One step at a time

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Often I come across people who, when they find out I am in dietetics and a personal trainer, would ask me a very common question. Any guessers? If you guessed, “How can I get in better shape?” then you are spot on correct.

In reality, this question can take forever to answer, and frankly that is exactly why top trainers and dietitians get paid a lot of money to work with their clients. My response to that very common question is always “well, what have you tried to do to get in better shape?” Most people think there is a one-fix solution to this question and while this is correct, that one-fix solution can ONLY be this: “having the motivation and will power to get in better shape”. Once you have that in the bag, everything else becomes a matter of knowing and implementing.

When I started being a trainer I would jump into giving advice about huge drastic life changes for my clients and friends. I quickly came to realize that there is no better way in losing people’s attention and business. Pounding people with a ton of changes only leads them to losing their motivation, which happens to be the worst thing to lose. Every trainer and dietitian knows that there is absolutely nothing better than having a client with strong motivation and will power, because that does 50% of the work for us.

So, to answer that commonly asked question there are two important steps, “how can you get in better shape?” first step is you have to define “better shape”. Whenever my mother and I used to get in heated debates and arguments I would, rarely.. well occasionally, scream out “I am free, I can do whatever I want” and her response was always “define free”. So you must define the term “in better shape”, do you want to loose weight? Build muscle? Improve your aerobic (cardio) performance? Feel healthier? Improve your chances from getting sick? Define it however you want to, as long as that is what you want and not what society expects!

Step 2 is how bad do you want to achieve how you defined “better shape”? Kinda want it? Want it bad? Not really sure? Want it more than anything in life? The list can go on. Once you define your motivational factor, rank it from 1 (I think I want it) – 10 (I will do whatever it takes) and monitor it over time. Make small changes in your life and see if it improves your motivational factor. You might ask “what small changes do I need to make?” and in fact what you are doing right now, curiously reading my fitness and nutrition blog, is precisely a small change. I will help you with the rest, over time of course. I personally had to learn from a very inspirational special person that the secret is always: one step at a time!

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Love it, or use fitness & nutrition to change it!

Mohamed