Stacking the Ratio’s in your favour.

I’m a true believer in Ratio Stacking.  I believe that if you simply act out more positive behaviours/actions in your day than negative behaviours/actions, means you’ve won.  What have you won exactly?  Well that part is up to you.

Say your task is to lose weight.  Daily behaviours that give you a daily win towards that goal would be, drinking plenty of water to remain hydrated, eating enough vegetables and fruits for micronutrients and fibre intake; exercising for 30 minutes, consuming enough protein to give your body the building blocks to run efficiently, consuming great quality fats to help your hormones be balanced, help your energy and mental clarity.  These actions stack the odds in your favour.  If you perform as many of these as possible each day you leave little room for negative actions, but we ALL do daily actions that we deem to be negative when we have a task to achieve.  But you know what?  We ALL DO and that is ok.  It is your viewpoint that matters.  

If most of the time the positive outweighs the negative then you have won.  Because each daily win of these ratios, stacks the ratio of wins up for the week, then the month and then the quarter and then the year and ultimately your lifetime.

It is about looking at situations as a whole, as opposed to looking at a segment with a microscope.  
An example of this would be, my husband travels for work.  When he travels, my routine gets a little messy and I am very routine driven, it also means that the dynamics in the family and household shift a little.  I could view this as “my husband travels too much and I can’t stick to a routine, so therefore it is a disaster for me and this is why I can’t achieve XYZ”.
Or I could take a step back, pause for a moment and apply the ratio in a more accurate way.  “On average my husband is away 5 nights a month, this is 60 nights per year, so he is home 305 nights per year or away 16.4% and home 83.6%”.  

When you look at this situation under a microscope and only focus on the nights away then it is easy to get caught up in the disruption to routine, the workload increase and dynamic shift from a negative viewpoint (by the way there is an upside to this in my opinion, frittata with all the mushrooms for dinner, the bed to myself, a cleaner house and best of all mummy & daughter time, plus I am one of those personalities that needs space and time to myself).

When you view the situation as a broader picture then it is only 16.4% of the time, those ratios are stacked sky high in my favour.

The same could be said for judging your body.  How many of you look in the mirror or at a photo and your eye zooms in on what you deem as your negative attributes?  Ahhhh I hate my [Insert your negative judgements], so therefore I am [Insert your sweeping negative statement].  Interestingly I once did a ratio of positive things and negative things about myself going head to toe.  I was actually shocked by my ratio outcome and at my personal viewpoint about myself.  The negatives were, pimples on my chin and jawline, cellulite on the backs of my legs and butt, stretch marks on my hips and thighs and about 10% too much body fat all over.  The positive things, were fine hair but a tonne of it, great skin tone on the rest of my face, straight teeth, plus a load of other things about my face, lean and strong upper body, strong athletic physique in general, plus a lot of other great attributes that would take too long to list.  When I tallied all of this up, I became aware that I only actually disliked 3-4% of my body, so I could focus on that 3-4% or I could focus on the 96-97% that I liked and found positive about myself.

It all comes down to prospective and ratios!  I’m not saying be a positive quote touting  hippie (although I am a bit of a hippie, to a degree), I am actually encouraging you to be pragmatic, logical and more sensible when it comes to looking all aspects of your life, your viewpoints and consider how to stack the ratios in your favour.

Thank you for reading!

Kel xo

PS: I have just proof read this and noticed that I haven’t sworn…..Fuck yeah!

Why you don’t need a “new” diet.

How many “new diets” have you tried?  Only to return to your current eating plans.

You don’t need a new diet, you already have a diet.  Your personal diet/style of eating is something that is ingrained in you, it is sometimes a result of your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your likes and dislikes.  You eat this way because it often fits with your schedule, your desired eating times and patterns.  If you have eaten this way your whole life and then you get yourself a shiny new diet, chances are you will gravitate back to your “real life” diet.

I am asked a lot for a “meal plan” or a “diet overhaul”.  I do NOT “do” meal plans or diet overhauls, because I do NOT believe setting up my clients for disaster and failure.  Instead, together we tinker and hone your current diet, why?  Because your personal eating style is part of you, it is part of your identity and here at KKFitMachines we do NOT believe in the one size fits all approach.

Instead of hating on your body and thinking I need a shiny new diet to “fix” me, I challenge you to pause for thought, for just a moment.  How about just making a small and maintainable change to your diet each month for a year?  I promise you that in one years time you will change your body permanently for the better, instead of starting a new diet, failing and going back to the start, then starting another new diet, failing and going back to the start, so on and so on, until in one years time you are no better off, sometimes worse off, majorly frustrated and poorer for it too!

Change doesn’t need to be drastic to bring about the big results you crave.

Thanks for reading!
Kel xo

All those SHITTY Thoughtless Social Media Posts….. Part One

I guess we are all guilty of it……..We hit the “Share” button all too easy.

But the Health and Fitness hoards on Social Media have to be up there as the worst for posting Shitty Thoughtless Crap on their social media.

I am sure their intentions are good at the time, but as you scroll through countless well lit selfies, motivational quotes, misleading nutrition/training advice and transformation photos, do you ever stop and think, about the impact they are having on you?

PART ONE:
IS SOMEONE ELSE’S END RESULT STOPPING YOU ACHIEVE YOUR BEST?

Your thoughts are most likely along the lines of “that’s the body I want”, “that’s what I need to do”, “I’ll never make the grade to be like her/him”, which leads to “Oh I fucked up again and ate that, spent this, missed a workout and I’ll never be as good as them”.  Which leads to, “fuck it all, I’m back to square one, I might as well quit”.

Next thing you know, you are scrolling through your Social Media and come Monday, you’re back on the “hunting down those goals Train, next stop Fuck it all, calling at Self Sabotage, destination Vicious Cycle”.

What most people are posting on Social Media is their “end result”, very rarely they are showing/sharing the process, the habits that got them to the end result.  Someone else’s Goal (end result) does nothing positive for your state of mind or motivation. In fact it has a negative result which keeps you on the Train calling at Self Sabotage and terminating at Vicious Cycle.

The magic is actually in the Process and the Habits, it is the small adjustments that yield the biggest results in the long term.  If a Pilot sets off on a flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Los Angeles, USA with the nose of a plane set one or two degrees in the wrong direction, without correcting that degree of error, by the time that plane has travelled 13+ hours, it could arrive in San Francisco, USA.  The flight time is the same, the distance is similar but the destination (Goal or End Result) is very different.  That small degree of error results in the flight landing 350 miles away from the desired location.
Now, the pilot doesn’t then come over the loud speaker and say “sorry folks, I fucked up my calculations, we are re-fuelling and returning 10, 500 miles back to New Zealand so I can start again and hopefully this next time I will get the goal of LA”.
What actually happens is, the pilot makes checks along the flight path, makes small adjustments throughout the journey to ensure the flight lands in the right location.

Just like anything in life, those small adjustments, positive habits and minor tweaks along the way, will help you land yourself the desired end result.  By embedding yourself into the process, focusing on the adjustments and checks and learning to enjoy the journey, you give yourself a greater chance of achieving the desired results and keeping that result for the long term.

Of course Nutrition is my area of expertise, so let’s apply this to nutrition.

Your Goal is to reduce your daily refined sugar intake and to lose some excess body weight.

You currently eat four Oreo cookies a day.  You decide to make a point to reduce this to two Oreo’s per day and you change nothing else in your diet.
Over the course of a year (12 months), you will have:

• Cut 38,690 calories from your diet which equates roughly to losing 11lbs / 5kg of body weight;
• Cut 3,431g of refined sugar from your diet which is equal to almost 7 bags of white sugar.

You are still consuming and enjoying two cookies a day but that small and quite possibly unnoticeable change of habit will yield you a bigger result than the Train to Vicious Cycle ever could.
If going balls to the wall being “good” to look like a Social Media post and then falling off the Good Wagon only to find yourself back at square one is something you find yourself doing regularly, then you need to start discarding these Balls to the Wall attempts and start making small positive habits that you can stick to and make part of your lifestyle in order to land at the desired destination.

As the saying goes, “if you get a flat tyre on your car, your don’t slash the other three tyres”…..

Thanks for reading my words for Wednesday!

Kel xo