Carley and I got connected through her father after he and I spent hours upon hours together at the Spectrum Fitness Center lifting weights while discussing life, love, liberty, and some shared adolescent experiences in Kinmount, Ontario that remained consistent a few decades apart.
After Trevor and I had lifted together for some time, he brought it up.
“My son and daughter are both trying to get into fitness. Maybe I’ll buy them a couple months training with you for Christmas and see what happens.”
I thought to myself, “what an odd Christmas gift.” Like getting your wife a vacuum or your child some new socks. A little twisted, if not completely practical. Not knowing Carley at all, I agreed. We made up a cute little certificate that Trevor lost before he could gift it to her. In essence, what I’m trying to say here is this whole thing felt like a bungled op from the get-go. A couple days after Christmas, I awkwardly messaged her to see if she was interested in getting started.
Since the beginning, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to have my expectations proven wrong. Carley has taken her time at Align Coaching seriously and treated it as a priority. When we had those initial conversations at the end of December and beginning of January, Carley was somebody who had let her relationship with physical fitness stray much further than she would have liked. She had weight loss goals, but she also had a mental transformation in mind already. I was delighted to find Carley in a spot where she was already to work.
It wasn’t without its difficulties. Early in our time together, her nursing placement began. Carley started taking on 12 hour shifts at her placement, which, combined with a bunch of new fitness efforts, resulted in a few back-and-forth weeks of us getting our rhythm. This is a major life change and a pace so completely different from what Carley was used to that it made complete sense to me. My role through this time was to support the transition and encourage Carley to maintain what efforts she could through the short period where we may not see as much “progress.”
Carley and I tried to control our controllables. We had aspirations of getting her in the gym 3-4 times a week, but this schedule just wasn’t going to realistically allow her to make that transition. I know lots of nurses are able to make it into the gym after their long shifts, and for that I CONGRATULATE them. I’ve been in medical buildings. Those are hard jobs on your feet full of days being under appreciated by people who are in pain. Carley was tired and she hadn’t built the tolerance to gym and work in this capacity, so we adapted and moved back to a home program.
You’ll notice that Carley is an EXCELLENT communicator. She gives me as a coach the information I need in an unfiltered way. She lets me know what is going on and together we can build toward a resolution, because issues have been effectively communicated.
And so Carley got to work at home. She could control a little movement there, she could fit that in after her long placement shifts. She controlled her food. We overhauled her diet because she was actually under eating, and her body had difficulty sort of knowing what to expect given her unpredictable habits.
Much of Carley’s “dietary issues” actually came from what her and I have called her “turnaround days.” These shifts at placement can alternate in time, and she has school, work, family, friends, and a life outside of that. We set “windows” of food for her to start trying to hit. We kept it open and talked conceptually rather than boxing her in to a hard and fast meal plan or eating times. Our goal here was to reduce the drastic different in the “turnaround day” where Carley would often eat less than half of her daily recommended macronutrients because she was so exhausted after finishing her string of shifts she would crash after getting home. We focused on the high protein diet and consistency her body was asking for.
Carley and I set weekly “checklist” type goals for her to hit, because I can tell she is an organized “checklist” type person. Not all of my clients would like this approach or find it useful – if I suggested it to some bodybuilding male clients, they’d resist strongly, but Carley is no resistor. Every week, we move her a little bit closer to where we want. Her protein intake was so low that, again, it was unrealistic to expect her to go from almost nothing to a consistent 150 grams a day and track all of her macros. Over these few months, we have moved Carley to a spot where on several weeks she has hit her 7/7 days over 100 grams of protein goal. We work on slowly building up volume and frequency so that we can hit targets consistently. We pick individual snacks or dietary options or foods that might work to plug in or sub out at certain meal times. Slowly and surely, we tweak. We progress. We improve. We work.
And so we worked. For close to three months, we have worked. Carley has had good weeks, she has had great weeks, she has had some where she did not perform as well, and she has had some where she got discouraged. She has been working, and she knows this is the process. She knows it takes time. She knows doing takes undoing, and it is a process. Slowly, though, bit by bit, we see progress. We see it in her communication and mental strength. We see it in the way she speaks to and about herself. We see it in these small victories she can acknowledge and appreciate that are less tangible than the scale — in new pants, in the way she feels when she walks, and in the ease of her movements.
After this time and effort, we have some results to bring forward. Carley had done so much work to lose weight and connect with herself before we even started together, and I came in to her journey only part way through. She lost close to 20 These photos and progress you can see with our time together only show a small drop in the bucket of her work despite being so incredibly impressive. Her face, her legs, her waist — they’re all feeling and looking healthier to Carley in these photos, and she’s incredibly happy about it.
But the work is not done. We have tweaks and improvements and progress to be made in all areas. Carley can make improvements to her movements patterns, frequencies, and intensities. She can eat better. She can sleep and recovery and treat her body better around the rigours and demands of long shifts and an inconsistent circadian rhythm. Carley knows all of these things, and she is undeterred because she knows that we will continue to make our small incremental changes. When we are ready to address and improve, we will.
Look at her food; in the span of our time together, Carley has gone from eating in a way that just wasn't engaged or informed to a way where she is conscious about what she is putting into her body. She is conscious of the relationship she has with food, and while she isn't even limiting herself or being overly restrictive, the knowledge and concepts in itself have driven her improvement. We began by asking Carley to eat 100 grams of protein 3 times a week, as we saw in the messages above. A typical day of eating from Carley now looks like this:
She eats mostly whole foods. She tries to prioritize protein. She knows that the breakfast window is an opportunity to get important protein that she sometimes misses, and it's an improvement she is going to try and make. She doesn't actively tank her day by dumping sugar and cream into coffees or eating excessively. She needs to eat a little more in general so her body can expect a regular amount of nourishment and give her the energy she will need to sustain an active fitness regimen. She knows these things, and we are working toward them. She's smart and communicative and intuitive, and I know we will get there as we build out our habits for her balanced lifestyle.
And so Carley is going to continue working together with Align Coaching in the pursuit of her best self. She’s made physical, mental, and emotional progress… but she still has a long list of goals and accomplishments to get after, and we can’t wait to watch!
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