How This Coach Routinely Gets Clients to Lose 50+ Pounds
The Hidden Truth of Progress
Happy Thursday, and welcome to the 28th Thrive Protocol Letter.
Today at a glance:
A profound insight from a coach and friend who has a seriously impressive track record helping people lose seriously impressive amounts of fat.
Applies to health & fitness & life in general.
And speaking of fat loss, here’s a reminder to pick up your Fat Loss Bible Freebie if you missed it last week :)
In other news, today is the day I’m heading over to Kelowna, B.C. to take part in this natural physique show.
With my low weigh-in of 157 lbs today, that marks 25 lbs in under 12 weeks. It’s been tough, I won’t lie.
Here’s the latest Vlog at 1 week out for anyone interested :)
(despite brutal calories, it features a pretty fun stuffed protein French toast at 16:25)
I have a friend who is an excellent health coach.
His name is Daniel, and he mainly works with people who are north of 300 pounds.
His results are phenomenal; he has a wall of testimonials of people who have lost 30, 40, 50, and up to 100 pounds.
The first time I hopped on a chat with Daniel, he shared one of the presentations he uses with his clients to illustrate a key concept of his coaching.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant, and I’d like to share it with you today.
Here’s the scene:
You’re driving along the highway, and someone cuts you off aggressively.
Not in the “oh, they might have missed me” way — there is no doubt they saw you and simply decided to be a massive jerk.
It was dangerous, and you had to swerve a bit to correct yourself.
You’re fuming.
You use every curse under the sun to refer to this guy.
But now you need to get gas.
As you pull off onto an exit and head into the gas station, lo and behold — you see the car!
He’s there gassing up.
Let’s consider the range of behaviors available to you now on a spectrum ranging from taking the high road to neutral to taking the low road.
Neutral is doing nothing — gassing up your car and then driving off without any altercation.
But the high and low road examples involve an interaction with the fella.
We’ll start with the high road.
Despite being mad, you have the sense to think to yourself:
“You know, he must be stressed. He’s probably having a really bad day. Let me do something nice for the guy.”
When you’re paying for your gas, you buy a Twix Bar, and you leave it on his windshield before you drive off.
It’s a nice gesture, and it makes you feel good.
Your mood is noticeably lighter as you drive off.
Okay, now let’s move up a couple of steps on the “high road” end of the spectrum.
You have the same thought, but a Twix bar simply won’t do.
While he’s buying his gas, you interject and insist that you buy his tank.
You tell him that you hope he has a better day, the two of you have a pleasant exchange, and you carry on with your day in a serene and positive mood.
Buying his gas was quantifiably much better than the Twix Bar.
But how much difference did it make in your life?
It made more of a difference to your wallet — the end result was pretty similar: you felt pleasant and peaceful after both scenarios.
Now hold that thought — off to the low road end of the spectrum.
You’re fuming when you see this car gassing up, and the thought of buying him a Twix is nowhere on your radar.
As you get out of your car, you address the guy, starting with “Hey Asshole!”
You proceed to have the type of exchange one would expect when beginning a conversation with “Hey, Asshole.”
There is no violence, but it’s aggressive and unpleasant.
Your cortisol is raised as you drive off, and you feel on edge.
Okay, let’s travel further down the low-road side.
Turns out that you’re a golfer.
You’re on your way to the driving range to knock out a bucket or two.
Well, you’re so pissed that you take your 9 Iron out of your trunk and smash into the guy's windshield.
He tackles you, a brawl ensues, and the gas station attendee calls the police.
You’re taken to the local jail, and the guy decides he’s going to press charges.
Consider the difference in degrees of outcome from moving up from worst to bad in the low-road end of the spectrum:
You go from being arrested and facing a court date to a mere unpleasant conversation.
That’s a massive tangible difference in your life between the worst-case scenario (far end of the spectrum) and the action a few degrees better from the worst case.
Principle: With every move toward improvement from the worst case, we see significant tangible benefits.
But what about the high-road end of the spectrum?
The difference in degrees of outcome was much more subtle when we consider the very best outcome vs an outcome 1-2 moves toward neutral.
Buying his gas didn’t make you feel all that much better compared to buying him the Twix bar.
Principle: The comparative benefits from best-case scenarios to slightly less optimal scenarios yield only modest positive differences.
You may be asking yourself:
What the heck does this have to do with fat loss?
There is a profound principle embedded in this silly hypothetical:
The most noticeable results come from improving your worst, not improving your best.
The goldmine of any type of self-improvement isn’t found in making your best day 3% better —
It’s in making your worst day 25% better.
For someone who wants to lose fat and get healthier, this plays out when they try to be too perfect, focusing on the “perfect” diet and nailing everything.
They’re going to fitness classes, taking athletic greens, buying organic veggies and grass-fed meat.
But then, every week, at some point, they crack, and they eat a pint of ice cream and a bag of chips.
Or drink 10 beers when they go out with their friends.
This isn’t hypothetical.
I’ve seen many people who have been doing things mostly right but have too many “bad days” adding up.
The thing is, they don’t see this.
People believe the solution is to further optimize their positive habits.
Moving up a degree in the positive spectrum.
But in reality, they would see drastic results if they stopped trying to improve their best and started trying to improve their worst.
The goldmine of progress is found in making your worst day better, not your best day.
This applies to everything, but we’ll keep the scope on health.
Stop focusing on optimization, and ask yourself:
What does your current least healthy day look like?
Do you do mostly pretty well but then relax with a 6-pack every few days?
Food prep for a few days, but then get busy and then jump to the order-in pizza and McDonalds?
Instead of trying to be more good, try to be less bad.
Find the current example of your worst day and diagnose the cause.
Now, see what it would look like if you could move that day toward the positive end of the spectrum.
Daniel calls this improving your standards vs improving aspirations.
When you make a 3% move between positive outcomes, you’re improving your aspirations.
It makes a small difference, but not much.
But when you improve your worst possible outcome, you raise your standards.
This can have a massive impact on your life.
When your worst day goes from a 7,000-calorie binge to a single bowl of ice cream.
From skipping the gym and laying on the couch with chips to going for a short walk instead.
Aspirational improvements yield minor results.
Raising your standards yields life-changing results if you can stick to it.
Daniel gets his clients to focus on raising their standards, and it’s working incredibly well for him.
Consider what raising your standards looks like for you.
If you can make your current worst day 10% better, it will be the best thing you can do for your health.
Hope you found that as insightful as I did the first time I heard it.
See you next time -
-Colin “Raise your standards” Matson
