How a personal trainer can help you lose weight
Losing weight on your own, without the help of a professional knowledgable trainer can definitely be done, though it may be difficult for many people. Having somebody who has experience and expertise in reducing bodyweight can help make the process much more efficient and keep you focussed. Accountability and support can also be extremely useful for anyone who is trying to reduce their bodyweight or improve their body composition.
Helping you get the right mindset for losing weight
One of the things that needs to happen right at the start of the process is the adoption of a positive mindset. Everyone can lose weight or body fat, provided they can make the necessary changes in their lifestyle. You also need to be willing to learn more about lifestyle factors that are sabotaging you, about healthful nutrition and also how to avoid self sabotage. So there is a bit of a learning curve if you really want to lose weight properly and permanently.
Coaching lifestyle factors involved in weight loss
A sedentary lifestyle, combined with bad nutritional habits is the major cause for most peoples weight issues. Your lifestyle and nutrition habits will be analysed and modified or optimised so that you become a far more active person, who gravitates towards food that is nutritionally dense but calorifically efficient. Sitting or laying around 23 hours a day and then exercising for one hour will not be effective as a long term strategy. You also need to optimise your sleep cycles so that your hormones balance themselves out. There’s a lot of evidence for the link between bad sleep patterns and weight gain, and these need to be coached and fixed as part of the process.
One of the biggest sabotage mechanisms for people who have weight issues is stress. This leads them to reduce the stress by eating too much or drinking sugar laden drinks or high calorie alcoholic drinks. This is often a vicious cycle, with more bad choices being made as a result, leading to more stress and so on.
Of course reducing the sources of stress is essential as a longer term vision of the problem, but several very helpful tools can be implemented to reduce the response to stress and to help people make smarter more conscious choices regarding their food and drink intake. The implementation of simple meditation practices, which involve breath work or other techniques have been shown in scientific literature to be of significant help in encouraging a more positive mindset, reading stress and encouraging a more mindful awareness of lifestyle decisions. It also directly reduces stress hormones which create their own significant problems internally, if they are unbalanced.
In essence these additional practices can help you ‘update’ your software so you can carry out a healthier lifestyle more easily – which will benefit your ‘hardware’.
Using the most efficient nutritional approach to maximise fat loss
Going on ‘diets’ often works for a while, but then weight is often regained. What needs to really happen is a paradigm change internally, so that new nutritional instincts takeover and you don’t ever feel deprived or restricted. Calorie deficits do need to happen and can easily be created without feeling like you’re ‘dieting’. You can also incorporate certain types of macronutient ratios to help maximise fat loss and maintain muscle mass, though this should be a shorter term strategy which transitions to an overall more healthy and less rigid approach in maintenance phases.
Creating a calorific deficit through movement
Becoming more generally active, in addition to exercises sessions, will help you on all sorts of levels. For example studies show you sleep better when you’ve moved more during the day, particularly if you’ve been exposed to adequate sunlight. Hormones rebalance themselves (which is essential to regulate appetite and body composition). You’ll bring blood circulation to all the tissues of the body and more easily create an energy deficit, provided your diet is good. So as a trainer my approach to weight loss includes getting you moving a lot more.
Building more metabolically demanding muscle tissue
In the exercise sessions we concentrate on using metabolically demanding exercise which will burn a lot of calories, but also help to build some lean muscle mass. This in turn requires more calories from your body to maintain, which means you burn more calories at rest. The training done to achieve this will generally focus on using the ‘Big’ exercises from weight lifting and strength training.
- Dips and ring dips
- Pull- ups and chins
- Deadlifts, sumo deadlifts and romanian deadlifts
- Squats: Front, back, overhead and goblet
- Bench press
- Millitary presses
Additional training with kettlebells is also excellent for building muscle, creating metabolic demand and burns calories too.
- Cleans
- snatches
- jerks
- presses
- swings
- juggling
- lunges and squats
Calisthenic exercises are great in a weight loss program because they also work muscle development and endurance, creating a demand on the metabolism and can tone and grow muscle mass. They can also be done in active circuits to burn a lot of calories
Other metabolically demanding drills and exercises are done in the studio with pads and various other pieces of equipment to suitably ramp up your metabolic rate.
In addition to this type of in-session gym work you will asked to carry out as much active living as possible, including a lot of walking, cycling or other ‘leisurely’ active tasks. These things all add up and when combined a low and high intensity, well balanced active lifestyle will get your body into an optimal state to rebalance itself.
Transitioning to maintenance and prevention of weight re-gain.
Ultimately your long term success will depend on your ability to absorb a more healthful, natural and active lifestyle paradigm. Yo-yo weight loss and gain is very common, because most people never factor in a transition phase, or receive the proper education in terms of healthful nutrition and lifestyle practices that will keep their weight optimised. It’s an essential part of the process.