All Posts by Josh Hillis

About the Author

Josh Hillis is the Chief People Officer for One by One Nutrition, Author of Fat Loss Happens on Monday, and Nutrition Habits Coaching Expert for Strength Matters Magazine

Mar 09

Is Your Weight Loss Plan Making You an A-Hole?

By Josh Hillis | Uncategorised

A Good Metaphor for a Weight Loss Plan is A College Graduation Plan

If it takes 120 credits to graduate, and you take 15 credits per semester, you graduate in 8 semesters, or 4 years. Sometimes you can’t get classes or whatever, and it takes 5 years.

If, on the other hand, lets say you really want to graduate. You’re like so motivated. Plus, you haven’t gone to college in a while, so you figure you need to make up for it. So you take 120 credits in one semester. You get burnt out, you fail everything. You’re so demoralized you don’t even really try for another year or two. That would be how you do college like an a-hole.

Most people approach college the first way: 15 credits per semester. This appeals to your values, like: Moderation, patience, consistency, intentionality, and planning. It’s the consistency of doing the 15 credit work, day in and day out, that gets you to graduation. Plus, the practice of moderation, patience, consistency, intentionality, and planning, makes you a better version of yourself.

Most people approach weight loss the second way: 120 credits per semester (aka, like an a-hole). They try to do literally everything at once. The fail, because it’s impossible not to fail this way. It’s too much for any human. They destroy themselves, fail, and then they don’t learn from the silliness of how much they took on… because next time they do the same thing again. Even worse, because they are practicing taking on too much, short-sightedness, impatience, and perfectionism, they’re making themselves worse versions of themselves. They’re rapidly becoming a-holes.

It’s About Hitting Your Goals

Looking at the college example, it’s pretty easy to see that the patient, consistent, reasonable, planned way is the only way to graduate.

It really, really, really is the same with weight loss. Your 15 credits per semester might be working on 2 or 3 food skills over a few months. By really integrating these food skills into your life, you change the kinds of results that are possible for you with fitness and leanness forever.

Most clients it doesn’t take four years, like college. But if it did take four years, that would still be faster than what most people do — because most people fail so fast, so often, they never come anywhere near hitting their goals.

It isn’t just the better way, it’s the only way to lose weight.

The No-Nonsense Way to Become Your Best Version of Yourself

Step One: Identify your values

Pick 1-3 values that are important to you. Most people get more with less; Think about one value or two values that really mean a lot to you. That laser focus will make things simple and obvious. Most people have trouble, initially, with figuring out what their values are. That’s ok. Just spend some time reflecting on it, each week, for the rest of your life. It’s ok if you pick something, and then refine it over a few years.

Step Two: Apply your value(s) to an area of your life, like fitness

You will probably find that there are areas of your life that you practice this value already. You may totally rock that value with finance, but not with fitness. Or you rock it with other people, but not with yourself. You’ll notice that some areas are different than others.

That inconsistency is an inconsistency of self. Don’t worry, we all have those. Actually, we’re mostly blind to them, because we just don’t spend any time thinking about it.

My mentor Dan John has always told me: “Be one person, all of the time. Surround yourself with people who are one person, all of the time.”

Step Three: Shrink inconsistencies and gaps

You’ll pretty immediately see where you have gaps or inconsistencies between your stated values and what you practice in real life, with your fitness. That’s great! That’s a place to go to work. That’s an area you can grow.

All there is to do is ask yourself “What would be a better expression of __________ value with my fitness?” Just try something new. Again, it doesn’t have to be the end-all, be-all expression of that value in your fitness, it just needs to be one step better than you’ve done before.

For example, if you’ve repeatedly done extreme diets and cleanses where you crash and burn after a month, but you value reasonableness and consistency. A skill based approach to nutrition would obviously be the ultimate expression of reasonableness and consistency. You don’t need to do all of the skills at once, youonly need to do one skill for now. Later, you can add another one.

It’s ok for it to be progressive. You don’t need to completely close each gap in one step — likely that’s been what’s failed for you in the past. All you need to do is take small steps, continually, that are in alignment with your stated value(s).

Rinse and Repeat

It really is as simple as: State your values, apply stated values to an area of your life, and then shrink the gaps and inconsistencies in your actions.

Every time you repeat that process, you bring your actions more in line with your stated values. And that’s pretty much the ultimate in personal growth: Living your values.

by Josh Hillis
Chief People Officer, One by One Nutrition
Author, Fat Loss Happens on Monday

P.S. This was inspired by a webinar Steven Ledbetter did with Michael Littig about universal stories and horizontal vs. vertical traditions. It got my head spinning about horizontal vs. vertical growth could look like in fitness and weight loss.

P.P.S. We, at One by One Nutrition, have an awesome coaching program, if you want some coaching and accountability in applying your values to your food and fitness.

Mar 08

Eating Out is Simple

By Josh Hillis | Uncategorised

Our clients are often shocked to find out that they can totally eat at Chipotle or Garbanzo as often as they want.

But if you look at the picture above, it’s really pretty simple:

  • 1/2 plate veggies
  • 1/4 plate protein
  • 1/4 plate carbs
  • Sauce

That meal is a meal from Garbanzo, ordered exactly like this:

  1. No hummus or pita
  2. Half the plate lettuce
  3. Rice
  4. Double chicken
  5. Seasonal vegetables on the lettuce
  6. Cilantro sauce

It’s a pretty delicious and tasty meal! Available almost anywhere, quick, reasonably priced.

Of course, you get to pick whichever carbohydrate you like. You might want to do the pita instead of the rice. Awesome, rock out with your pita. You get to choose.

You can eat anywhere you want. It’s just a matter of noticing that places will mostly serve you like 5 portions of carbohydrates, and somewhere between half a portion and a full portion of protein.

The biggest thing is to order one portion of carbohydrates, and then fill in the rest with vegetables. Between the portion of protein and the double portion of vegetables, the meal will be healthy and filling.

And you don’t need to be afraid of carbohydrates! Just pick one.

This pattern works just as well for any place you go eat or any meal you make at home. If it’s a meal where everything is “stirred together,” just make sure the portions are right before you stir it all together =)

Also, note, you can adjust these plate ratios based on your individual needs. Someone who is training for a triathlon two hours per day will need more portions carbohydrates than someone who works out two hours per week. Someone who is six feet tall would need more than someone who is five feet tall. And so on. This is just a starting place, adjust as necessary, and use common sense.

—Josh

Mar 07

The Motivation Superstition

By Josh Hillis | Uncategorised

The fundamental lie (superstition) of working out and eating well is that motivation comes before action.

Lets take a look at the reality:

  • Jessica doesn’t want to work out today. Feels like skipping it. Goes and works out anyway. 15 minutes into the workout, she starts to feel “motivated”
  • Sarah is has been planning and cooking healthy meals now for 10 weeks, and seen results, but is just so totally over doing it. Does not want to cook this week. Goes to the store to buy the food she’d planned anyway, by the time she gets home, she feels “motivated”
  • Joe has been doing the same workout program for four months (it’s a six month program). He’s bored, wants to do something else. Goes to the gym, does his program anyway. By the end of month five, he’s “motivated” to finish all six months.
  • Melissa is so frustrated with getting slow and steady results using food habits. Wants to jump on a new magical macro plan she read about. She keeps doing her smart, reasonable program for another year, and hits all of her goals. At some point, a few months after hitting all of her goals, she finally starts to feel “motivated”

What do you notice about all of those examples?

Yes, motivation came after action.

Sometimes, motivation comes immediately after taking the action. Sometimes motivation comes a month after taking the action consistently. Sometimes it takes a year.

The Only Game Worth Playing

So, we start to see that if our plan is to look for motivation to take the action, we’re pretty much screwed right from go.

I’m not saying that never happens. Once in a great while you can get lucky like that, and get motivated before doing something. Which is terrible, because that starts the motivation superstition: “I felt so motivated yesterday and went and ate all of my meals slowly! It was awesome!”

And then you start to think that that’s how it’s supposed to work.

In reality, motivation is fleeting. Motivation is like the weather. Some days are sunny, some days are cloudy. If you only went to work on sunny days you’d get fired. You’ve got to go to work even when it’s cloudy.

So we start to see that there’s only one game worth playing: Taking action when we aren’t “motivated” and when we aren’t “feeling it”

Action Without Motivation

Now we’re talking! It turns out there are some great ways to keep taking the actions that matter to you, even when you aren’t “motivated”.

  1. Other people — Whether it’s a coach, a workout buddy, a group of friends you prep food with, a habits coaching group, a workout group, any time you involve other people, you’re more likely to follow through on your actions.
  2. Be good at/getting better at it — No big surprise we’re more likely to do things we’re good at, even when we don’t want to. The trick with new food or workout habits is that they’re new, so we aren’t awesome at them yet. We need to constantly look for evidence that we’re learning about what we’re doing and getting better at doing it. Learning and getting better are what being good at something looks like in first steps and in action.
  3. Connect it with your values — If the doing of it is connected to your values and who you envision your best version of yourself would be, that’s a strong pull to express yourself in action. Even when you aren’t “motivated” you still want to act in line with your values.
  4. Outside triggers — Put things on your schedule, or in your phone. Set alarms. Do them before _____ or after ______ (something you already do automatically).

The War of Fitness

There’s a great book called “The War of Art”, that has a basic premise that waiting for inspiration and motivation are stalling techniques. That the real work of creating art happens after people have done so much work on their art that they’ve actually started to hate it.

I really, really want people to enjoy their workouts, and enjoy eating well. But I know it doesn’t show up like that every time. Sometimes you aren’t feeling it, and you do it because of someone else waiting for you, or because it fits your values, or because it’s on the schedule.

And if you do that often enough, you just might even feel “motivated” sometimes also.

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

To Recap:

Your most reliable access to motivation is taking action.

The game you should be most interested in is finding ways to consistently take action when you aren’t motivated: Involving other people, noticing learning, noticing progress, doing it just because it aligns with your values, and having triggers in your life and doing it at a certain time.

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