I hear it all the time, I am eating well and exercising 5 times per week, but I am not getting results. My first question is what does your training actually look like? While training is really the tip of the iceberg, doing more is not necessarily the answer.

You might be exercising and madly spinning your wheels, while being totally inefficient with your time or not eating according to your goals. There is a big difference between exercise and training. Training is planned, recorded and improved upon. While exercise involves the expenditure of energy but may not have any continuity between sessions.

Let’s start from the top, my first suggestion is that if you are training yourself, but go to the gym without a plan, make, find, or download one. You will be amazing at the progress you will make and the extra accountability it will provide.

If you are aiming to improve your running performance, then recording stats like distance, time and pace are important. If you are aiming to get stronger and leaner, then recording your weights, reps and set are important. Remembering that weight-loss is the by-product of getting stronger and expending more energy than consumed over a period of time.

But despite all of this, seeing results can be hard! If it was easy, a multi-billion dollar industry would not exist to help people reach their fitness goals. Having said this, there are some very simple strategies you can use to dial in your fitness goals.

1. Not accounting for the licks, tastes and bites

So you are pre-planning delicious and nutrition meals, but then you bring yourself undonw by sneaking in extra calories without even knowing. This might be the jar of peanut butter you have at the office (1 tsp = 100 calories), nibbling at the leftover food from your children’s’ plate, a handful of chips at a party, an extra full fat latte at 3pm…. They all add up.

Do: Start by recording EVERYTHING you eat in a day- you will be surprised at what passes your lips.

2. Your training volume is too high but your workouts lack intensity
Put simply, you are not optimising your recovery time to build muscle. Your training sessions are too frequent and this effects the quality of your training because your body is operating in 2nd gear. You might be fooled to thinking that because athletes are able to train every day, you can too. Unfortunately, being able to handle this kind of volume takes time, we are without a team of experts to manage our training load, and we do not have access to state of the art facility and techniques to promote recovery. Further, the daily stress of work, family and other commitments are pulling us in the opposite direction.

Do: If your goal is to build muscle, ensure you have scheduled rest days in your program. It will make you train harder when you are back in the gym.

3. You diet does not match your training- start by eating more protein
This whole article could be centred around dietary approaches to getting results. But let’s just focus on protein. The typical western diet tends to have the balance wrong. Your plate should be ½ vegetables, ¼ protein (1 palm size) and ¼ carbohydrates. Protein is the building block for all human tissue. When you exercise, you need more protein to account for muscle breakdown.

Do: If you want to build a more superior human body, ensure you are giving it the right building blocks to do so. You should aim for 1.5g- 2g of protein per kilogram of body weight.

4. Every time you get on a roll you self sabotage
Honestly, most women do this. We are on track, focused and have razor sharp will-power to say no to foods that do not fit our new diet regime. Then one of two things happen. We start to feel fit AF, and we start to relax and before we know it, have binged on a whole pack of chips because some how we convince ourselves that we deserve it. Or, nothing happens, we get frustrated by the lack of progress and binge on all the chips, telling ourselves that we are hopeless and incapable of weight loss.

Do: Practise daily mindfulness around food. Getting results takes time and patients, give yourself at lease 30 days of being commitment to see noticeable changes in your body composition.

5. You are stressed and need more quality sleep
Studies have proven that people who get more sleep are able to lose body fat faster than those who get less than the recommend 7-8 hours and experience broken sleep. Insufficient sleep and stress raises your cortisol, a hormone that signal your body to conserve energy in the waking hours. Because of fatigue, you are also more likely to reach for sugary, energy dense foods.

Do: Create a bedtime ritual, stick to a schedule and and get off digital device within 1-2 hours of going to bed to quieten your mind.

Do any of these factors resonate? Choose one that you feel has the most significant impact. If you need help tailoring a training or nutrition program to meet you needs, get in touch about our online 23W coaching program. Read more about the science of weight loss and how to preserve muscle here.