It was my youngest son’s birthday a few weeks ago.

Between family, friends and a joint birthday party for both classes in his year, he did pretty well for presents.

He’s really enjoyed the Chad Valley Construction Playset you can see in the blog image.

As have I.

Reminds me of the Big Loader I had as a kid.

There was a delay in assembly though.

We got so far and just couldn’t find the L shaped struts needed to attach the second level to the base.

It had all got a bit spread around so we figured they’d gone somewhere else and we ended up not far off scouring the entire house.

As I often do, I (wrongly) accused my wife of hiding them just to mess with me 🤣

Eventually I looked at the box.

And immediately realised my error.

They were grey.

I’d assumed they were yellow.

Because the other, fairly similar, vertical piece I’d put on was yellow.

The instructions were in black and white you see.

So I’d been looking for a “long, yellow bit of plastic”.

If anything, I was mainly looking for “yellow”.

When I started looking for a “long, grey bit of plastic” it jumped straight out at me.

Because it’s easy to confuse ourselves over what we’re actually looking for.

Add extra bits of information in that stop us concentrating on the important bits.

And we often do this with our health

Get caught up in labelling foods as “good” or “bad”.

Maybe “healthy” and “treats”.

And forget that, if weight loss is our goal, then creating a calorie deficit is the important bit.

Deficit calories of a mixture of foods we might frame as “healthy” and “unhealthy” will be better for our health………..

Than surplus calories of a bit more of the “unhealthy” ones and bit less of the “healthy” ones.

————— It’s never going to be 100% of one or other other ————–

We get caught up in “the best exercise” to do…………..

Or how much is “worth doing”………….

And end up doing none.

Or, at least, less than we could do.

Rather than looking for “best”…………

Could we just look how to get deficit (or maintenance) calories…………

And get some exercise in?

———- Every year the people we speak to in January who didn’t do any exercise at all in December, regret it. If you’re currently “leaving it to January”, why not take advantage of our “rest of the year for free” via www.myrise.co.uk/apply and not have that regret? ————-

And, maybe, when that’s all sorted, look for that “next piece”?

Much love,

Jon ‘Coldplay’ Hall

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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!

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.