Evolution not Revolution

I've just had a chat (over a herbal tea!) with another Personal Trainer pal of mine. She has helped one of her clients to lose 8stones in the last 18 months – a good slow rate, one that means he'll keep the weight off.

We talked about how she did this, what diet approach she used, what she said to him. She was not training this client but merely corresponding with him over the web – he's several thousand miles away.

Her approach may be considered unusual – she did not tell him to stop eating pizza and burgers. His doctor had tried this and it had not worked, indeed the client had said that this was impossible for him. So what did she do?

Well we all know that you will lose weight if you reduce your calorie intake and that getting moving will help further. So she asked him how many burgers he ate, how much pizza and she asked him to gradually reduce this. Slowly his meals went from 3 burgers to two, to one with a big salad.

She asked him how far he could walk – they agreed he would start by walking to the end of his drive until he lost enough weight to manage more. As he got slimmer he bought a bike and started riding for exercise (the bike shop sold him an old delivery bike at first as the only thing that would take his weight), he runs a local cycling group for people like himself now as the local bike club did not think he could keep up with them.

He is now trying new fruits and vegetables every week under her instruction – some he likes and will add into his range of foods eaten, some not. He still eats burgers and pizza (which he now cycles across town to get!) but he is a more 'normal' and healthy weight. His eating has changed radically – but it has evolved over time, it was not all done at once.

What can we learn here? Well, work with what you've got and it's evolution not revolution that will work best for some clients.