WS#46 - Proper expectations lead to improved results
Week of 2/26/24
Expectations are everything. If you can manage your expectations, you can control your emotions; and if you can control your emotions, you can make the right decisions. This applies to all endeavors, especially ones that involve health and fitness.
Part of my job is to help set and encourage reasonable expectations for my clients. To do this effectively, an understanding of underlying mechanisms of change is necessary. Early on in someone’s training journey, I do not expect them to be able to do this on their own. How could they? It is also crucial to monitor some key vitals along the way to ensure you are on the right track. This goes hand in hand with the expectations that you set. For example, if the goal is to build muscle, your weekly checklist should look something like this:
1. Am I utilizing a progressive training program, training at the appropriate volume and intensity for my goal?
2. Am I consuming adequate protein each day, on average?
3. Am I consuming adequate calories each day, on average?
4. What does my bodyweight trend look like?
5. How do I feel? Do I feel like I am making progress?
If you can use a checklist system like this, there will likely be no surprises when you go through a reassessment process. Establish the proper expectations on the front end and have a system in place to manage your emotions along the way. Here is a real example from a client this past week.
I had a reassessment with a client who was surprised at her results. Her expectation was that she was going to show an increase in muscle, have no fat gain, and therefore show a decrease in body fat percentage. She felt this way because she has gotten much stronger over the past few months and hasn’t noticed any major subjective changes when looking at herself. She figured that since she has gotten stronger, she had to have added muscle. It is worth noting that just because you get stronger, it does not mean your muscles have gotten bigger. But if your muscles have gotten bigger you likely have gotten stronger. The two are not the same.
For context, since March 2022, this client decreased her body fat percentage by 4%, increased her lean body mass close to one pound, and lost around seven and half pounds of fat. To lose that much fat while adding muscle is an impressive feat. To do that you need to be checking a lot of boxes consistently to compound your results. With that said, from a body composition standpoint her results have been mostly flat for the past eight months. Most of her change came between the months of March 2022 to June 2023 and she has maintained those results ever since (that is no easy feat in and of itself). So, what happened? Why did her body composition progress stop but her strength increase?
When she was making the most progress, she was tracking her food diligently. She was eating close to 80 grams of protein each day, sticking to a calorie intake range, and following the workout program we were going through together. This strategy worked and there were several touchpoints each week for her to check in and make sure she was on the right track. More recently, the food tracking and bodyweight measurements stopped. This took away two very important check-ins and led to a significant decrease in protein intake and an overall increase in calories. Clearly, some good habits stuck with her as she was able to maintain her muscle since June of 2023. She has been training and eating in a way that has allowed her to keep most of her results which is a very difficult task, and she should be proud of that.
As mentioned earlier, she was surprised with these results. We sat down, talked for about fifteen minutes and she understood why the results were not really all that surprising. I also realized that I did a poor job of setting the proper expectations. I knew she had stopped tracking some important metrics and had a feeling that led to lower protein intake and an overall lack of calorie control as compared to when she was making serious progress. I could have done better here.
The moral of the story is that the way you manage your expectations and psychology is one of the most important parts of making long-term progress. This client has been working hard towards her fitness goals for a very long time and does a terrific job of managing her psychology. She is open minded and is willing to listen to me. She may have gotten discouraged for a moment, but she bounced right back and was willing to tighten up how she managed her protein and calories to kickstart some progress. The expectations are now set. If you have a goal and have set your expectations well, you should have multiple touchpoints along the way to help you to know if you are on the right track. This is a proven strategy to help you avoid disappointment and surprise along the way.
-Matt