Let’s look at the example of Carol the client who is a mother of three children under ten, with a part-time job and also a full-time husband. Two children are at school with the third starting two-day kindy this year.

Carol’s reason for change is to keep up with the hectic pace of life and to have the energy to perform at her best for her family.

Carol has done an amazing job of committing to three days a week at the fitness centre for the last 6 months but is not happy with the results she is achieving. There are definite changes we can make to her current program at the fitness centre that will aid in her results, but is this where most gains can be made on her path to the results she desires?

Often we do a great job in committing to a health and fitness program and self sabotage ourselves in the times outside the exercise part of our program. What can Carol do outside of her time at the fitness centre to push her to the next level? (Create direction to make change easier).

First of all, there are a number of things that Carol could do to manage her nutrition better and I would love her to see a dietitian but she is resisting this idea at the moment. So let’s shrink the change and concentrate on small changes over the next 8 weeks.

Carol currently has no alcohol-free days in her week as she enjoys a glass of wine while preparing dinner. For the next 8 weeks Carol has committed to two alcohol-free days per week. (Shrink the change to make change easier).

The other area of nutrition Carol has identified as a problem is her lack of breakfast because of her hectic mornings and having to look after everyone else. Carol cannot currently see a solution to this, so our compromise is to have a fresh basket of fruit on the table and she will have a least one piece of fruit each morning on the run. (Tweak the environment to make change easier).

Carol needs more activity outside of her time at the fitness centre to create real change and real results. Carol believes this is impossible because of the pressure on her time because of managing family activity.

Together we looked at the family week and identified some windows to create more activity in Carol’s week. Two afternoons per week involved taking the two older children to netball training and ballet lessons while the younger child is in after school care.  Instead of sitting and talking to the other mothers while these activities are going on, Carol is going to use this time for walking. On the netball days Carol is walking laps of the park whilst the girls train and is setting a goal of increasing the number of laps over the 8 weeks by two laps in the 40-minute time slot. On the ballet lesson day Carol is doing 30 minutes of walking hill repeats outside the ballet studio, the hill is about 500m long and she does as many repeats of the hill as she can in the 30minute window. Manipulating the type and intensity of these walks over the two days gives Carol more of a purpose rather than just walking and also gives a measure of fitness because as her reps increase her fitness must be increasing. (Create direction to make change easier).

Increases in incidental activity is one area we can all improve on and an area that can make a big difference to our results. Carol targeted her two workdays to look at increases in her incidental activity, the first change was to park further away from work to increase her walking time on these days. At work Carol spends a lot of time on the phone in her office, so she now stands rather than sits while on the phone at work. The last area was to introduce walking meetings to her workplace; not always practical, but they have identified certain meetings where this is possible. Small changes to your workday can make big differences in your health and fitness results. (Tweak the environment to make change easier).