Inspired by a recent conversation with a 1:1 Personal Training client (you know who you are 😉 ) this post is about the faulty thought process that “I should be able to do X, if I do Y”.

Over the years with the hundreds of clients we have helped to lose weight, tone up and get fit (in both Macclesfield and across Derbyshire and the Peak District) we have variations on this conversation countless times. It generally goes something like the following:

“I should be able to eat what I like if I do enough exercise”

“I should be able to eat X in moderation”

“I should be able to lose weight and keep it off by eating less”

“I should be able to lose weight by doing what my friend, who’s slim, does”

In many cases the people we talk to will have tried these approaches, or variations on them, repeatedly over the years, with little or no lasting success.

Einstein once defined Insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Another phrase is “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.

Some people can have their cake and eat it. If you have tried something before and it hasn’t worked, it won’t work this time. Trust us. You can’t do X and get Y. If you could, it would have happened by now.

I know that I cannot eat carb heavy food and not put on body fat. So I don’t eat carb heavy food. No bread. No pasta. No potatoes. No cake. Once I realised that it was a direct choice between these foods and being slim, it became an easy decision. Removing that little voice that lies to you, telling you you should be able to have both is a powerful way to achieve results.

I came to the realisation that you can’t have both when I realised the people telling me that I could, didn’t. Even know I constantly get people getting annoyed when I won’t join them in cake or crisps or pasta and so on. They say “you should be able to eat what you like if you do enough exercise”. These people are always fat.

If the person telling you you should be able to do X if you’re doing Y (including doctors, dieticians, personal trainers, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, etc) isn’t in good shape – ignore them. It clearly hasn’t worked for them.


Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.