I coach football at a middle school when I'm not teaching boot camp. It may seem like a weird contrast between training women for a living and coaching middle school kids, but there are definitely similarities.
We recently got beat pretty bad and it was pretty demoralizing for the whole team. They worked out all summer, they've been killing themselves in this heat at practice, and to lose hurts that much more when you've really put the effort in.
Maybe you've experienced something similar in your life. You've really committed to a program, then you go to weigh yourself at the end and you gained a pound! It's enough to make you give up.
The first step is to figure out what went wrong. In football we lost contain on defense, didn't hold our blocks, and had poor tackling. In your fitness program you have to look at proper nutrition, proper exercise form, proper recovery, stress management, etc..
In football we can run drills specific to target these shortcomings. The first step is awareness of what needs to be done.
With proper nutrition, look at caloric intake first if weight loss is your goal. You have to create a deficit to lose weight. Knowing your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is a good place to start. Your BMR is the bare minimum calories you need to function.
It is tough to calculate outside of a lab, but to get an idea of yours you can use this calculation. If you are curious, this is one of the best calculators I've seen for BMR:
After you do find your BMR, you can scroll down a little and look for the section where you can find your total caloric needs for the day. You multiply your BMR by the number that corresponds with your activity level.
Like I said, not exact numbers but at least somewhere to start. I'm not gonna lie, this was a lot of math for me so I'm going to pick up with the other areas we might need to address in a future post.
And if you are currently struggling, don't give up! You're not broken, there's nothing wrong with you, and you can still reach your goals.
Small changes can lead to big results over time. Let's find out what we need to fix, put a plan in place, and keep at it. No shame in getting knocked down, you just can't stay there.