Stay in your lane...

I feel the blogs deserve a nice big summary to my little discussions on balance, which have been the main theme of both my blogs and prep diaries recently. As this is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about myself, in the aim to try an maintain my current physique, as well as having many discussions with members who are “struggling to get the last bit of weight of”, I’m going to do my best to summarise my findings so far, and with the help of my fancy new diagram, really show what needs to be done to get the body of your dreams! I am aware some people might not like what I am going to say, because people are very stuck in their ways, but please remember, myself and Sophie only want people to be as healthy as can be, and you have to ask yourself how much of your current lifestyle do you want to sacrifice to achieve your goals.

Now I’ve called the blog stay in your lane, but what I really mean is stay in your tier, as I’m going to display different body types as a pyramid, please know the names are only a joke based on how I found mine and Sophie’s own levels of fitness and we are here to have a laugh, so you’re not allowed to get offended.

We can see above I have detailed Soph-Lowe’s hierarchy of feeds (sorry Maslow), and as me and Sophie track everything we eat, train together and she is consistent with her cardio from week to week, I am able to give a very accurate break down of the work she must do in order to stay in each tier. I will then do my best to summarise what this means, and perhaps help you decide about which life choices are correct and which should maybe be thought out a little better. Keep in mind these levels are different for everyone, and can depend on everything from how much you eat when your off plan, what you eat, and how much effort you put in when you exercise.

Starting at the bottom we have “Can’t put her own socks on”, this was me at almost 19 stone, Sophie was about 16 stone, the big deep breath before each sock wasn’t the most comfortable. This is of course the easiest tier to stay in, requires 0 work or effort, she can eat takeaways every night if she so chooses to, never hit 10k steps, never do any weight training or cardio. I hope none of you have to experience this stage, myself and Sophie have both been here, might feel good when the delivery man arrives, doesn’t feel good any other time.

Next, we have “stairs are hard”, maybe its not a takeaway every night, but you certainly like a drink 2 or 3 times a week, shit food will accompany it, a lot of these people feel they are doing something about their health, maybe occasionally are getting their 10k steps, perhaps 2 or 3 classes a week, diet will be about 60/40 on plan to off plan, and there will be some off plan foods in their more or less everyday for sure, still overweight for this category. Coming from the bottom tier to this one can feel like a huge leap for a lot of people, if you’ve moved from totally sedentary to something like this, first of all a huge congratulations, I am not trying to shame anyone at all by writing this, you’ve improved your life and I fucking love that! If you found you have been here a while however and want to get to the next level up, something is going to have to give, and you have to start changing your lifestyle to do it! Your body is not just “stuck at this weight”, no matter how much you cut calories during the week, the bad choices are what is keeping you here.

AVERAGE! Means something different to everyone, I of course know this, but this is what myself and Sophie consider average for ourselves. ALWAYS hit our 10k steps, maybe 1 drink a week, eating out or takeaways would be once a week, I’d be getting 4 or 5 gym sessions a week, Sophie would do around 7 classes or runs a week. Diet would-be spot-on Monday to Friday, weekends a lot more relaxed, you can of course swap this a little, we don’t expect 7 classes a week for people to be average, but if you do around 3 or 4, maybe you might consider making Monday to Saturday a little better for your eating, or consider increasing your daily steps a couple thousand.

At this point I want to point out that failure to achieve any of the markers I’ve laid out in each tier would push me back to the tier below. I average 20k steps a day, if I fail to do that, I’m going to start dropping down a tier, this is why its so important to know where you want to be, is your life too busy to hit 10, 15 or 20k steps a day? Then maybe you have to change your expectations about where your goals can ultimately be set! Sacrifices have to be made in order to go from the bottom tier to wherever it is you want to end up, and to get out the bottom one it may be sacrificing a bag of sweets every day, which sounds easy. But to move out of the higher tiers and go beyond, you might have to start sacrificing how many box sets you watch, or how often you go out drinking with your friends, and all this is easy to do short term, till you hit your goals, but if you don’t keep hitting the requirements of your tier, your going to drop back down a tier, so ask yourself seriously, how much are you willing to sacrifice? There can’t be any off days.

Next, we have Athletic, this is probably where we currently reside, and is what we find is achievable to maintain. As previously stated, it means 20k steps a day for me, 25k for Sophie, we eat around maintenance, 1900 calories and 2900 calories each (no need to state who’s is who’s), and this gives us the energy to move as much as we do. Sophie gets the gym 5 or 6 times a week to lift weights, does 6 or 7 classes as well, she could do less, but calories would need cutting, I lift weights 5 times, 3 classes but more muscle mass means I burn more calories moving a bit less (which is why weights are great). I must state at this point our diet is pretty much perfect, I’d say 90/10 on plan, off plan. We never drink, we haven’t had a takeaway this year, if we have eaten out we have got chicken, rice and broccoli from Nando’s. Probably sounds like a boring life for some people, if its not for you, then that’s fine, but you can’t expect to reach the athletic tier getting pissed and eating out every weekend, and if you only give that stuff up for a few weeks, that’s as long as those results will remain permanent. I used to be of the mindset that when I lost weight I could eat what I wanted, I very much put that hypothesis to the test and ballooned up, and the whole point of this blog is to get this across, but also help you look at the areas in your life that might be holding you back from reaching where you want to be.

Finally, we have STAGE WORTHY! I have been here 4 times in my life and I would not wish it on my worst enemy, it is not at all sustainable for me, there’s basically no carbs, 2 hours of cardio a day, an hour of weights a day. This is where you might see some guys in the movies get down to (Zac Efron in Baywatch), which only looks good for a day, and its important I mention this stage because we can always look better, or get that bit leaner if we wanted to, but the sacrifices eventually become too much, and for me, and 99% of the population, this is a bridge too far.

I would hate this whole thing to come across as a brag about the level of exercise we do because we always get comments like “oh you’re lucky” and “it’s easy for you, because its your job”, but we have both been massively over weight, and it’s our job because we love fitness, and achieving the body and level of fitness we want became so important, we sacrificed our careers to try and do this full time, so if there’s any luck involved, its that we have managed to get by in this career, but believe me, just like in fitness, we work our arses off to make sure that this remains a possibility.

I mentioned I don’t want people to get disheartened by reading this, because a lot of people will want their cake and to eat it too, you want to get more weight off, and you also want to keep going mental on a weekend with your mates and a bucket of KFC, but the real takeaway you should get from this is to decide what you want more, not just for today, or this week, or this month, but permanently, or at least as long as you want the results to last.

Peace and love,

Aaron

Ps. Life is going to throw curveballs at you, its how you respond to them that matters. It’s shit your hamster died, but a pizza won’t bring them back, and now you’ll feel even more sad because your hamster-less and fatter