Recently you may have noticed the new, colourful results road up in the gym, or you might have worked through it in your most recent catch up with me. The roadmap contains a concise summary of the do’s and dont’s for all aspects of your life to enable you to lose fat, get fit and live a long healthy life. This is how I condensed 4 years of uni and 8 years in the industry onto this single page.

For 4 years I went to uni and learned about exercise. When I was 17 and in my final year of high school I decided I wanted to study Health and Sports Science at UNSW. I imagined spending my days conducting experiments on elite athletes. The athlete would be wearing a gas mask, they would have several leads and cables attached to them, and I would be there in my lab coat frantically jotting down data points to determine if they could win gold at the next Olympics.

The reality was very different. The first 2 years my subjects were mathematics, statistics, chemistry, biology, psychology, biochemistry etc. Where’s the athletes? Where’s the Sports Science? Things turned around, and by my 3rd and 4th year at uni I was doing more interesting subjects like functional anatomy, biomechanics, exercise physiology, exercise prescription, exercise for special populations, movement rehabilitation, exercise and pharmacology. We even did an experiment where we had a subject riding a bike in a gas mask with ECG cables.

I emerged from uni with an intimate knowledge of the benefits of different types of exercise for different types of people. I knew lots of big words and thought that exercise was the sole solution to every health issue that exists and could bring about global harmony and world peace if given the chance.

MOVE

Fast forward 2 years. I’m now working at Ignite Health (now known as CrossFit Igntie Sydney). I’ve discovered that no one really cares about the big words I learned at uni. I’m also starting to realise that the personal skills I learned while working at Bundeena Service Station through uni were probably more useful to my work at Ignite than the respiratory exchange ratio of a 20 year old male cycling at 70% VO2 max for 30 minutes.

In the early years of my working life at Ignite I began to see first hand that when people started exercising they got a little fitter, a little stronger, felt a little better.

I was surprised that they didn’t seem to achieve the amazing life transforming weight loss and health benefits that both they and I expected.

Maybe it’s the food? Can’t be, they all tell me they’re eating a really good low fat diet. What gives?

Fast forward another year and along comes CrossFit. Wow, now people are seeing some good results. Perhaps the main reason people weren’t getting results before is that they weren’t working hard enough. As trainers, learning about CrossFit gave me and my colleagues so many new tools to deliver intense sessions for our clients. It was exciting! When people were first exposed to this they got results! But would they last?

EAT

With CrossFit came exposure to the Zone and Paleo diets. I immersed myself in the literature (and still am). Despite some initial scepticism, I accepted some uncomfortable truths and let go of some of my long held beliefs about food.

With this new information at hand, we started re-educating people about what they really should be eating. People start eating less bread, pasta and processed food and start eating more unprocessed plants and animals  and we start seeing the dramatic results that we weren’t before….. for a while.

We observe over time that people can’t seem to maintain the strict eating. People are also getting fatigued and struggling with niggling injuries. The intense training and low carb, strict paleo perhaps isn’t the bees knees I thought it was.

SLEEP / STRESS

After a while I start to notice that some clients are eating strict paleo and training 5 times per week and are feeling great and getting results and others who are seemingly doing the exact same thing are feeling burned out and their fitness and fat loss has stalled or is going backwards. I feel guilty because people it seems people are doing everything we tell them too yet still don’t seem to be getting results.

I was convinced when I was exposed to CrossFit and what healthy eating really looks like that I had all the answers. As I realised I didn’t, I began to ask questions about what’s going on in peoples lives outside the gym and their nutrition and how is that effecting them. What other factors need to be considered?

I started listening, reading and learning everything I could about what else could be at play. I learned more about how the body reacts to things like stress and sleep deprivation and came to the realisation that no matter how good your training regime and food, if you’re trying to function on insufficient sleep and you’re stressed to the max then your bodies hormonal response to that lifestyle simply won’t let you lose fat, get fitter and be healthy.

”OK, I can start to see how 12 hour work days are effecting our clients, and that the 6 hours sleep our clients are getting per night might be having an impact on their results. EVERYTHING contributes to our health in one way or another.”

THE RESULTS ROAD

I’ve arrived at a point where I firmly believe that all aspects of a person’s being, the way they move, the way they fuel themselves, their internal dialogue and mental health, their ability to rest, relax and unwind all contributes to their quality of the life and the health of the body they live in.

So after a 4 year degree and almost a decade in the industry I’ve condensed my recommendations for fat loss, fitness, health and longevity onto this single page. It aims to give you the info you need (in the bubbles) to attain the optimal health, fitness, body composition indefinitely  and points out a few things to watch out for along the way (in the arrows). It is a tool that simplifies what we need to know and DO to be healthy, lean and fit.

You can find that page here or have a look at it next time you’re in the gym or in having your catch up.