Castle Personal Training
Castle Personal Training is a Corstorphine, Edinburgh based company who specialise in weightloss/toning and Pre and Post Natal exercise.
It’s time to stop acting like a child.
Hi guys,
We’re snowed in in Edinburgh today, and I’m not liking it one little bit. I had plans, quite a few sessions and classes to get through and I don’t like being stuck in the house. As regular readers of my blogs will know; my puppies are also fairly close to the ground and the snow really is at such a level that even the ridiculously bouncy Buddy is toiling a little bit so I can’t take the pups out on a nice long walk, which is my default thing to do when I have a cancellation or two;
Picture taken in a nice shallow bit 🙂
But, since I have to be productive and active to feel good about myself, it does give me a chance to write about something I’d been meaning to write about for a while.
I’m going to write something here that might be quite controversial but it’s been on my mind for a long time now so I might as well.
You don’t achieve goals in a straight line but you sure as shit will never achieve anything if you keep giving up when things get a little bit tough.
I’m very lucky when it comes to work;
I’m lucky I love my job. I’m lucky in that all my clients are commited people who genuinely want to reach their goals. I’m also lucky in that when one of my clients does go off-the-boil for a little bit I can make them understand that that’s completely normal and they understand that. Not one of my clients has a “Feck it” attitude, an attitude a lot of my PT colleagues complain to me about and, funny enough, an attitude a lot of PTs suffer from when it comes to anything other than exercise.
You know the attitude; as soon as it gets tough, throw in the towel. As soon as a weight gets heavy to lift say; “I can’t do this” and then walk off. As soon as exercise involves even a little bit of sweat and being out of breath, stop pushing. As soon as the diet feels restrictive, crap out and just go back to eating what you feel like because “I can’t eat like a rabbit all the time”, as if it’s really that black and white. In short, as soon as any real sacrifice is required, just quit. Obviously this goes for more than just weightloss but I’ll just focus on that to keep it simple.
The human body is basically lazy, and the human mind is more than happy to go along. It’s not easy to get off the couch, stop watching shitty tv, and actually go and do something that requires effort. It’s harder work to learn something new than to just veg out. It’s always tempting to go and eat loads of salt or sugar as your brain rewards that sort of behaviour immediately, albeit very temporarily, whereas feeling good, strong and energetic takes a lot longer. And it’s definitely tempting for people to throw their toys out of the pram when they’ve been living like a child for a large chunk of their lives.
HERE’S THE CONTROVERSIAL BIT
Fat people are like 5 year olds, there I said it.
Yeah, that’s gonna bite me later on.
People who are clinically obese and do nothing about it, no exercise and no REAL healthy eating, are basically behaving like a 5 year old without supervision. I could put a caveat about “how some people have medical conditions” etc. in here because I’m bound to get emails from people telling me about their Polycystic ovaries and all that nonsense but I decided not to. For those of you with Polycystic Ovaries; low carb, there’s your answer to losing weight.
For 99% of all clinically obese people, it’s not because of any medical condition, it’s because you live like a child and don’t take responsibility for your actions.
There is no such thing as a “healthy obese person”, it’s a bit like a unicorn that way.
A fat one at that.
And, if you live your life like that long enough, that means that you train your brain to be weak and only care about what it gets now. Short-term pleasure, which is the only kind you get from bad habits, becomes the norm and that’s why I say you’re still behaving like a 5 year old. Mature people don’t live that way. As a little aside; I love that link and think more people could do with reading it and having a closer look at themselves.
Again, just to make it clear, I am only talking about people who don’t do anything about their situation. Don’t come to me to complain how “I am unfair and you go walk everyday and have lost 20 stone already thusfar”, I don’t mean you.
If you manage to be open and honest with yourself then you can start to really make a change that will benefit you
If you realise, and admit to yourself, that this is what you look like on the inside and that you are therefore quite unhealthy, then you can change;
Healthy on the left, visceral fat, which ALL obese people have, on the right.
Tell me again how you feel fine.
But you can only change when you really admit that all is not well and that your behaviour is self-destructive.
As soon as you take that step, take responsibility for your actions and start making decisions accordingly then you will find it easier to make some healthy options, get off your bum and start exercising and eating right. If you can see the big picture then you can get through those tough moments when you’re feeling weak and life is shit. Then you can say that, just because you had a handful of Pringles for breakfast you haven’t fecked up your diet for an entire day/week/month and you can just have something proper again for lunch. Only then can you plan, and look, ahead and really succeed.
I write about Mindset a lot, it really is essential, and a solid, mature, mindset is what your Personal Trainer should help you achieve. A good PT is so much more than someone who shows you how to squat and tells you what a good diet looks like, he/she’ll be able to get you through those shitty moments or get you back on the horse if you’ve had a little slip.
And that’s where my own mindset comes in; yes the weather today meant that all sessions and classes fell out of the schedule, and I spent a lot more time indoors than I’d like to, but I atleast got some stuff done and had a productive day, rather than just waste the entire day sitting on my bum and feeling shit about myself at the end of it.
Take care, even when you’re snowed in.
Peter
PS. Now obviously me not being able to take the pups for a long walk doesn’t mean we didn’t go out, for my and my pups sanity, so here are some cute puppy pictures for your entertainment.
Lola bear.
Snowy carnage
My boy
My girl
Castle Personal Training 