Jem Yeh: April 2014

Don't ask for a meal plans.

Don't pay for a meal plan.

When your 28 days challenge is over, weight maintenance becomes YOUR part time job since you haven't made it a habit yet.

Habit comes from doing something you enjoy and practical in your leisure time. Meaning it should involve as little pain as possible while getting lots of reward.

Unless you can keep paying trainers to babysit you, keep eating boring meal replacements, reading the same BS articles your yoga instructors send you, you will not get "permanent" results.

Why? because it's hard. Eating less sux and staying on the couch feels so much better than training on a sore ankle.

In order for you to achieve sustainable results, you'd actually have to enjoy what you do to get there. If you don't enjoy the process, you probably can't maintain the result.

If you hate chicken and green beans, what make you think eating it for 8 weeks straight just because your ripped trainer order you to is going to help you in the long run? Why not learn about nutrition, new recipes, body metaoblism, and human behaviors that dictate food choices for your goal. Learn to budget in your favorite foods into your diet without ever having to follow any strict, boring, 'eat this don't eat that', meal plans?

Eventually, you'll have to learn about the human body to really GET IT! About hunger, about macronutrients, and how they all relates to how you make choices that get you closer to your goal.

Don't hire babysitters, hire a teacher. And read

Ask for ideas that will help you make food choices for yourself that only works for you and nobody else. Then, more importantly, ask for the evidence to support those claims and experiment with it.

Ask for knowledge that prepare you for vacations, happy hours, holidays, knee injuries, and asshole coworkers who bring donuts every Wednesday. That's what's going to SUSTAIN you. Not some bland meal plans your trainer got from bodybuilder.com.

Find Strength Through Knowledge.

If you keep finding yourself having to restrict this and eliminate that only to get temporary results, yo-yo dieting losing the same 10lbs over and over again, you'll never find get the permanent result you want. Stop doing the same shit.

Pictures below are my competitors. None of them do "cardio" and meal plans are a joke to them. They are smarter than 99% of the trainers who still make meal plans out there because they took the time to READ new information that help them change their beliefs. When you have new working ideas and strategies, you will start to make smarter and more mindful decision about your meal selection and prep. You become an independent thinker around food, your body, and training. You no longer need cookie cutter templates that only works while you have motivation (cuz you're paying someone) and fail miserably when you don't (stop paying someone).

Seriously, enough with the "I try to eat clean" and the "I need more willpower and get strict" B.S.
You don't need any more restrictions in your life and your willpower will run out eventually. Education, on the other hand, will last you a life time.

Helpful Links:

Problem with "will power"

http://sett.com/dicktalens/the-myth-of-willpower-and-eat-less-move-more

JYFitness Clean Eating Mistakes

http://www.jyfitness.blogspot.com/2012/10/top-ten-clean-eating-methods-and.html

Theses competitors don't do "meal plans" or attend "bootcamps", they do nutrition learning and understand training principles. They know the difference between hunger vs cravings. They know where to shop and how to prepare their own meals that hit their nutrition goals while still accommodate cooking for their family. They know how to train while traveling, experiencing elbow problems, or experiencing a stall in their progress. They know to identify their own bad behaviors and have learned strategies (that are structured and well researched) to help themselves out of those behaviors.

After you acquired the knowledge needed to train and eat for different stages of fitness, goals, and circumstances, you pretty much prep yourself. Trust me, you'll save a lot of money and time this way in the long run.

Heather Mouser - Smithville TX