If you tell anyone, you have a coach for anything, you’ll get one of two responses:
- Person sniggers and snorts, asks why you need one for that purpose and then just shrugs and says “I’d do it myself.” while simultaneously standing their being totally mediocre in said field of play.
- “Great! How have they helped you??” This normally comes from people who are already coached for something.
In this day and age, you can get a coach to help you do pretty much anything – and I think that’s brilliant! The world has become a skill sharing economy, enabling us all to conquer a lot more and feel a lot more fulfilled, so take advantage of this!
The world of weight loss coaching in the UK and across the globe, has become a pretty confusing and saturated market. There’s keto Kathy telling you carbs are evil and flaunting her flashy fake smile next to her airbrushed abs on her instagram while holding her latest book about how she went from unhappy stay at home mum to “the bod” in less than six weeks.
There’s fasting Frank down the road who does those tongue in cheek videos on TikTok about his breakfast – black coffee and water only, since he is too virtuous to let anything pass his lips until 12pm. He’s got a hot wife and a fast car because of Intermittent fasting – clearly the diet of all successful CEOs on the planet…
But these people are NOT weight loss coaches…
Social media has given everyone a platform for their own voice. They can stand there and tell you how important and successful they are. And I’m sure some of what they have to say, will work for some people. But it’s very often tested on n=1 – themselves. For every follower with a success story, there will be plenty more whom their “strategy” hasn’t worked for. Because they’re missing one important fact; everyone is different.
And that’s what helps us understand “what is a weight loss coach” really?
I mean I guess the key is in the name – weight loss coaches help you to lose weight. Or do they…?
Of course, a good weight loss coach will help you to understand how to lose weight. This will be based on good evidence for health and weight loss, but it’s important to also expect them to help you experiment to a certain degree. We are all different. We are all individual. What works for Dave down the road, isn’t necessarily going to work for you too. You have different physiology, different genetics and more important, different lifestyles. One of the biggest things a weight loss coach can do for you, is help you understand what will work for YOU to control not just your weight, but your health too.
But there is something more than that that a good weight loss should do for you…
You come to me and tell me you want to lose weight. You tell me a story about how you looked ten years ago, how happy you were, why you were happy with that weight, what your body looked like.
The most valuable thing I can do, is help you to understand WHY you felt happier then. Was it all REALLY to do with your physical appearance…?
Nine times out of ten, the answer is no. And that’s where performance coaching comes in. Instead of just looking at how many calories you need to consume to lose weight, or even what food you need to be eating to improve health, I help you evaluate life as a whole and establish exactly what it is that made you happy back then. Yes, your body composition is likely to be a very small part of that, but that’s usually the SYMPTOM of something more…
A good weight loss coach won’t sit there and agree that your body fat is the source of all your problems. They actually don’t want you to be so focused on restricting your food for the rest of your life. They want you to be happy. They want you to find out WHY you put the weight on. Yes, we know, shoving too much into your gob. But the reality is, this is not usually a standalone problem. Stress-eating, time-crunching, confusion, overwhelm, they’re all causes of over-eating and weight gain. So if we simply address weight loss through food and calories, are we really solving the problem?
No.
We need to figure out what went wrong. What changed between now and then. What started to tip the scales in favour of fat.
So a good weight loss coach, isn’t in fact about weight loss at all. It’s about so much more.
Now if you think this sounds familiar, go check out my Super Human scorecard. It’s completely FREE and you’ll instantly get tips to help you kickstart your weightless journey today. You’ll also receive my free weekly newsletter to help you get the best from all my weight loss related content as well as access to my weekly nutritional nuggets and the opportunity to join my FREE facebook community of like-minded individuals, the Paladins. How about that for bang for buck??