duncan to help promote her brand new book “Healthy As F*ck.” As of this date of this show’s release, we are one day early for when her book is officially available but you can pre-order your copy on Amazon.com or through her website listed below. In this episode, I bring up a few topics I really enjoyed Oonagh’s take on within the book. I found her sense of humor in the writing and a more realistic leaning towards the health conversations we likely have with our friends to be extremely refreshing. You can learn more about Oonagh’s work at http://www.fitfeelsgood.com To learn more about your host, check out http://www.jasonleenaarts.com and http://www.revfittherapy.com You can also like our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/revolutionaryou Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.

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I’m honored this week to welcome fellow coach, Chris Cooper to the show. Chris is the owner of Amp Training and oversees the Facebook group: Personal Care For Personal Trainers. In this episode, we discuss the commonalities between coaches and clients when it comes to our personal struggles, self-care and behavioral obstacles that many of us go through on a daily basis. Chris and I also discuss how we handle our priorities including business and family to make sure the best version of ourselves is constantly at the forefront of life. For trainers, you can join the FB group at www.facebook.com/personalcareforpersonaltrainers and to learn more about Chris, you can follow him on Instagram at www.instagram.com/chris_coopercpt To learn more about your host, check out www.jasonleenaarts.com and www.revfittherapy.com You can also like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/revolutionaryou Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.

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For a moment, I’d like you to think of a time when you’ve felt disrespected, talked down to or felt that someone was treating you with a condescending tone.

Maybe it was a co-worker, employer, friend, or a loved one.

And I’d like you to think about how you felt at that moment.

Did you feel insulted or betrayed?

Did you tell yourself that you deserved better than that?

I believe it can be a slippery slope with human behavior. The unfortunate thing is sometimes it’s those exact scenarios that elicit change.

I think back to employers I’ve had who treated me with disrespect, especially when it was done in front of my staff or my peers. I remember how small it made me feel. I also remember that, in many ways, they got the desired result from me.

I recall one manager who could (and would) rip me up one side and down the other. And as much as it embarrassed me and made me feel terrible, I would ultimately come around and do what he asked of me (in the short term.)

Sometimes a degree of shame can make a difference in delivering desired results.

But workplace efforts are different than weight loss efforts.

It’s the rare person who can shame themselves to a life of happiness and better health.

It’s the rare person who can berate their self image and turn into a person of adequate self-worth.

So rare, that it’s probably not worth considering.

And yet, this is the place so many people that I see decide to start from.

They begin with a foundation of shame but hope and pray and kick and scream that maybe, just maybe, they’ll get the body they wanted.

I’ve never seen this work.

Ever.

Let me rephrase that.

I’ve seen people with low self esteem make progress with strength training and progress with weight loss. I see that frequently, if I’m being honest.

What I don’t see is people who maintain their efforts or applaud their success who have this self-destructive emotional foundation they’ve set for themselves.

And there will be more I have to say in future posts about why I think this foundation is set.

But today, I’d just like you to reconsider your foundation.

Because if you are hoping to motivate yourself through self-hatred or at the very least a place of self-deprecation, you’re going to find yourself in a perpetual state of unhealthy eating and unhealthy training.

I’d like you to do something really uncomfortable.

I want you to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if you can be okay with that person.

You don’t have to be over-flowing with body positivity and pride.

You just have have to accept that this is your starting place.

It’s a good place because this is the place that arguably has the most room to improve. And when you can see that there is room to improve you can shine your own light at the end of the tunnel instead of waiting for someone else to provide it.

I find that many of the same people who have no tolerance for being disrespected by others have zero problem disrespecting themselves.

They feed that low self-esteem with poor quality food or even too much of the high quality food, they self-medicate with things that don’t fill the void but blur it and temporarily cover it up, they treat themselves like shit when there’s no way in hell they’d let someone else treat them that way.

The really clever ones will use exercise as a way to punish their indulgences and hope that enough HIIT classes will swoop down and unveil the happiness they’ve been begging for.

And in case you haven’t guessed yet, I haven’t seen this work before either (certainly not long-term.)

It’s that kind of person who looks in the mirror and says: “You don’t deserve better. You’re too fat/unworthy/unattractive/unkind, etc. You are doomed to stay right here and never make progress.”

This person becomes the manifestation of those thoughts.

Or as famed speaker Earl Nightingale once said: The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.

That can be a scary thing. So when you’re planting those seeds, plant good ones.

Here’s the thing: despite your lack of belief in yourself, I believe you do deserve better health, a more capable body, and a stronger positive self-image. I believe you can have those things without a degree of narcissism (which can be equally destructive.)

Perhaps your original goals were unrealistic and thereby unattainable which makes each failure along the way more painful because it’s one more reminder that you didn’t achieve what you wanted.

You can get closer to where you want to be…actions that only you can accomplish for you.

But you will likely need support, which is where a trainer or like-minded community or friend can be of help.

If you don’t feel worthy of your goals now, your ability to accomplish them is minimal.

The best person to get you where you need to be is you, right now. You just have to believe in that person.

The people that come through our doors, our RevFit family, I believe in them and we succeed together.

The goals you want to achieve may have to be modified to fit your lifestyle and mental well-being at this stage in your life. It may go well beyond a scale number or a pant size.

But make no mistake, you do deserve those goals.

I promise.

Below is just a handful of our RevFit family. I’d like to introduce you (left to right) to Pam, Brandon, Adam, Jaylen and Kelvin. They all came here with goals. They all deserve those goals. We’ll help them get there.

“We Make Great People Greater”

 

 

 

 

Returning to the show for her third time (see episodes #108 and #172), Heather Robertson of Half Size Me joins me this week. This conversation was inspired from a couple of directions. She was a resource I utilized for a recent article of mine which you can read at www.jasonleenaarts.com/2019/08/27/weigh-watchers-has-almost-ruined-you and we both had similar opinions regarding the introduction of WW’s new Kurbo app. As someone I have immense respect and admiration for, this was another topic I knew I had to get Heather back on the show to discuss. Per the mention in this show, you can access Heather’s course at www.halfsizeme.com/family To learn more about Heather’s work, I can’t recommend her podcast, Half Size Me, enough. You can also learn more about her at www.halfsizeme.com To learn more about your host, check out www.jasonleenaarts.com and www.revfittherapy.com You can also like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/revolutionaryou Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us iTunes review.

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