The Secret to Looking AND Feeling Amazing

Are you confused & frustrated with all the information on diets, supplements, training protocols and latest health fads? Have you spent years in search of your dream body with perfect health to match, only to discover the simple act of eating less and moving more is ineffective?

Before you give up, before you resign to being stuck with your current body and the way you feel for the rest of your lives, before you blame your ‘genes’ and concede defeat while scrolling through Instagram in envy, before you do all of that, I want to share a secret with you.

The Secret to Looking AND Feeling Amazing: It’s Health

Sorry if you were hoping for the perfect diet plan, a wonder supplement, or a gym routine that ‘melts fat’. At the end of the day, these things are all short-term bandaid fixes that will never allow you to sustainably look and feel amazing.

Let me explain why.

As a health coach, I have people from all around the world coming to me for guidance. Their story is either:

“I have tried everything, yet still cannot make progress”

OR

“I have done nothing, but I need to change and I don’t know what to do”

In a nutshell, they are ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired’ and they share a common goal of looking and feeling amazing. It’s such a basic desire that we all possess. To look good naked and feel amazing. Yet, for many, it seems so hard to achieve. But in reality it’s not that difficult of a goal to reach (and maintain).

It’s just that you have been doing everything wrong. And if you’re just starting on your journey for change, then make sure you go down the right path before you waste time, money and possibly end up doing more harm that good.

For example, a lot of people believe the secret to weight loss is simply eating less and moving more. Yet it’s well known that chronic cardio can lead to higher cortisol, higher inflammation levels and retained body weight, or that long-term restriction of calories will lead to a down regulation of your  metabolism while your body’s sex hormone levels plummet (the last thing the body wants to do in a period of starvation is reproduce, survival is more important than reproduction in a time of starvation!)

Not to mention that either of these situations only address one side of the ‘Look & Feel’ great coin. I can tell you from first hand experience that if you do achieve 6 pack abs by eating less and moving more you’re going to feel like crap. Oh and you can tell your partner that sex is off the cards – at least until you start reversing the process by eating more and moving less.

Fix The Inside To Fix The Outside

The body is a complicated machine, an elaborate system that I don’t know if anyone truly understands (or ever will). I do know one thing however, and that is this: the body wants to be optimal, it wants to be healthy, and it has ‘us’ in it’s best interest.

Think about it, it’s on our side. I don’t want to go down the ‘meaning of life’ path, but lets assume humans are no different to every other living organism on this planet, and that our bodies sole objective is to reproduce and maximise the survival rates of our offspring.

With this in mind, it’s clear that our body should:

1. Be resilient to life’s stressors – we must remain alive to reproduce and protect.
2. Be able to move around seeking food, shelter, water and a mate.
3. Be able defend said food, shelter, mates and offspring.
4. Have the urge and desire to seek out a mating partner, and then have the ability to reproduce.

Would you agree? These are all basic ‘needs’ of a human’s life. Take away Netflix, promotions, vacations, and bigger houses. At the end of the day, it all boils down to being able to perform the tasks above.

But the average adult fails miserably when tested against these requirements:

• The average American Adult would catch the influenza virus once every 5-10 years, and 4 out of 5 Americans are prescribed antibiotics in a single year. It’s begs the question of how resilient the average John Doe really is?
• If you remove taxis, aeroplanes, segways, heck even footpaths, how many of us would physically be able to move over rough terrain, up and down hills, carrying food and resources to sustain life… on a daily basis.
• Again, physical ability is important here. How many of use truly posses said ability.
• Finally there is libido and reproductive ability. In my years working with clients I have seen a large percentage of both men and woman who have zero interest in sex. Even I suffered from non-existent libido despite being a national bodybuilding champ.

Tl;dr

Despite everyone wanting to look and feel great, and knowing deep down that our body also wants us to look and feel great to increase our chances of survival, why then, do so many of us look and feel like rubbish? And why do so many focus soley on hours spent at the gym, or steps taken in a day, or worse, total calories consumed?

A Change Of Focus

My own realisation that the body has ‘us’ in its best interest and that in a natural environment we should look and feel amazing changed not only my life, but the lives of my clients. You see, if you want to look good, you simply need to get healthy. If you want to feel good – get healthy. It really is all down to health and giving the body what it expects and is designed to do.

Don’t focus on running 20kms in a week, or burning eating on 2000 calories in a day. Targets like this will never bring about long-term change. Sure you can look good without being healthy. I know this for a fact. I was winning Bodybuilding competitions but had zero libido, poor energy and felt like rubbish. As soon as you focus on health however, you get the best of both worlds – feeling great while still looking amazing!