Dwayne Sykes Coaching

👇🏻 Being a supporting partner 101

1️⃣ If they’re trying to be more active, do the same.

Suggest walks together for fun, have a little 1v1 steps competition, go to the gym at the same time, plan active date nights - whatever makes the most sense in your situation.

Just try to avoid being a massive couch potato or encouraging them to do the same.

2️⃣ If they’re trying to stick to a deficit to lose fat, don’t put temptations right in their fu***ng face.

And please for the love of god, don’t ask them if they want anything you’re having - I know you’re trying to be nice but you’re just putting them in a position where they have to use more willpower/restraint than necessary.

Instead why not encourage more home cooking, less date nights revolving around food/drink, keep crisps, chocolate, etc to a minimum in the house.

You don’t have to put yourself in a deficit to help, you just need to make the environment much easier for them to stick to theirs.

3️⃣ Take a genuine, genuine interest in their goals. Try to coax out some of their wins and big them up when they appear.

Make the smallest win feel big.

BUT don’t focus on what has been achieved too much, focus on the actions they’ve taken to get the outcome. This is a much healthier positive reinforcement.

E.g:

❌ “You’ve lost so much weight, I’m so proud, well done!”
✅ “I’m so proud of how you’ve really focused on yourself and changed XYZ over the last 3 months!”

One links praise to how they look/what they weigh.
One links praise to how they’re acting and who they’re becoming.

Doesn’t take a genius to understand which is better.

There’s so much more you can do to be a 10/10 partner, but just doing these 3 things will set you apart from most who are either:

1/10 unsupported ar****le partners
or
5/10 blissfully unaware partners who don’t realise they’re making things harder.

💬 If you found this helpful, drop a quick comment just to let me know I’m being useful and not wasting my time 😂

As a foodie at heart, there’s nothing I love more than dropping a message in the group chat that says:

“New food spot just opened… shall we check it out? 👀”

Or asking the Mrs if she wants to “have a potter around the local craft market?”

Which coincidentally happens to have a sick line up of local baristas and pastries that I definitely didn’t know about… 🤥

And whilst you do NOT need to cut these things out to drop the gut and keep it off (in fact, that’s the worst thing you can do).

You do need to have options for fun and social that don’t involve food.

If all your social options are food related, you’re going to find yourself doing one of two things:

A) Skipping events.
B) Making a lot more compromised choices at these events.

Because whilst the Fit Foodie Method provides a maximum flexibility fat loss approach, there is still a limit.

Either option will have you feeling overly restricted, which leads you right into the hands of the f**k it button for the 500th time.

This change has helped me and my clients shift 10’s of KG in body fat and not feel restricted AF doing so.

If you want to be successful in fat loss, and maintaining it after, you need to look beyond ‘eat less, move more’ because that is not the solution that 1000s of gym shark promo code wielding fitness influencers would have you believe.

Not if you enjoy having a life anyway. 🤷🏼‍♂️

If you read this far, I’m assuming you’re a fellow foodie and enjoyed a different take on fitness.

Might be worth dropping a quick follow now cos Meta might not show me to you again!

‘I’ve lost 2kg this week, gonna treat myself to a dominoes’

Respectfully, do you realise how ridiculous this mindset is? 😂
I still kick myself for acting like this and wondering why I kept losing and gaining the same 5kg for years.

That’s like cutting back on spending unnecessary money to save specifically for a holiday, but once you’ve racked up £100 you treat yourself to a £90 pair of trainers for ‘being good’.

Rewarding yourself is fine, but rewarding yourself with the very thing that can impact further progress isn’t the smart choice.

Think of some other ways to reward your efforts that are not related to the thing itself.

Cinema trip (without the £25 popcorn).
That new PS5 game you’ve been wanting.
Those new pair of jeans you’ve had on your Vinted wish list for ages.

By all means, reward your efforts and progress but let’s do so in a way that doesn’t directly go against what we’re trying to achieve.

And sometimes, it can be as simple as continuing to tick the boxes that will see progress continue because the progress IS the reward, is it not?

FYI cos someone will think I’m pushing restriction agenda or something.

This is not to say you can’t have dominoes or whatever during fat loss, you can and my clients do all the time.

Just NOT as a reward for their efforts, because that’s just silly.

4 weeks of prep for the Fit Foodie Photoshoot done and dusted.

Couldn’t have hoped for better outcomes so far.

Scale weight moving exactly on target.
Feeling leaner (photos to be taken at the weekend).
Strength and performance maintained.
No real physical or mental fatigue.

I make it sound relatively easy, but there have been challenges.

To keep my calorie average around 1700 per day each week WITHOUT sacrificing my weekend away, meals out, etc it took some heavy compromise.

I’m talking 1400-1500 calorie days.
Which when your maintenance calories, based on current level of exercise, are likely up to 2500… it’s a significant drop!

But with smart nutrition choices and the right mindset, those challenges were overcome.

These next 2 weeks should be fairly straightforward for once.
1 meal out this week and 1 board game, beers and snacks day the following weekend.

Then we’re into a recharge week which I’ve already planned some good eats to make use of the calorie bump 🤣

If you’d asked my this question before I started coaching… I’d have given you the worst rant on how liquid calories are dumb.

But like any good coach, ya boy has pivoted on a du***ss belief.

Like everything, it depends on context.

Assess the pros and cons, and make your decision accordingly.

As long as you abide by the law of equal give and take, you can have an incredibly inclusive approach to fat loss.

I know me and my clients do, and you’ve seen the results that we get from it 🤷🏼‍♂️

Photoshoot prep is in full swing, 3 weeks down already.

Considering the minimum goal was to get from 58.5kg to 56kg in the first six weeks…

We’ll take 56.5kg in 3 weeks 👀
Especially given everything I’ve worked around recently!

Scales aside, feeling leaner and looking forward to seeing the difference when I take my next set of pics at the end of this week.

Now to focus on ticking the boxes this week to make space for the Pizza & Tiramisu I’m gonna inhale on Friday 😮‍💨

Pushing the Fit Foodie Method to the extremes on this photoshoot prep.
And putting all the fitness waffle on the internet to bed.

Can’t do this if you want to lose fat, can’t have that if you want to lose fat.
Blah blah blah.

You’ve gotta eat clean, cut the carbs, stop eating out, no liquid calories, train 5x per week, daily cardio, etc etc.
No you don’t.

I’ve just been away for a weekend and had daily coffees, bakery goods and lunch out…
whilst in photoshoot prep.

And there’s 0 negative impact on my progress.
Because I have the right structure, process and mindset to work life into the plan.
No matter how aggressive the goal.

If I can achieve an extreme goal such as a photoshoot prep using my flexible coaching methods…
I reckon there’s a pretty good chance we could use them to get that extra 10kg off you.

And finally sack off the s**tty dieting myths and methods that keep you stuck year after year.

It’s hard to get your point across correctly in 90 seconds when you’re not exactly the most articulate person.

It’s then impossible to caveat everything you say in one post 😂

So this is a follow up to the last one to make my point clearer.

I don’t hate or look down on fitness classes nor people who go to them, I was just using that context as an example to make a point.

I can make the exact same point using the gym floor, as I mention in this.

The message being: if you’re consistently doing [insert type of exercise] but getting nowhere with your goals…

You’ve likely gotten comfortable just turning up and aren’t putting in the work where it matters now.

Once just getting consistent with [insert type of exercise] was enough to see progress, cos you weren’t doing that before.

But now that’s your norm, it’s time to tackle those other areas you prefer not to think about.

(Someone say nutrition? 👀)

Hopefully that’s clearer this time and if not then maybe I should just shut the f**k up and keep my observations to myself 😂

(I won’t though cos who is that helping?)

I’ve worked with almost 100 people as a weight loss coach, this is THE mistake I see amongst people that never achieve their goal.

(Including myself for YEARS)

They’re constantly searching for a way around the hard part.

🪩 A better plan.
🪩 A quicker method.�🪩 A more “realistic” approach.

Basically… the fitness version of “is there a way to get paid without working?” 🫠

They’re looking for something that feels easier.
But the funny thing is all that does is keep you stuck in the same cycle you’re already sick to death of.

The ones who actually get anywhere just bloody get on with it like the fully grown adult they are.

They embrace discomfort like it’s part of the job description, cos frankly it is.
They accept that:

💀 Often you won’t feel motivated�💀 Sometimes getting steps in or getting to the gym feels like unpaid labour�💀 Saying no to things (and people) can be awkward as hell

And then they do it anyway.

Because fat loss isn’t about finding a perfect plan or waiting for the stars to align and your motivation to magically show up.

It’s about getting better at taking action regardless of how you feel.

When it’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, and honestly a bit s**t.
It’s not sexy, glamorous or rocket science but it does get bloody good results.