Max Lowery (00:05.231)

How do you create a life that allows you to lose weight, eat the foods that you love and sustain the results? Over the last 10 years, I've helped thousands of people do exactly that. I'm Max Lowry. I'm an author, personal trainer and weight loss coach. In this podcast, I'm going to share my top tips and tricks from within my one-on-one coaching program. It's my goal to give you the tools and understanding so that you never diet again.

Max Lowery (00:41.934)

Okay, so why wait watches and Slimming World don't work long term? There are some serious, serious problems with Slimming World and wait watches. Let's get into it. All right. So problem number one is the food labeling. All right. So the sins list or synergy list, but the fact it's called sins perpetuates a negative relationship with food. All right. So the labeling of sins, i.e. bad foods, and then having the free foods, i.e. good foods.

is a problem. And any of you that have been through the five day challenge have experienced this, right? Or I've, you know, tried to let you know that this isn't the way forward. There's no such thing as a good or bad food in isolation, right? The... It's all about the bigger picture, okay? You need to look at every aspect of your life in order to understand if something that you are eating or doing is going to help you achieve your goals or not, right? Everyone that's on my Live360 program can eat whatever food that they want.

There's no such thing as a good or a bad food. Right, it's really important. And if you are in that mindset, it's just going to perpetuate this negative relationship with food. If you're not enjoying food, you're not enjoying life. It's as simple as that. In calling certain foods free foods, this can increase consumption. You've got this kind of psychological get out of jail free card. I can eat as much of these foods as I want. And again, that is just perpetuating this kind of binge.

culture, this binge relationship with food where you're, you know, you've been told like a school child, yes, you can eat as much of this food as you want. So of course you go crazy. And this is a big problem. And it just means that having this mindset in the long term is going to mean that you're going to put weight back on as soon as you finish living world. Countless studies have shown that people who undertake diets that have black and white view of foods, so good and bad, you know, this is good, this is not good.

can lead to a 73 % increase in the likelihood of weight regain in the future. If you want long-term change, you have to shift your mindset out of black and white view on nutrition. It's really important that you get yourself out of that. Stop labeling foods. Only then will you improve your relationship with food, live life to the full, and end the constant cycle of guilt and deprivation. All right, so how many of you here every single Monday have eaten...

Max Lowery (03:06.168)

sinned foods, have eaten bad foods on the weekend and you're feeling guilty, you feel like you don't have motivation, you don't have willpower, you don't have discipline, there's something wrong with you and every single Monday you're having to start fresh. Right, that is incredibly draining and you need to get yourself out of that kind of guilt cycle. Alright, problem number two is generic. It is generic. Weight Watchers Slimming are the two largest and most popular diets in the world in the UK.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of members are given the exact same advice. Okay. There's virtually no individualization. All you're doing is following this kind of generic sins, free foods, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? It doesn't work in the long term. Right. There's virtually no individualization. Okay. And in order to get long-term results, you must have individualization.

Alright, so you wouldn't go to a doctor who dished out the same advice to every single patient, would you? You wouldn't do that. You know, why would you do the same with fitness and fat loss? You know, imagine if, you you turned up to your GP and, you know, there was a guy, a man who went in there first, who had a problem very specific to a man.

and you go in afterwards and the doctor goes and gives you exactly the same advice and gives exactly the same advice to everyone in the room, everyone in his practice. It's exactly the same. Each person who visits a doctor has a very specific problem. So just like a doctor, a good coach needs to diagnose what the real issues are. And the only way to get a long-term change is to follow a plan that's specific and tailored for you and fit into

your life. If you're trying to fit your life into something generic, that is not going to work. It needs to be the other way around. It needs to be specific and tailored. It needs to fit into your life perfectly so that you can actually do it in the long term. Problem number three, it treats symptoms and not causes. Right? What does that mean? So what is driving you to overeat? Why are you overeating in the first place? Why are you unmotivated to exercise?

Max Lowery (05:18.328)

Why don't you believe that you cannot succeed? So why do you believe that you cannot succeed? You know, these fundamental questions are never going to be answered with something like Slimming World and Weight Watchers. Alright, you're very much just treating the symptoms and never actually discovering what the root causes of those problems are. And in order to get long-term change, long-term behavioral change, in order to have an impact on your self-belief, your identity, your habits, your behavior, you must understand what the causes are.

Because it's going to be a combination of your habits, your behaviors, your self-belief and identity, which have got you to where you are. And any program that does not incorporate that is not worth your time. All right. It's as simple as that. This is why, you know, in the Live360 program, we are challenging our clients all the time to address their limiting self-beliefs. All right. We really do try and improve every aspect of their life rather than just coming in and saying, right, eat this food.

Don't eat that food and, you know, do some exercise, right? That's symptoms, not causes. Problem number four, it's humiliating. Right, it is humiliating and it can perpetuate a negative self-image. Right, why is it humiliating? Weighing yourself every single week, know, queuing up to weigh yourself every single week in front of a room of people is a big, big problem.

It's degrading, embarrassing, and can lead to an obsession with a number on the scales. It's rooted in extrinsic motivation. Okay, I'll briefly describe what that is, but if you want to understand more about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, I've made a whole video on it. But extrinsic motivation is when you're motivated by rewards, when you're motivated by external things, external people's opinion of you, by the number on the scales, right? And this is not good.

in the long term, like extrinsic motivation doesn't work long term. And not only that, from what I've heard from some of the ladies, you know, who have been on the, on the program is that what often happens, you know, the day before weighing yourself on the scales, you're not eating anything. You know, you're trying to hack the system. Maybe you haven't been good that week. So, know, Saturday morning, you've got the weigh-in. All of Friday, you're not eating. You don't eat anything on Saturday either. You weigh yourself and stay the same. You've lost a bit.

Max Lowery (07:44.792)

Of course, you know, everyone thinks you're doing well just because the number on the scale says that you are, you're lower than you were last week. Somehow you're doing well. And that's the only measure of success that they're measuring. But of course you go and binge afterwards. Okay. Cause you're starving and it kind of promotes binge behavior. Okay. It can promote eating disorders, right? Disordered eating. This is really, really, really, it's a massive, massive, massive problem. the number of the scales will not tell you what a great person you are.

how much your friends and family love you, that you're a kind, smart, funny and amazing in ways numbers can't define, that you have the power to choose happiness and that you own your own self-worth. All right? It's just a number.

Really quick one for me guys, I don't run ads on this podcast and I do aim to give you as many high value tips and tricks as I can for free. All I ask in return is that you help me spread the word. That way I can help as many people as I can to never die again. The way to do that is to rate, review and share this podcast. A review will only take 30 seconds but it would mean the world to me but more importantly it could help change the life of someone else.

Max Lowery (09:01.072)

But accountability from a coach who truly cares about you and your results is key. Okay. So accountability is more than just turning up and being weighed. Like if you have a proper coach who cares, you know, they are not going to put you through something so humiliating and embarrassing. All right. This is a big, big problem. Plus the number and the scales is just one measure of progress. And it tells you absolutely nothing of your body composition. It doesn't tell you

what your muscle mass is, what your body fat percentage is, what your water levels are. It tells you absolutely nothing. Any effective program will also use other measures. So photos, very good. Measurements, we're consistently measuring bust, hip, waist. Performance, you know, are you walking more steps? Are you squatting more? Are you doing more press ups? Whatever it might be, okay? So just focusing on that number on the scale is a big, big problem.

Alright, it's just going to perpetuate this obsession with the number, extrinsic motivation. But really you need to switch into intrinsic motivation and once you are, you know, the difference between, so intrinsic basically means that you are doing, you're doing something because you enjoy doing it. You're doing something because you want to be the best version of yourself. Alright, once you start to focus on these things, then you start to get a long-term change. Enjoying the process is key. Finally, problem number five.

there is not enough education. They do not want you to succeed long term, right? It's as simple as that. They want you to come back. So because of that, they don't give you the tools to get long-term results. Like I said, they're just treating symptoms and not causes, right? It's set up so that you can only get results when you're on the program. And then as soon as you have finished the program, slowly but surely you return back to your existing behavior.

Addressing key habits, beliefs and identity will help with the help of an expert is the only way to get long-term change. Of course, you could do it by yourself, not saying you have to have a coach, but it's difficult, all right? And it's better to get a roadmap, essentially a shortcut, and that doesn't mean extreme results, but, you know, essentially you've got to imagine a good coach is like a good GPS system. So say any of you watching right now, you have a destination you want to get to, you've got absolutely no roadmap on how to get there.

Max Lowery (11:24.08)

Right. You've got no direction. So you might get there eventually, but you're to get very, very lost on the way. And it's probably going to take a long time. Whereas if you've got a good coach, you know, like myself, like, like Darrell and in the live 360 team, we're to give you the exact coordinates. We're going to know exactly what traffic there is ahead, what problems you're going to come up with. We're going to help you take shortcuts. You know, we're, we're ways essentially, rather than Google maps ways is a bit more intuitive. All right. So understand that.

Any coach or program that actually cares about helping will incorporate habits, beliefs, identity into the program. You should feel empowered and understand why you are doing something rather than just blindly following instructions. Okay, you need to understand why you're doing something. You need to understand the mechanics of what's going in the body. Then you are empowered to make informed decisions and get those long-term results and not have to depend on anyone. You know, how long has this been a problem for you?

Right, how long has your weight been an issue? But lots of the ladies that I speak to, it's 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years or more sometimes. Okay? Proper accountability, support and personalisation is the only thing that is going to reverse 20, 30 years of conditioning and thinking our fitness and fat loss in a certain way.

Alright, any of these quick fixes, any of these ebooks, any of these sluiting world weight watchers that do not have proper accountability, accountability, support and personalization are not, they're a waste of your time because you might think, oh yeah, but you know, I can just do it in time for holiday. And basically every time that you do one of these things and you put a weight back on that affects your self belief. Right? Every time you do something and it exacerbates the issues with your relationship with food,

it gets worse and worse and worse. You're obsessing about food at the time. You're living in this cycle of guilt restriction, fear, anxiety. You're not living life to the full. It affects your decision making. You know, maybe you're saying no to things instead of saying yes to things. And those decisions in the long term can lead you to two very different destinations. Right? So it's really important that you understand how detrimental this is. But I just want this to be a warning to you not to gravitate towards any of these things because they can seem easy.

Max Lowery (13:44.426)

They can seem cheap, affordable, you know, the commitment levels are pretty low, but they're going to make your life worse. All right, everyone have a great week.

If you would like to go deeper into any of the topics of this podcast and learn the exact same step-by-step system which I use with my coaching clients, then make sure you check out my free definitive guide to fat loss. It will teach you everything you need to know to lose weight, sustain the results and live life to the full. It's linked below in the notes beneath this podcast.