I Invested $2,000 in Online Fitness Coaching, and What I Discovered Was Surprising.
It cost me $60 per pound of fat lost — worth every cent.
I cringe at the thought of spending money on things I don’t actually need.
Since I got suckered into one of those pyramid-selling schemes and paid top dollar to attend a Robert Kiyosaki conference, I’ve savagely scrutinised paying for education and mentorship.
You quickly realise there’s a minefield of fake gurus and wannabe entrepreneurs who sell advice they’ve never lived.
The problem was I was clinically obese with a BMI of 34.1 and weighed 92 kgs, and I didn’t have a clue on how to shift it.
A good friend and three-time world body fitness champion, AJ Ellison, once told me:
“Jay, this fitness thing is actually just a metaphor for life. It might sound a little shallow, but what you look like on the outside is a direct result of the effort you put in. The results never lie”.
AJ was right — my results were atrocious because I didn’t know how to solve being out of shape. It all circles back to that timeless adage, “Somewhere out there, someone has already cracked the code.”
So I went looking for help.
I understood deep down that anyone worth their salt would need to prove their credibility to me and deliver tangible results to make the cut.
Buckle up, and let’s dive into it.
First, get your head around this one golden hack.
It re-wired my brain.
I flicked on YouTube, and world-renowned entrepreneur Garyvee appeared:
“The way I’ve hacked my fitness, which isn’t a strength, is to be accountable to someone I can’t let down, someone I need to impress.”
It was an aha moment.
I had never heard it explained like that before, but I was like, “That’s me he’s talking about. I think like that, too.”
When I reflect honestly, I realise that I struggle to make significant progress unless someone else holds me accountable.
Whenever I hit the gym, I often had no plan or direction. I didn’t track my progress, measure my food or water intake, or have a list of exercises I would do before walking into the gym.
It makes sense now why I’d sit in my car doom scrolling through social media for an eternity.
The lack of a game plan completely crippled me.
It all took a 180-degree u-turn when I decided to grab the bull by its kahunas and make the financial commitment to get help.
So, I teamed up with a fitness pro who reviewed my lifestyle, activity levels, gym programme, and eating habits. This transformed me from clinically obese to shredded abs, and I lost 33+ pounds in 8 months.
It’s been the ultimate breakthrough in my health and fitness journey.
Online Trainers use training apps that inject you with dopamine.
Becoming a tracking Jedi is the ultimate superpower.
It exposed me to the truth, and once I realised the sobering reality of where I was with data, it became the cornerstone of my progress.
One of the many valuable tips I didn’t find when going solo — was the scrutiny around my tracking.
My signature breakfast dish, which isn’t fancy, is peanut butter on toast. Every morning, the chubby maverick in me would eye-shot the amount of peanut butter I’d spread on my toast—a big mistake.
In the early stages of my journey, Chris, who had access to my food data on my phone, would search through the meals I was having and comment, “How are you measuring all this peanut butter you’re eating? You know it’s pretty calorific, right?”.
I responded with, “I’m using my eyes.”
When I began weighing everything I ate, I was shocked to discover the number of extra calories I consumed.
It’s those scenarios where having an engineer fix your plane while you fly gets results.
Find an online coach with all the bells and whistles, someone who can maximise the use of technology, cover every angle, and expose your white bits with every metric under the sun.
Dragging my skeletons out of the shadows was downright exhilarating.
I had no escape from accountability when Chris and I looked at a dashboard of the metrics below.
I tracked water intake consistently.
I weighed myself daily to monitor progress.
I utilised my phone to track daily step counts.
Capture monthly progress pictures for visual reference.
I scanned my food to track macros and calories accurately.
I measured various body parts weekly with a tape measure.
Here’s a peek under the hood of the dashboard.
Chris overlays his face on the dashboard with my metrics on video and walks me through each section weekly, reviewing areas to fine-tune.
According to research, the double whammy of all this is that the app and others like it mimic the “dopamine reward system,” a bit like how YouTube keeps you in a K-hole.
So, each time I updated my stats and completed tasks, I got this mental boost.
I needed someone to walk me through failure.
My self-sabotage tendencies are no different to anyone else’s.
When it came to my fitness, eating healthily or trying to build discipline, I always tried to get there through willpower.
Damn, that was stressful.
My mind would play this weird trick: if I had one chocolate bar, I’d think, “Jay, it’s gonna be ages before you get these treats again. Just start fresh tomorrow.”
That internal dialogue always resulted in me decimating my diet for the rest of that day. It explains why I gained weight each time I took a health kick.
Keeping your finger off the nuclear warhead of self-destruction is the most profound habit you can build up.
When you’ve got someone guiding you, I found it was like watered-down therapy because my natural inclination was to beat myself up like one of Mike Tyson’s sparring partners.
Booz was my Achilles heel, but the self-criticism was the nail in the door shutting me off to progress.
My newly appointed trainer, Chris, said, “Jay, I don’t mind if you drink — enjoy yourself, but just make sure you track everything.”
So I did and clocked almost 4,000 calories in a day.
Excuse the pun, but it set in a sobering reality for A: just how much I was drinking and B: how much I was spending on booze to feel like complete trash for five days.
I was more aware of how badly alcohol was holding me back through a screen that stared at me and an online coach who would positively frame where I needed to improve.
It set the wheels in motion for the outsized results I achieved.
My 3-day workout routine has kept me at 12% body fat for over a year.
This one was a huge deal.
The absence of a plan and the intimidation factor always prevented me from stepping into the gym.
I was scared of having a jam-packed schedule and of having to stay disciplined, so the “I’ll start tomorrow” mindset became a big part of how I talked to myself.
After some lengthy Zoom calls with Chris, we devised a plan that was a borderline submission move for defeating my inconsistency head-on.
Given that my social life was likely to stay the same, we decided that my core training days would be Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
We did this because it broke the back out of my training for the week before the weekend when I inevitably got distracted by social events.
So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are locked in, but I also have the option of repeating the same sessions from Thursday or Friday onwards, i.e., Monday’s session on Thursday.
Chris would say:
“ Jay, after Wednesday’s session, rest is important, but just go to the gym for a mess around if you want to do extra. It’ll keep you in the habit of going while maintaining your enjoyment.”
Here’s the kicker.
Each training day was an all-body workout where I did one exercise on my main muscle groups.
I initially thought, Chris, this is excessive, but the opposite effect happened.
By doing an all-over body workout with one exercise on each body part, I removed the intimidation of leg day, which I had previously avoided like the plague.
It made consistency more manageable.
It also meant that missing a day wasn’t a big deal since I’d already worked all the major muscle groups, significantly reducing the pressure to play catch-up.
It all addressed the one thing I lacked — Consistency.
Final Thoughts.
Accountability to the right expert can change your life.
It worked like a wizard’s potion for me.
It cost me $60 per pound of fat loss, but I gained lifelong strategies and insight I’ll have up my sleeve forever.
When I look back at my former self, an obese and frustrated office worker who used to sit at my desk, grab my belly fat, and stare out of the office window, I wish I could shake him.
The answer and all the solutions were right infront of me.
Having someone I had to show up for who knew what they were doing was my unlock to success.
It could be for you too.
Special Offer for My Readers
Chris, the online fitness pro who revolutionised my fitness journey, is offering a free discovery call exclusively to my readers.
If you’re ready to transform your fitness and tailor a plan that suits your unique lifestyle, this is your chance.
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