Facing your weight loss journey alone can be tough, lonely, and discouraging, that’s why bringing a personal online weight loss coach along for the ride can be game-changing. One of the biggest factors in whether you lose weight or not is motivation. Trying to motivate yourself to do something you don’t particularly understand or enjoy is a mighty force to wrestle with.
Fitmate coaches understand that motivation is a key player in any successful weight loss plan. They help you create a healthy plan and then keep you motivated with positivity and encouragement. When you are motivated, you can easily stay dedicated to your new lifestyle, put in the hard work, and be consistent about it.
The Role of Establishing Healthy Routines for Weight Loss
Commitment to a weight loss journey means accepting a long-term process of consistently following certain routines. These include consuming lean foods that will keep hunger at bay, managing calorie intake, incorporating strength and cardio training, and addressing any potential obstacles like stress that can hinder the adoption of these healthy routines.
Your personal weight loss coach will work with your lifestyle to create routines that are realistic for you. Whether it’s finding the right time of the day to include or figuring out how to save calories for weekly treats, your personal coach for weight loss can help you find the solution that’s best for you.
How a Personal Weight Loss Coach Assists in Developing Healthy Habits?
Of course, once your routines are established, you need to stick to them, and adapting to a new lifestyle is no easy feat. That goes double for when you’re trying to get rid of bad habits and adopt new healthy ones consistently. This is where your weight loss personal coach steps in. They utilize proven techniques to motivate you and provide you with realistic guidance that aligns with your lifestyle.
Personal Coaches Can Help You Find an Attainable Starting Point
Embarking on a weight loss journey can be intimidating for even the most determined of people. It can feel like the challenge is too big, and changing your routine is uncomfortable and on top of that is the fear of failure. However, that’s a normal way to feel when you’re trying to make all sorts of changes in your life at once. While the notion that ‘big changes equal big results’ makes sense, doing too much all at once also has its drawbacks. This is where a personal coach can help you find a balance.
Identifying Focus Areas
Your personal weight loss coach can help you break down all of the changes you want to make into manageable pieces. Instead of jumping into the deep end in the first few weeks of your journey, your coach will give you key areas to focus on initially. This will prevent that initial overwhelming feeling since you’ll only be doing a few new things each week.
For example, if you lead a primarily sedentary lifestyle, one of the initial suggestions would be to simply add a few short walks to your weekly schedule. If you find yourself getting hungry after healthy meals, your coach might suggest incorporating more protein and/or fiber to manage hunger more effectively and prevent overeating. By prioritizing one or two new routines each week, you give yourself time to get used to each new habit before moving to the next one.
Personal Coaches Can Get You Off to a Successful and Achievable Start
Weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint so you should be aiming for steady, manageable weight loss right from the beginning. You do that by creating manageable targets. When you hit your targets, you gain confidence. You also get confirmation that you can achieve the goals you set out to achieve which ultimately makes you want to keep going.
Formulating Specific Goals
Your personal trainer online works with you to create goals that challenge you but are not impractical. When you work toward achieving challenging, but attainable goals, you increase your motivation, and that motivation is the propeller that’s going to keep you moving throughout your journey.
For example, if you have led a relatively inactive lifestyle and decide to incorporate cardio into your new lifestyle, jumping headfirst into high-intensity spinning classes three times a week might not be the best idea. Sure, you might start with a bang, but such an intense start could lead to fatigue or injury. Beyond that, it might be too much too soon which can lead to missed sessions, sinking motivation, and a slow-down in your weight loss momentum.
An experienced personal coach would instead suggest you start small such as two 30-minute walks a week. This is an achievable goal that lays the foundation for consistent cardio exercise. You might think the impact of such exercise is minimal, but it adds up and gives you the confidence to go after bigger goals later on - like spinning classes three times a week.
Personal Coaches Arm You with the Right Weight Loss Tools for Success
So now you’ve got some goals for the week, however, those goals without a structured plan for implementing them can render them useless. You cannot set a goal and then ‘play it by ear’ about the date and time that you’re going to do the action. When you don’t have a fixed schedule, you end up postponing or missing out on doing the activity altogether. That, of course, means stagnant progress which is discouraging and demotivating.
Adequate Planning
Research has repeatedly validated that successful weight loss is often a result of meticulous planning. It's been found that you are far more likely to commit to your cardio sessions if you've scheduled them into your routine. Similarly, planning your meals increases the chance of you sticking to a nutritious, portion-controlled diet. Of course, life happens and sometimes you’ve got to change things up.
Your personal coach can give you tips and tricks to deal with sudden changes of plan, like if you don’t have time to cook due to your child’s after-school activities or maybe work is keeping you too busy for evening cardio. Scheduled things get done, even when you have to move them around the schedule a little bit.
Personal Coaches Ensure You Never Stop Moving Forward
After the initial high of starting your weight loss journey has worn off, it can be easy to slip back into old habits. But that’s exactly when you need to push forward, the new actions you’ve incorporated into your life require consistency so you can maintain your weight loss momentum to hit your goal. That’s why being accountable to your personal coach is important.
Ensuring Accountability
While self-monitoring can be effective, studies show that people are generally more accountable when they report to someone, particularly a professional who is invested in their progress. When you feel accountable to someone besides yourself, it often adds that extra impetus you need to push on.
Personal Coaches Ensure You Remain Intrinsically Motivated
While external motivation and accountability play a very important role in weight loss, having intrinsic motivation is also important. When you feel motivated from within, you are better able to stick to your new routine and habits. A big part of maintaining the intrinsic motivation that got you started on your weight loss journey in the first place is to adopt new habits that you get pleasure out of. But how do you do that?
Help in Picking Foods and Activities
You need knowledge and experience to figure out what foods are nutritious and delicious as well as activities that are fun and effective. That’s where a personal coach comes in. With a vast knowledge bank, your coach can help you build a diverse diet of foods that are good for your body and good for your tastebuds. Your coach can also help you discover activities that you look forward to doing and are also effective. Changing up your diet and activities with the help of your coach prevents monotony so you intrinsically feel excited about your weight loss program from week to week
Personal Coaches Help You Constantly Improve
Your weight loss journey is about progress, not perfection. It’s about improving from day to day and week to week. You will face trials and tribulations along the way and that’s a natural part of trying to master the elements of a healthier lifestyle. Whether it’s diet or exercise or mental resistance, each time you get to the other side of a trial and win, you feel like you are progressing and that is a powerful motivator. This whole journey is about learning, growing, and refining, and your personal weight loss coach uses their expertise to help you keep moving.
Offering Constructive Feedback
They do that by providing actionable feedback based on their extensive knowledge of weight loss principles, nutritional knowledge, and exercise physiology. This helps you continually refine and improve your habits and techniques – whether it’s tweaking your diet to include more fibrous foods or moderating your intake of such things as cheese (which although high in protein, can be calorific if consumed in excess). You can comfortably move forward and improve when you have a knowledgeable cheerleader by your side.
Personal Coaches Offer Strategies for Quick Recovery From Any Setbacks
It doesn’t matter how disciplined you are, there will be setbacks. Anything from a holiday meal to work exhaustion can cause you to change your routine. Your setback is not as important as how you rebound. Many people feel inclined to beat themselves up after a setback. However, your personal weight loss coach who is trained to provide emp;athy and understanding can help you move past it and instead focus on a strategy and solution. For example, if you miss your evening activity because you’re too tired after work, your coach will help you figure out where else you can plug the activity in, such as at lunchtime. Whatever the setback, a new strategy will quickly get you back on track and leave you stronger for it.
Personal Coaches Inspire Your Continual Growth
One of the secret weapons that boost motivation in your relationship with your personal coach, is the collaborative dialogue you have together. This interaction isn't just about updates on your weekly cardio sessions or discussions on your dietary changes, but a conscious strategy aimed at inspiring change. Instead of your coach dictating what you should do and when, imagine a scenario where you're mutually deciding these targets. You're not only engaging in this decision-making discussion, but you're also taking the reins here. Why does this matter?
So much of change is about belief and ownership. When you 'talk' yourself into performing certain actions, when you have a say in what you commit to doing, you're likely to take these commitments far more seriously than someone else's instructions. A skilled personal coach recognizes and encourages this. They won't just assign tasks but will prompt you to delve deeper, to reflect, to think, and to decide.
Personal Coaches Give Unwavering Support Throughout the Process
Despite ironclad routines and thorough planning, life is far from predictable, which means an obstacle can suddenly pop up and derail our best intentions. A random argument with your spouse can disrupt your emotional equilibrium, sending you reaching for that instant comfort food. If you don’t have access to speak to your coach about it right away, you may find that your whole week goes off course until you can finally connect with your coach. That’s why on-demand personal weight loss coaching is so crucial to success.
On-Demand Availability
Your coach's ability to be there when you need them is crucial in maintaining your weight loss consistency. Surprise cravings late at night? An unplanned work dinner on a weekend? Or dealing with emotional eating triggered by stress? These obstacles need instant strategizing and prompt response.
Being able to address these issues as they occur helps you regain control swiftly, preventing temporary setbacks from transforming into significant derailments. Having a coach who can offer guidance in these critical moments can make all the difference in your weight loss journey, helping you maintain your momentum and steadily move towards your goals.
Personal Coaches: Your Partners in Emotional and Social Well-being
Weight loss is not just a physical journey but a holistic one, encompassing your emotional and social well-being. Given that, your weight loss coach is more than a nutrition and fitness guide, but rather a vital partner holding your hand on the journey.
Research shows that social support is a powerful motivating tool. Teamwork, especially with someone who genuinely cares for your well-being, helps you sustain motivation and stick to your new healthier habits. With all of your responsibilities at home, work, and life, the weight loss journey can become a battle against time and willpower. However, when you have a team member on your side reminding you to take time for yourself and perform your healthy actions, you feel encouraged and motivated to stay on your path to weight loss success.
The Bottom Line: Finding the Best Personal Weight Loss Coach for Your Needs
Choosing the best personal weight loss coach for your lifestyle involves more than assessing their knowledge about weight loss principles, nutrition, and exercise. You need a coach that is not only going to tell you what you need to do to reach your weight loss goals but also one that is going to be constantly motivating you to follow through.
It’s also important to find a personal coach that is going to be available when you need them. Getting on-demand advice and feedback on an obstacle you’re facing moves you quickly past the obstacle into the solution. That allows you to quickly get back on track with your weight loss journey and keep moving forward.
If you feel that you need the motivation and accountability from a 1:1 coach, check out Fitmate success stories and take our quiz to see if you're right for the program.
