Red Pill or Blue?

True story
So in the interests of protecting the guilty I'll pretend that this fictitious person never was one of my clients and his name wasn't Steve.

Steve, a successful professional in his 50s wanted to lose some weight and get in better shape and so committed to training once a week with me.

Now Steve was pretty smart and he knew that he wouldn't be satisfied if he didn't perform due diligence and research healthy eating to speed up his progress.

I'd hear from the other trainers that he was picking their brains about fat burner supplements and pre workout powders. 

He'd even ask me about whether he should be eating organic steel cut oats for breakfast.

I was encouraged by Steve's enthusiasm and happily supplied him with the knowledge he sought.

There was however one small problem. Steve liked to drink.

In fact he loved it. 

After his 11am training session he'd have lunch with a bottle of wine and then make his way home via a few pubs along the way.

His daily consumption was pretty high and he was happy to talk about it. It usually consisted of approx 2 bottles of wine a few beers and perhaps more at the weekend.

Clearly this is an extreme example and perhaps beyond my area of expertise. 

I did however, offer one suggestion or strategy to reduce the alcohol consumption by delaying our session until the afternoon thereby delaying the alcohol kick off time.

This didn't work unfortunately as Steve would turn up for his session after a pre workout Malbec!

Ok this whole ridiculous story - I made it up to illustrate a point... 

Or perhaps it is actually true...

The reason I (possibly) made up this story is that it's so easy to get caught up with all the latest diet trends potions or pills on offer at this time of year.

Each headline with the promise of improbable results is accompanied by the effortless action it will take for you to arrive at the New You.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed, so where to start?

Possibly you've heard of Pareto's principle or the 80/20 rule? Derive 80% of your results from 20% of your efforts. (He said a lot more than this but I'm only using twenty percent)

In relation to your health and fitness it's not that complicated in fact it's usually somewhat obvious.

Take a look at your worst habits, your worst days (or weeks!) and put your work in here.

If you're getting 80% of your calories from alcohol it probably won't make much difference what you eat for breakfast.

Another myth I'd like to clear up about habits is that it's not about the length of time it takes to adopt a new habit it's about how frequently you practice this new habit.

So now you've identified where you need to focus your efforts you'll need to build up a certain amount of momentum and then work towards creating a chain of success that you don't want to break.

Place all faith in YOURSELF when it comes to change NOT some new diet hack, potion or magic pill.