You're sick of saying it: 'eat healthy and exercise regularly and you'll lose weight and keep it off for life'. You know it is as simple as that. But your clients don't seem to think so. They seem to be doing everything possible to make it all seem too hard and down-right impossible.

You feel at a loss as to how to keep motivating and encouraging them to reach their goals successfully. What do you do? As a Leader in the Health and Fitness Industry, it is your job to be the one who inspires, ignites passion and enthusiasm. The one who provides wise and sound information regarding food and exercise. It is your job to whip your clients into shape.

Your clients look at you as the person with the answers. They look at you as the source of all when it comes to looking and feeling the best. You are the expert in their eyes and the responsibility, in their eyes, falls on your shoulders to get them to where they want to go.

In theory, it is a match made in heaven, needs met on both sides. But with statistics showing that 95 percent of diet and exercise plans fail in the long run to help people lose weight and keep it off for life, then something is not working out perfectly in practice.

What is really going on here? Why is it that despite your best efforts some people just don't or can't seem to 'get it' when it comes to changing their eating and exercise habits? At what point does your responsibility end and theirs begin? At what point does it come down to them taking full responsibility and being willing to just become the guidance you are offering?

Your clients are the ones that intrinsically have within them all they need to be a success not just in health, fitness and weight loss, but in every area of their lives. They have all the skills and abilities already programmed into the very essence of who they are to fight mediocre eating and exercising to become an authentic version of magnificence. All you are actually responsible for is to awaken them to this feeling or essence of who they fundamentally are. For once they get a sense or taste for the magnificence of who they are then this is enough to fuel them to seek and strive for more.

Your responsibility is not so much to see them through every physical step holding their hand for what feels like every moment of everyday. No. You provide them initially with that spark and remembrance that their fundamental self is not fat, overweight or has problems or issues. On the contrary, within them is a magnificent being who can be reconnected to and enjoyed through taking some simple, yet powerful, steps.

How do you then take this step with your clients to move from that paradigm or relationship whereby they overly depend on you for everything to you providing them with the spark to ignite their intrinsic drive and will to look and feel the best ever and keep them moving for life on this?

The first step you need to take is when you begin working with a client your initial focus is on the quality of their thinking. Not the quality of their eating and exercising. For whatever the shape of their bodies and eating is, is because that's the shape of their thinking. Everyone is a living reflection of who they think they are and what they will allow themselves to be. So 'Fat' thinking creates a 'Fat' experience. Simple as that. No matter how superb and state-of-the-art your eating and training programs are, if your clients remain in their out-of-shape thinking about themselves, food and life, then you are wasting your time with them. For ultimately their 'Fat' thinking will sabotage the process no matter how good at your job you are! They will not achieve their results, more than likely blame you for this and it becomes a demoralizing experience for all.

To free them from their out-of-shape thinking you start to listen to them beyond the words they are actually speaking. Look at their bodies and be willing to hear what distress, pain and unhappiness their bodies are communicating to you about how this person might be feeling and what the quality of their thinking might be. Listen to them beyond the 'I want to lose 10 kilos by Christmas' to 'I feel so hopeless and useless and I don't believe in myself'. If you can fix the real problem by boosting that person's self-esteem by helping them to think in a way that can provide them with moment-to-moment encouragement and support, rather than just whipping out a diet and exercise program, you will be well on your way to providing a truly valuable and authentically successful service.

To help your clients think differently ask them to choose a word that in essence represents a quality or a strength that they have that feels good to them. It is an adjective plus a noun. It describes who they are and defines them. It might be 'Strong' or 'Lean' or 'Magnificent'. The key is that it 'feels' like something to them. Secondly you then encourage them to use this powerful word non-stop in their everyday life when they are thinking and speaking about themselves. Over time, what this will do is assist them to stop telling stories in their minds and in conversation with others that depreciates them and makes them feel bad about who they are, therefore driving them to eat 'badly'. Thinking differently then deconstructs the 'bad' eating habits and very effortlessly opens the doors to making healthy eating a normal ad natural experience. For it is normal and natural to eat healthy. It is an intrinsic drive that is there for everyone, once their out-of-shape thinking is out of the way. You explain they need to persist for a good 3 months with the thinking differently as they change their eating and exercising to get the full impact of this shift to never ever create a weight problem again.

When your clients are given the opportunity to solve the real problem in their eating and weight, rather just treating the symptoms and hoping for the best, they then have the chance to finally be free from the weight struggle for life.

You provided them with the opportunity to be liberated because you went to the source of the problem and solved it with them. Showing that your clients were right from the very beginning, you were and are the answer they thought you would be. Perfect!

Joanne M Prior is Director of ‘Think Yourself… Successful’. Joanne’s mission is to help women and men who are successful in life but can’t quite seem to get their minds and emotions around ‘how to’ lose weight successfully. Through a step-by-step process of looking at mindset and how to apply new learning around self, eating and weight Joanne’s clients are provided with the confidence, skills and abilities to never battle with food and weight again. Joanne’s background is B.Sc. (Nutrition), followed by Post. Grad Studies in Counseling followed by her Reiki Master accreditation. Joanne is a published author and sought-after speaker in the area of weight loss whilst running a successful private practice in Sydney. For further information about Joanne’s work, please contact her on +61 (0) 412 499 758, web http://www.joanneprior.com or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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