How A Busy Manager Dropped 20+ Lbs Without Living in the Gym

Date: July 2nd, 2024

Read on: veganfitnessredefined.com​

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Most people fail in their fitness.

They go backwards with their weight-loss.

They don’t create sustainable or permanent transformation.

Why?

Because they’re using inefficient and/or broken systems.

In health there’s principles that need to be followed.

Follow these principles and you’ll pave a road with fitness success.

Ignore these principles?

You’ll regress and lose your results like 95% of the population.

Ines came to us at one of her lowest points in her life.

Postpartum several years, she suffered from depression and not liking herself.

She also was extremely busy.

She took care of her son.

She was a wife.

She also worked in a veterinarian clinic.

There was a lot on her plate.

But she had reached the point where she had enough.

She could no longer afford to stop putting herself last.

At the bottom of the priority list.

Being plant-based she also wanted to be a positive role model for her son and family.

She wanted to show others that eating plants equated to living your best life and health.

But she felt incongruent.

Out of alignment.

So after applying for a spot inside our VFR Accelerator Program, she was grateful to be accepted.

We got to work.

Here’s the 5 principles we used to create her best health and fitness.

Principle #1: Create a nutrition system

Without this principle, it would have been impossible to drop body fat.

Ines’s transformation was incredible.

But part of this was because of her consistent nutrition tracking.

But this wasn’t just tracking calories and macros.

It was also improving her food quality.

The interesting thing about tracking your food is the more you track, the more you bring awareness to your choices.

With the added awareness, you can start to make better choices.

You can add more fruits and veg.

You can start to notice your blindspots.

Your areas of improvement.

It also lets you see how much you’re eating and with time how you’re eating.

A caloric deficit or eating less is how you drop body fat.

Eating the right foods is how you create optimal health.

Eating slowly is how you create longevity.

Principle #2: Commit to a training schedule

The second part of her fitness success was dedication to her schedule.

Everything in her life needed to be organized.

Her time with her son.

Work.

Meals.

Workouts.

The more structure she brought to her health using our plug and play VFR systems (which we give away to each of our students to systemize success), the easier it was for Ines to see radical results.

We initially started with working out from home.

But with her outgrowing her weights pretty fast, we graduated to a local gym nearby.

Although this meant her reorganizing her schedule again, she was committed.

Soon after, she began using barbells and the heavier machines to sculpt her body.

Results continued to pour in.

After nearly 6 months, she had dropped 5+ inches from her waist.

Things were ramping up for her.

Lifting heavy weights is how you sculpt and carve a strong physique that’s lean and toned.

Lifting weights = signal to body to retain and build muscle tone.

Without a consistent signal to your body?

There’s no reason for it to change.

Give yourself the right stimulus.

Get the right results.

But it doesn’t matter if you can’t keep your results.

Which is why principle #3 made a huge difference…

Principle #3: Start a relaxation practice (s)

The amount of stress Ines encountered on a daily basis was mind-blowing.

Work. Family. Marriage. Finances. Parenting. Health.

This all put a heavy toll on her life.

She began to feel suffocated by all this stress.

Until, we assessed her area of opportunity and key leverage area.

This turned out to be learning how to relax and destress each day.

The tools that we used?

Silent meditation and Qi Gong.

5 minutes of sitting quietly with her mind, body, and emotions.

Allowing herself to genuinely feel.

Giving herself the chance to follow her breath.

And come back to her center.

Qi Gong served a similar purpose but with the added benefit of energy production.

If you aren’t using a consistent relaxation practice, stress can accumulate.

Stress is part of all of our lives.

Learning to release it in a healthy way is part of adulthood and maturity.

Holding onto it is what a child does.

Let go. Or be dragged.

Principle #4: Hydrate each day

One of the key practices we used while working together was hydration.

In the middle of our time working together (Ines later advanced to our Lv2 Inspire Program after her graduation due to her phenomenal progress and coachability), she found out she had kidney stones.

She wasn’t sure if she needed to have a procedure to remove them.

More stress.

More worries.

More overwhelm.

Fortunately, she had committed to her hydration practice including her daily lemon water practice.

Incredibly, the lemon water each morning helped her release the stones and avoid the procedure.

She was joyous.

This was incredible news for her and her family.

Her commitment to her health saved them financial, emotional, and physical stress.

She kept stacking up wins.

Here’s our VFR Interview Q/A recapping some of our wins together:

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Principle #5: Convert the negative into positive

The final principle we worked on together was her mental and emotional foundations.

According to eastern psychology - the mind is the path.

How we use our mind is how we perceive the world.

Many of us use our minds that harm ourselves or others.

This is called ignorance.

Yet, the more you can understand yourself, the easier navigating life can become.

Mental mastery became a big focus for Ines.

How to convert negative thoughts into their opposite.

According to physics, energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It can only be converted (transformed).

Which means you can’t destroy or get rid of negative thoughts.

Thoughts are energy.

The path of inner transformation is through - not around.

It’s using our negative thoughts as fertilizer for a positive transformation.

It’s self-acceptance and self-compassion.

It’s owning all the parts of ourselves that we’ve cut off from a young age.

It’s stepping into full maturity.

It’s becoming who we were meant to be.

Daily mental conversion became part of our work together and ‘catching’ the thoughts as they came up.

It wasn’t perfect.

But we made progress over time.

In conclusion, Ines shared these parting words from our experience together:

“To summarize in a few words, my experience started with very low expectations, without confidence and with low self-esteem. Last year was difficult, I helped open a new veterinary hospital, while studying for my specialization and with a toddler. My stress levels were sky high! Without the VFR team, I don't think I would manage to do everything.

We adapted to my situation and were so helpful by teaching me how to control my stress levels, reducing my anxiety and helping me continue my routines. My coach, Anna, always took the time to hear me, always gave me a friendly word, and went way beyond her 'job' to support me. The VFR program is way more than just diet and an exercise plan.

VFR pulled me out of a dark place by giving me tools, support and recognition for the effort I made. I'll always recommend VFR. I'm very grateful that we found each other. 😊”

Progress over perfection is where to start.

It’s also where you finish.

Approach your health from the perspective of kaizen (1% daily improvement).

Then, keep moving forward. 🙂

- Gabriel

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Whenever you're ready, there are three ways I can help you:

#1 Join our free high-performance fitness FB group to get access to dozens of free live trainings recorded, plus a tight-knit group of leaders who want to become healthy role models.

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