Before you read this. Understand one thing for me….

This has been DIRECTLY used by me over the last 5 weeks. IT WORKS.

That’s me a stone heavier – it took some serious mindset shifts for the ’skinny guy’

There’s an age-old saying that goes “You can’t out train a bad diet”.

So true – no amount of effort in the gym will counter-act the damaging effects of processed food, tap water, poor meat sources, too much saturated fat, too many carbs at the wrong times etc.

However, the more I get submerged in trying to change the world around me through health and fitness, the more I have realised another key to looking amazing!

“You can’t out diet a bad mindset”.

“But I genuinely am trying hard” is something I often hear, and I don’t doubt it.

The problem comes when what you’re consciously forcing yourself to do isn’t aligned with what your subconscious mind believes.

It will take many articles to cover this in detail but here are the basics to get you started on identifying which area of your mindset is letting you down.

Logical Levels

There are essentially 6 key levels you need aligned if you’re going to make changing your body to a lean fitness machine an effortless process where everything just happens.

The stars aligning…everything just happens…in the zone…..

Whatever you want to call it, it comes down to the same thing. You constantly kick ass, look great and feel great.

Level 6: Purpose – The bigger picture of your life

Level 5: Identity – Your sense of self and how you fit into things

Level 4: Beliefs and values – Motivation that supports or rejects your capabilities

Level 3: Capabilities and skills – Knowledge and skills you use to guide your behaviour

Level 2: Behaviour – Specific actions and reactions to your environment

Level 1: Environment – What and who is around you

(Logical Levels from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback)))

Think of it as a waterfall, where everything cascades down from the top.

Sort the top 3 levels out and the bottom levels will take care of themselves. Too often we try to go in at the bottom which can lead to short term results but it comes crashing down sooner or later.

You go straight into a diet without aligning your thoughts about EXACTLY why you are doing it and the emotional changes you will experience as a result of losing 3 stone / getting down to Size 10 / running a marathon for charity etc.

You might have joined the GFC with no real thought as to why – you just heard it was good and know you should lose weight.

Without understanding what being a lean, strong, healthy individual will do for your life and others, you lose motivation to push the prowler up and down 5 times at 7 o’clock in the morning!!

Losing a stone is too abstract and meaningless to keep you going.

Let me tell you why Storm Force Fitness is doing so well right now.

Level 6: I understand my mission on earth is to change lives and inspire people to search for and achieve more than a bigger bank balance. Those days when you look great, feel great and feel at one with your day…I MAKE THAT SH*T HAPPEN!!!!!!

And now my team of trainers do as well!

Level 5: I’m the leader of the tribe and the one who brings people together. Quite honestly if someone then leaves the Guernsey Fitness Camp or our other services and go on to run a marathon across a desert raising money for a cancer charity and they get to see the world before we destroy it, my mission is going well!

I’m not going to complain – there are MILLIONS more people to help!

If someone leaves because they haven’t progressed…that’s a different story!

Level 4: I get labelled as arrogant sometimes. Some people see me as very confident.

First, what they might not know is that I had counselling at university for struggling with being in a new environment and struggling to talk to others and make friends at first.

You can change. I have.

The point is once I figured out my mission, I found the belief that actually, I am a major force to be reckoned with and there’s a lot of people who DO want to be around me because I inspire them to be better.

Second, I don’t care what people think. For the reason above. Don’t try to please everyone.

Now I can stand up in front of hundreds of people and present seminars without an issue.

Level 3: Capabilities and skills. I turned down a lucrative job in Guernsey to go and earn £5.77 an hour working as a gym instructor. Before tax.

Why? Because I wanted to learn the skills I needed to start building the logical levels below. You can’t behave the right way without the knowledge and skills.

Don’t expect magic wands or a click of the fingers to bring you results.

Level 2: My behaviour is (most of the time) very consistent! I know what it takes to build a tribe now, I know what it takes to make money, I know what it takes to stay in great shape. I’ve spent A LOT of time and money learning this stuff and have a long way to go, but the behaviour patterns are in place so it really is just a case of letting life run it’s course now.

I don’t have to force anything or feel uncomfortable with what I’m doing so it just keeps rolling and rolling without huge amounts of thought or internal struggle with myself!

Level 1: I didn’t see the environment I wanted in Guernsey. So I MADE it. Don’t expect things on a plate. Go find the right environment and move out of the wrong ones.

I also paid £12,000 a year, to be part of Masterminding groups in the USA which are FULL of people who are doing or trying to do the same as me.

This dude makes over $10,000,000 a year. Having lunch with people like this will change your world.

——> Success is the most contagious disease on the planet. After negativity.

What might happen if you took the the guy or girl you most look up to, to lunch? It could cost you £20-30 but change your life.

Good deal right?

Here’s the questions YOU need to ask about your Logical Levels when it comes to your health and fitness so you understand what needs to change.

We’ll hit more on individual levels over the next few weeks:

Level 6: Start well away from thinking about your body as just this ‘thing’ that needs to get smaller. Go far, far away.

What do you want to be and do in your life?

Do you really just want to lose a stone so you feel a bit better?

Or do you really want to be more than that? You HAVE got the power to do it and your body is the vehicle to doing it!

This will guide your motivation as it will serve as a very, very powerful reminder of who you need to be physically and mentally to achieve those goals.

It might be to be the best father EVER and inspire your children to change the world, it might be to be an adventurer who raises money for charity.

It doesn’t matter so long as YOU know what it is and WHY.

Level 5: At Storm Force Fitness there are no ‘best clients’, favourites or anything else.

No one is better than anyone else because, everyone is in a one man battle therefore there is no better or worse. Just progression or regression.

You either improve YOURSELF or you don’t.

You are a MASSIVELY important cog in the machine and YOU will inspire people as your results become more apparent.

To this end, you have a responsibility to more than just yourself now. You’re one of the lucky few who have found something that really works. Wasting the chance is not just letting yourself down but also the hundreds of people who are as desperate as you are.

You will inspire them more than I ever can. That’s cool – I don’t need to be the face of everything that happens. I just need you to help me create more awesome days for people!

Level 4: Any beliefs you have that you can’t do it, have been put there by someone else or some experience in the past.

The past and future have NO effect on you whatsoever unless you let your mind run out of control.

Right now, is the first day of the rest of your life and in just a few weeks your life could be massively different if you just believe you deserve it.

No one has the right to tell you who you are yet things that were said or done to you when you were younger can create deep-rooted beliefs which make you act in certain ways even when you don’t know it!

Give yourself permission to be the person you want to be TODAY. Don’t talk of yourself maybe running a marathon.

As of NOW, you ARE a marathon runner.

As of NOW, you ARE a lean, muscular love god.

Program this into your brain and your subconscious will find whatever is required to make it happen.

Tell yourself your a fat loser, and guess what you’re subconscious will do….

Level 3: This is what you THINK you pay for – skills.

The ability to perform certain exercises and cook certain meals.

I believe you pay for Levels 4-6.

Yes you can get Levels 1-3 cheaper somewhere else. Although I believe we are by far the best!

Levels 4-6? You’re in the best place. Trust me. And it really is PRICELESS!

Level 2: Look around the guys and girls who look great on the Guernsey Fitness Camp.

Speak to them and ask them questions.

They’ll be happy to help.

Model their behaviour and act like a sponge. Your behaviour will soon change accordingly.

Level 1: You’re in the right environment.

Just make sure you spend as much time as possible in it!

**********************************

So there you have it.

A quick-stop guide to identifying what you REALLY want in life and where the problem might be.

If just one level is misaligned, you’re going to struggle to see any major progress.

When you look at someone and say “It’s alright for them, they make it look so easy”, you’re not far wrong.

They make it look easy because it IS easy. You’ll experience the same when you sort out the highest levels of the pyramid!

There’s lots starting to happen in and around my life which I was imagining and believing way, way before Storm Force Fitness started.

Purpose – Identity – Belief.

They MUST come first. The rest is easy! Even the prowler.

Post any thoughts below!

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We’ve already discussed why a calorie is not a calorie, and why counting calories with a goal of fat loss in mind is not always the most efficient or successful way to reach ones goals.

And while it may be a step in the right direction toward reducing our collective ever expanding waistlines (offering free ongoing support versus a 12-week program), an ongoing supportive program that includes a personal training program with a customized and direct approach for each individual is likely to prove even MORE successful in the long run, teaching life-long skills that are specific to individual needs.

To get the conversation going and look at different angles, my thoughts on certain issues are in red (Jon Le Tocq)

Read more about this breaking news from the UK Press Association:

Study: Offer Weight Watchers on NHS
(UKPA)

Slimming courses such as Weight Watchers provided freely on the NHS could play an important role in combating obesity, new research suggests.

A major study conducted in the UK, Germany and Australia showed that a year-long Weight Watchers programme was far more beneficial than helpful doctor’s advice.

(Given that doctor’s are not trained in nutrition, nor have the time to give it more than a passing comment, this is a bit misleading!)

Obese and overweight patients referred to the programme lost twice as much weight as those offered “standard care”. (Twice as much of very little, is still not a lot)

Commercial weight loss schemes are already offered to many NHS patients, usually lasting around 12 weeks.

For the new study, 772 patients were either given 12 months free membership of Weight Watchers, or offered advice on health and slimming by a primary care team.

After a year those on the slimming programme had shed an average of 11lbs 4oz while patients receiving standard care lost 4lbs 13oz.

(At Storm Force Fitness and many of my other trainer friend’s companies, this can be done in 4 weeks)

Participants assigned to Weight Watchers were also more than three times more likely to lose at least 5% of their bodyweight.

Dr Susan Jebb, from the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research Unit in Cambridge, led the study, which is published by The Lancet medical journal.

The authors wrote: “Data from our study suggest that referral by a primary health-care professional to a commercial weight loss programme that provides regular weighing, advice about diet and physical activity, motivation, and group support, can offer a clinically useful early intervention for weight management in overweight and obese people that can be delivered at large scale.

“Further research is needed to examine long-term weight loss maintenance, together with a formal analysis of cost-effectiveness.”

Let’s hear it! “Standard of care” versus a commercial weight loss program versus a personal training approach? Sound off on Facebook or leave us a comment below.

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The other day I posted on Facebook “Need to find some training partners who don’t let hangovers, bank holidays or anything else get in the way!” Not an easy task these days, but in order to achieve your goals that is what it takes – discipline.

Here’s a great read we found, here you can read the original article Improving Your Self Discipline with Your Training.

Key point to all of this: If you want to see results, it starts in the mind.

Improving Your Self-Discipline with Your Training
By Jackson Yee

When I train clients, I usually know very quickly if they will achieve or fail at their physical goals. The most important factor for success isn’t strength, motivation, or hard work—it’s discipline. Self-discipline is crucial to obtain both mental toughness and physical improvement. Without self-discipline, one can train hard but is likely to be inconsistent. Temptations to opt out of a workout or eat bad food will always be a challenge. We aren’t born with great self-discipline skills; it is a conscious effort.

Self-discipline is the ability to do a task even when one does not want to do it. The “even when one does not want to do it” is the key. I could think of a million things I would rather do than hill sprints, especially when it’s raining. But I do them because it’s hill day. When I work overtime and am completely exhausted, the last thing I want to do is heavy squats. But I still train because I made a commitment to myself. There was nothing worse than my muscle up training. After about a month of trying to get my first bar muscle up and failing, I was ready to quit. However, I continued to persevere until I finally was able to do one muscle up.

Without self-discipline, I wouldn’t have done any of these workouts because I surely would have stayed home with a beer and zoned out in front of ESPN. But I did them because I’m very disciplined. Anybody can work out when he’s well rested and inspired, but the real challenge is working out when you feel like a lazy ass.

When it comes to my eating habits, I’m just as strict. I have to be. I let myself go with years of junk food and poor food choices, but now I’ve gone to the other extreme. I eat as cleanly as possible, but I still have cravings for crap food. I have to fight these urges often by disciplining my mind. It isn’t easy, but I can’t take any chances of a setback. My behaviors are extreme. for example, I bring salads to the movie theater or brown rice to my favorite Chinese restaurant. Oh, I forgot. I don’t go out to Chinese restaurants anymore because of the high sugar content.

My friends always ask me if feel like I’m missing out. They think I’m miserable and fanatical. Miserable, no. Fanatical, yes. I like to call myself extremely focused. I don’t feel deprived because I cook my own food. I still eat pizza, Chinese food, and other foods that one may consider unhealthy. It’s just that now I learn how to make it healthier. My alternative cooking lifestyle didn’t come overnight. Through researching recipes and trial and error, I discovered I still can eat my favorite foods. No doubt, this change took a lot of discipline on my part.

I feel much better now as a result of my rebelling against the masses. To me, most people are weak and cave into the need for immediate gratification. I have taught myself to do the opposite—to learn how to delay gratification. This is the driving force behind the development of self-discipline. Delayed gratification requires one to embrace pain and sometimes give up what is enjoyable. The rewards may take a while, but the payoff of self-discipline is huge.

Self-discipline is needed if you want to body build, lose weight, or just enhance your athletic skills. But, most importantly, self-discipline is crucial in your pursuit of mental toughness. At times, your journey for mental toughness will be unpleasant and miserable. To help you overcome the upcoming challenges, these tips will help strengthen your self-discipline. It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile.

Tip #1: Your goals must be specific.

When I was doing bodybuilding training, my goal was to get big. I got big all over my body, especially in my gut. The problem with this goal was that it was too vague. You need goals that are specific and clear. Goals with targeted numbers like an amount of weight loss or a faster 5K time are best. Numbers on a scale, shirt size, or time on the clock are concrete.

The more specific your goals are, the easier they are for you to visualize. If your goal is to lose weight, really see yourself losing that 20 pounds with a new leaner and more muscular body. If your goal is an athletic achievement like running a six-minute mile, mentally rehearse seeing yourself finishing a sub 6-minute mile before each run.

Visualization is a powerful tool for your development of self-discipline. However, the problem I have with all the self-help gurus who advocate visualization technique is it’s way too passive and send some over the top into fantasy land. Visualization isn’t a means on its own. If so, you’re just wishing. Wishing is the common practice of the masses. It’s characteristic of those who are weak and too timid to take any risks. Those who are successful use visualization to elicit a behavior.

The images you have in your mind of you reaching your goals should provoke you into taking action. Whatever images you have, they must be strong enough to motivate you to do a workout when you don’t feel up to par to doing it. When you feel like having a large order of fries with your meal, the image of you hitting your goal should immediately confront you. The image should deter you from eating the bad meal. If the images do not propel you to change your behavior, you must create stronger and more meaningful images to motivate you.

Again, self-discipline is all about doing what you don’t want to do. It is the beginning of learning how to activate your will. This pretty much sums it all up—you train when you don’t feel like it and you don’t eat the junk food when you crave it.

Your pursuit of self-discipline needs to be proactive. Back up your talk with actions. Get aggressive and relentless as you pursue your goals. Write your goals down. Seeing them on paper will hold you accountable for your actions. Too many people rely on others to help them get things done. Learn to depend on yourself.

Olympic gold medalist and my favorite tough guy Dan Gable used to write his goals on index cards. He carried them with him so that he could review them throughout the day. George St. Pierre wrote down his goal and looked at it as soon as he got up. Before his fight with Josh Koscheck, his goal was I will destroy Koscheck. With the ass whipping he gave Koscheck, I would say he accomplished his goal.

As you make gains toward your goals, you will feel inner strength and confidence with your self-control. The junk food that was once so difficult to resist will later be viewed with disgust. When you feel too tired to train, you will know what buttons to push to fire yourself up.

Self-discipline is all about empowering yourself. When you can truly visualize yourself with a stronger body and mind, you’re ready.

Tip #2: You must learn to make sacrifices.

When it comes to making sacrifices, two athletes come to mind—Arnold and Ronnie Lott. When I was young, I was mesmerized with Arnold in Pumping Iron. He was so locked in on his goal of winning the Mr. Olympia that he even skipped the funeral of his father. I still find this chilling. Ronnie Lott got part of his finger amputated so that he wouldn’t miss any football games.

I hope none of you out there think I’m advocating extreme discipline. Arnold’s example is borderline self-indulgent while Lott’s is the ultimate warrior sacrifice. However, I do believe one has to learn to pay a price to achieve his goals.

Making sacrifices is giving up something so you can reach your goals. The core of self-discipline is dealing with the temptations that surround you. There will always be more desirable things to do than training. Your discipline will face challenges every day. See them as a daily test of your will. If we are striving for a better body composition, you can’t tolerate making bad food choices. A little indulgence can lead to major slip ups. I’m not suggesting we should live a boring life of eating just sprouts, but we have to stop lying to ourselves when we tell ourselves it’s OK to have junk and processed foods. It only takes a few undisciplined meals to send you down a spiral. When you avoid bad food choices or drinking binges, don’t feel like you’re missing out. Instead, see it as a gain, a gain you have made with your inner strength built upon each victory you made as you distance yourself more from those who are weak.

It all comes down to how much you want to achieve your goals. If your desire is great, you will work your ass off. Having a strong work ethic is the code of brotherhood for those who live to excel. You must buy into the concept that hard work will pay off. If not, a sense of doubt will creep in on those days where you don’t feel like training. When you start to second guess yourself about the hard work you put in, it’s over. You are done. A chronic pattern of procrastination develops following a fat gut.

Your sense of belief in hard work must be absolute. Let it define your character. Having talent is overrated. I’ve seen those with amazing natural abilities go to waste because things were too easy for them at first and they never learned how to embrace hard work.

I’ll take having a chip on my shoulder anytime over talent. Feeling disrespected is a strong motivator for those who have gone overboard with their work habits. Nobody worked out harder or was more disciplined than Jerry Rice. By constantly being undervalued by others, pushing himself to perfection became an obsession for Rice. Drew Bres is another example of how one can shut up his doubters. The questions about his size, arm strength, and shoulder injury all motivated Bres to discipline himself to become the most conditioned NFL athlete. He just refused to let any of his teammates out work him.

We all have people in our lives who we badly want to prove wrong. If you don’t because you sadly have forgiven them, mental toughness training isn’t for you. You are better suited for “yoga for seniors.”

This training is about proving yourself day in and day out. It’s about making people eat their words. Your desire must be so strong that you will do what is necessary to have the last laugh. If any obstacle is blocking you of achieving your goal, it must be extinguished. If anybody stands in your way of you reaching your objective, you must hold this person in contempt.

You must have a “take no prisoners” mindset and discard those in your life who try to hold you back. The journey to having a disciplined mind is very isolated. Most likely you will get little support or understanding from those around you. Counter attack the occasional solidarity by finding joy in the training. Learn to love hard work. Passion and a strong work ethic are an unbeatable combination. If you possess both, you are on the way to reaching the next level.

Tip #3: You must work on your weaknesses.

We all know what we suck at. It doesn’t take much thought process. We pretty much avoid doing what we aren’t good at. For years, I had a decent chest and arms. When I went to the gym, I mostly did a lot of benching and curling. I rarely trained my back or legs. And when I did, it was some lat machine pull-downs and a couple sets of leg extensions. The wimpy stuff.

Training your strength is the typical training protocol of the masses. It’s easy and very enjoyable. However, eventually you will stop making any gains. The worst part is when we fail to challenge ourselves. We don’t attain new knowledge or lean anything about our character. When one stops learning, that is never a good thing. A stale mind will lead to mental and physical regressions.

If you want to reach the next level, you must force yourself to work on your weaknesses. For most of us, our flaws will be our bad eating habits. It doesn’t matter how hard you train. If you eat crappy food, your body transformation will be very difficult. So stop fooling yourself and thinking that occasional cheat meal isn’t affecting your gut. It is—big time.

Training your physical flaws is the sign of one who is very disciplined and someone who is very serious about training. Before winning the Mr. Olympia contest, a young Arnold was huge, but he knew his small calves would prevent him from winning a serious title. He was so determined to get his calves up to par with the rest of his body that he made training calves his number one priority. Before each workout, he would do some kind of calf workout.

The pain of working on your weakness isn’t necessarily the workout itself but, in most cases, the anticipation of it. For me, I dreaded doing tire sprints so much that on the day of the workout, I was drained mentally before even doing the sprints. The workout would be in the back of my mind the whole day as I constantly looked for excuses and tried to make up fake injuries to get out of it. The tire sprint workout was always brutal, but the wait was a hundred times worse. Pure agony.

The sheer difficulty of working through your weakness will strengthen your self-discipline skills. However, once you’re set on planning your weakness training, you must get it done. Skipping the challenging workouts will cause irreversible damage to your development of mental toughness. Any progress you made will be halted and you’ll take two steps backward. Instead of getting tougher, the opposite will happen—you will become weaker. The damages of backing down will translate to your personal life as well. You will become a coward of confrontation instead of being the aggressor when your back is against the wall. The choice is simple: you either fight or quit and wait your turn to be trampled on. The wait won’t be long either. Once you learn to be a target, people will line up to stomp on you.

You must always refuse the urge to give up. Quitting becomes an acceptable pattern full of logical but lame rationalizations. Once you get into the passive mode, it is very difficult to get out of it. So once you make the commitment to dissolve your weakness, there isn’t any turning back. The ultimate goal is to turn your weakness into your strength. I know this is hard to believe for those of you who hate to run, but you just might love it. It may be far-fetched for those who can’t stand training legs, but after a couple months of squatting, you just might love the results you see. When you learn to convert your weakness into your strength, there won’t be anything holding you back.

Final thoughts

As you progress in your development of self-discipline, you will no longer view your life as full of weaknesses. You will see them as adversities that you must overcome. It will be a challenge to overcome, but with hard work and strong visualization, you know damn well there isn’t anything that will get in your way of accomplishing your obstacles. Now go to work.

Do you have what it takes? Visit stormforcefitness.com to get started right away or, join us on Facebook and share your goals and your stumbling blocks, and start working on your mental toughness NOW. Visualize, take action, ask questions – go for it!

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For the first time in a VERY long time, I ALMOST got offended yesterday!

See it’s takes a lot to offend me because I know I always give people the best information I can (until I learn even more) and genuinely want everyone who crosses my path to benefit in some way.

Now for my nice side….

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