The times they are a changing…

It’s the first blog of the new year, and I know its late, but Happy New Year to all of our members, and of course a massive welcome to all our new members that have joined us! This may be your first introduction to my blog, so I’ll apologise now for the: moaning, swearing, bad grammar, spelling mistakes, terrible jokes etc.

In this particular blog I am going to address the new turn we are taking within the accountability groups, for the ladies at least, you lads won’t be seeing any of these positive changes because I’m totally in charge of you lot and I find it a lot of fun to be the way I am. Oh so welcome to you lot as well I suppose, you’re all absolutely smashing it.

So, you may all be very familiar with how we used to work, so I’m going to delve into the thought process a little today and explain why we have the particular outlook we did, as well as explain the changes we have made, perhaps I’ll even give you some advice for surviving the groups, and the attitude you should have when you’re in them in order to get the best possible outcome.

First, I’ll give you a little bit of history into the groups! When we started over a year ago we were deep into lock down, the second one to be more precise, a lot of people were struggling to exercise due to the gyms being shut, and YouTube videos don’t always cut the mustard. My darling wife had the brilliant idea of not letting her skills go to waste, and start putting on live videos through Facebook so you all didn’t miss out on seeing her face on a weekly basis. We recruited Nikita as well as a few other friendly faces, and Soph & Kita’s Weekly Workouts was born! Well of course all great things must come to an end, and the gyms re-opened! Understandably, a lot of people prefer the face to face experience, so after trying and testing a few different things to keep you all with us, the accountability groups was born, combining our shared knowledge of nutrition and fitness we were able to give you what you know today as Ginger Girls Food & Fitness…

In the beginning the accountability groups were of course much smaller, and filled with people we had got to know and love throughout our journey into business, this meant our attitude and style of motivation could be much different to the one we are rolling out this week! Tough love was the aim of the game and no one does that better then Sophie. Mistakes were not tolerated and only the best was expected from people who joined our group, much like it is now, however failure to keep up with the plan had a much more direct approach. As some of you may already know, a lot more pressure was applied during this time, and it worked BRILLIANTLY!!! We saw over 200 you lose a stone and much more, and our reputation was beginning to spread its way across the city. It did become apparent however that this approach isn’t for everyone, and we knew this, we just weren’t in a place at the time to provide our service to every type of person, and so a few people slipped through our fingers and regrettably we weren’t able to help you in the way that you needed.

Well all that is about to change, as we grow as a business, we add more and more people to our team, each of whom brings more skills to our little diet groups, and with new skills comes the opportunity to provide a better service, which is what we constantly aim to provide for all of our members. We strive every day to constantly improve the service you all receive, whether it’s adding more classes (how good is our latest timetable by the way (hello West Hull)), re-branding ourselves, improving the website, adding our shop, or the introduction of the Bald Boys!!! Genius names by the way, I have no idea where she comes up with these things.

We are now able to take a slightly more laid-back approach, with our new tracking systems in place, we know exactly what your eating and how much your moving, as long as you tell us of course, we aren’t just stalking you all in secret. All this means, is that the daily messages to people who are failing to provide the basic information we ask for will be able to stop, and instead you can each be evaluated on a weekly basis using our new traffic light system. At the end of each week, we are able to see how many meal pictures you posted, how your tracking looks and if you managed to reach your daily step count! You will then each be told where you stand at the end of every week, which, and my personal favourite part about it, the people who are absolutely smashing it will each get the praise they deserve, and I’m sure the results you get will be a testament to this! Don’t be fooled however, we are not as daft as I look, we do recognise copied pictures, so don’t try and pull a fast one there ladies (and gentlemen).

This enables us to stop the constant pressure, as we all have bad days, or are going through a bad period in our lives, when the last thing we need is pressure from our team leader, but love the support we get from our groups, after all community is the most important thing we want to provide! What I do have to say however, this isn’t weight watchers! We are not happy to just sit back and take your membership payment and not see you get the results you so badly wanted when you started, so although the pressure will be less, you are still accountable to us, and we MASSIVELY care (this is why we started it all in the first place for completely free). Failure to comment at all, provide explanation of lack of pictures, bullying, abuse, or anything else we deem unacceptable will mean you are removed from your diet group, so please don’t act surprised, this is sometimes the only way to get through to some people! And if you do get annoyed about a particular comment, or grade on our traffic light system, or feel the pressure is “all a bit too much”, just know it’s because we know you’re capable of more, and all we want is to help find the best version of you.

There we have it, a summary of our new outlook on the diet groups, less pressure… a lot more support! I hope you all find this a lot more accommodating and it will help take some of the pressure off you guys, and allow you to keep smashing the plan the best way we know how, it worked for literally hundreds of others, and I know it can work for you too.

Stay Green,

Aaron

Ps. If you enjoyed this and any of the other blogs I’ve written, please comment any other topic you would like to see covered! I love writing these, and I know you may not all enjoy them, but it stops me talking to Sophie for a couple hours, and she definitely enjoys that…