'And what do YOU do?'

My name is Jaime, and I'm Canadian. I’m in the process of getting my Greencard. As a function of the immigration process, I haven’t been allowed to work since March. I haven’t been allowed to go ‘home’ to Toronto since then either. I'm kind of an in-between legal alien. At 31 years old, I'm finding it exceptionally difficult not to have a vocation; not to have something to be proud of, professionally speaking. Not to have a 9-to-5 to call my own when someone asks, “And what do you do?” It’s hard to say, “Well, I used to be the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s biggest bodybuilding magazine… but now I'm a happy housewife.”

Recently, however, I had a paradigm shift. Or rather, my wife shifted my paradigm. Since we moved to Florida, I’ve taken on the responsibility of coaching and programming at Crossfit ABF – our home Crossfit box in Clearwater; 5 days a week I coach, and I plan out the week’s worth of workouts for all the members. On top of that, the gym recently moved locations, which meant building a new gym from scratch … In only 3 weeks. I helped the owner tirelessly for days as we got the place ready. 

In my country, I have a Bachelor degree with Honors
in Kinesiology. But "This is America."

I was also doing all the domestic things around the house: Cooking, laundry, cleaning, fixing, buying. Whatever needed to be done in our little apartment I did. I made our food for the week, packed her lunches the night before, and made sure there was dinner on the table when she got home from work. And lastly, I was our social events coordinator; any plans that had to be made, any time we wanted to go out, or see what our friends were doing, I set up the date night. I arranged our calendar, and planned weekend trips, staycations, day trips, and nights out. 

When I told Katie that I felt like I lost my purpose when I lost my job, she said, "Are you forgetting that you took on the job of coaching for free? And that you're building an entire gym from scratch? And the fact that we have more friends now than ever?! Baby girl, I don't know how you do all of it in a day." And boom! Just like that, I realized my value wasn't in what I did for work, or even what I did during the day, but rather, it was in the effort I put into my days. It was in the love that I poured into my friends and the members of the gym. I am, in fact, 'busier' than when I worked as a journalist, but I'm not getting paid. And that's okay!

Moral of the story, although it took me about 5 months to come to terms with my 'forced unemployment', I honestly couldn't be happier. It’s reminded me, and really reinforced the fact, that my worth isn’t in what I do, it’s in who I am.

Why You're Not Losing Weight

I have so many clients coming to me asking for a program that will "fit" with their lifestyle. I also have people telling me that they're not going to renew with me because my plan didn't fit their lifestyle. It was either too complicated, too mathematical, or not realistic for them.

Let me explain something:

Fat loss is not a lifestyle. Being in a calorie deficit is NOT a way of life. It's a short term solution to a problem; you're unhappy with your weight, or your fat:muscle ratio, or how you look, or how your pants fit, and you want to do something about it.

Only people who have a lot of weight to lose can get away with doing some cardio, some weight training, and 'eating clean' (instead of tracking macros). People who don't have a lot of fat to lose, or who want to take their fitness to the next level, cannot just 'eat clean.' Fat loss is a numbers game; you NEED to burn more calories than you consume. With that said, how will you know how much you're burning (or eating for that matter), if you don't count?

You won't see results if you don't put the work in hard and fast at the beginning. That slow, 'lifestyle' plan is great once you've actually accomplished the fat loss part, and you just want to maintain what you've done. In order to accomplish that though, you NEED to do the annoying, tedious short term work - Like counting your calories, eating out of tupperware, and making sure you don't skip your cardio sessions.

So when you tell your trainer that you want to lose fat, and they give you a program, don't look at it and say, "There's no way I can maintain this ...", I hope they say, "That's the point." 

Maintenance = Lifestyle. Fat loss = Short term.