Take Action. Don’t Give up.

I had perhaps one of the most moving moments in my 16 year career this weekend. My client (who we’ll call John) who is pushing 55 years of age, has really hit a flat spot in his life. Work “is just work”and with the passing of his father this year, he has taken on a lot of the family responsibilities that come with dealing with a loss. As a result of all the stress and emotional heartache, his health has seriously deteriorated. The guy is but a shadow of his physique when we started training some years ago. Throw in the fact that John is a single guy with no emotional support & having no one to soundboard / talk about their day with and you could probably appreciate why our session this weekend nearly had both of us in tears as it all came to a head.

The session had gone only 10 minutes and all that kept coming out of John’s mouth were comments like “I’ve got to get back into it”. “I’ve being doing some research on some diets that I think may work”. “I need to start before the end of this year or it’s going to be too late”. “I’ve just been so tired lately I can’t get out of bed”. I had to stop the session. In my mind there was no point in continuing. He would just leave the session feeling good for the short term before inevitably falling back into a spiral. I felt we had to address the core of the problem and hit some home truths there and then.

Without going into all of the details and the tears that followed in that next 10 minutes, I would like to share with you the underlying message I gave to him. To put it simply – Dont think, just do.

Don’t let emotions pull you away from your goal. Don’t think too much about which diet will work and which one won’t. Thoughts are just questions your emotions will ask you – even when you don’t ask for their opinion! Thoughts like, “Will I be able to do his long term? What if I don’t like eggs? What if my friends see me eat like this? Surely there’s a better alternative? What if it doesn’t work? I’m going to have to go to the supermarket this afternoon and start planning. It’s going to take up too much time- I don’t have enough time as it is! I just want to live my life without the stress, without the restrictions. What’s the blood type diet all about? Should I try Paleo? Training every day will be too hard on my body? I NEED at least 7hrs of sleep a night. Work is so stressful at the moment.” STOP THINKING AND START ACTING. Just pick one avenue and commit to it. Don’t listen to the voices and questions in your head. Your emotions and thoughts are ALWAYS trying to push you off course and USE YOU. Don’t be fooled by the dogma and voices of other people’s thinking. Who said it’s too late to start again? Is that a rule? As a wise man once said;