Meet Mike
Mike is a father of two, has a busy job requiring him to work from 8:30 in the morning until 5 at night before taking care of his kids with his partner and squeezing in a little time for himself.
He wakes up and is so consumed by his plate of things to do everyday that he neglects making himself a plate of breakfast and goes without it. It’s usually not until noon everyday before he’s eating.
Even then, it’s the small things. He’s busy, you know, running from meeting to meeting, obligation to obligation. He tosses down a power bar, a piece of fruit and keeps working.
By the time he’s at his workout just after work, he’s trying to wake up and get after it. He goes through the motions before returning home for dinner with the family.
Without even noticing it, he’s eaten three granola bars along with half his kids’ leftovers and his own dinner by the time he’s helping put away the dishes and get ready to play with the kids outside.
By the time the kids are getting ready for bed, Mike has eaten himself through the pantry and has zero recollection of what he actually ate because he’s exhausted and already thinking about the next day.
After a while, he’s gained a bit of weight and decides it’s diet time.
Starting Monday, he cleans things up. He wakes up early, preps some food for lunch and continually says no to any social obligation that might invoke him eating “bad food.”
It works.
In a week, he loses 3 pounds. This is it, he thinks.
Then work piles up the following week, the kids go into a pattern of just not going to sleep and he has one bad night. It’s ice cream to start, then he adds on a couple of beers on Friday night thinking by Monday he’ll be back to the diet.
He steps on the scale and notices his weight is the exact same it was before.
After a month on the merry-go-round, Mike decides he needs help and hires a coach.
He’s alarmed at the first thing he’s helped with. Eating foods he likes. Having a drink or two, socially. Eating ice cream with his kids.
It doesn’t make sense, but he does it anyways.
After two weeks, he’s down the same three pounds. Although not crazy about it just yet, he realizes he’s not even having to work that hard to get results. All he did was keep his same routine, ate a little more protein earlier on in the day and tracked how much ice cream and sweets he was eating in the evening.
In a month, he’s down 6 pounds and is feeling great. He thought for sure when he went out for drinks with a friend on the Friday night that all would be lost. Instead, he woke up and got back on track with his eating feeling energized, albeit slightly hungover.
Six months into his journey, Mike now rarely says no to social outings and is down 15 pounds from his original weight and is eating more than he was before.
He regularly goes out for lunch with colleagues and has had to go clothes shopping for things that better match his new physique.
He still tracks his food, but far less frequently and strictly, knowing exactly what it takes to maintain his results through daily habits.
Mike is a changed man.