DNA testing for diet is a joke (or scam). Veeeeeeeery few people actually have a mutation that would increase their fat levels (leptin or ghrelin). Honestly, there is more scientific evidence that the bacteria in your gut have a larger impact on your weight than your own DNA.
DNA for training is also very suspect. Usually you can tell if someone has a mutation that increases muscle mass without looking at their DNA sequence. Other than that, lifting heavy things and consistently eating for hypertrophy will get you much further than looking at your genes.
With all due respect, it may not be to you, but spending 10mins in any commercial gym tells me it’s not as easy as you think, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many piss weak people.
Having worked with these people in several contexts (worked at a gym, worked at a weight loss center, now a therapist) I can say that part of the problem - and what I’ve provided in each of these spheres with some success - is faith in the process.
My instinct tells me maybe a lack of appropriate role models may be a big underlying factor. And by that I mean, how do you know what training hard looks like if you’ve never seen it? How do you know what “strong” is if you’ve never seen it? How can you have faith in a process if you don’t have examples of success around you? Am I way off base here?
Yes, along with assumptions about how difficult “going hard” is and complete unawareness of the intrinsic reward. I tell people all the time that it really only takes a couple of weeks before a sexy or confident feeling starts to kick in - long before changes show externally, but of course that won’t be the case if they’re able to play games on their tablets while they’re on the treadmill. You have to sweat - and eventually THAT feels good and is its own reward.
Some, most maybe, of them dismiss me as having some sort of magic that they don’t have, but some of them listen. Same is true of smoking, drugs, alcohol, relationship changes - if I can sell them on the very real, attainable possibility of genuinely worthwhile benefit, we’re halfway there.
I tend to push the sexy feeling for overweight people, because to try to sell them on fitness or looking good is simply too remote. They DO respond to “it’s just like, you walk differently, taller…” because that’s a near goal.
Right. For smoking cessation I might tell about my friend who said a few days into a quit “I can still smell my shower when I take my shirt off at night!”
They need tangible goals. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” doesn’t push any reward buttons.
Editing to finish my thought, lol. So that’s what you’re seeing in the gym; people who haven’t got a good clear, immediate and ATTAINABLE goal.
So if someone had a big old chocolate birthday cake baked by their kid in the fridge and not much planned for the afternoon, what immediate wins would you look for to stop them burying their face in it?
Since you’re on vacation and it was just your birthday, you should cut it into smaller pieces (you pick the number) and space them out all over your property. Sprint/run from one to the next and then eat it. If your property is too small for this to generate a training effect, then do a shuttle run to each piece (run to it, then away from it, then to it, then away from it, then to it, and eat it).
I can only imagine what type of horrible form is causing this lol