When it comes to diet and weight loss, there are two major barriers which get in the way to most people achieving results. And in my opinion, based on my many years of experience from working with the general population, those barriers are snacking and lack of portion control.

Sure there are the fancy fad diets out there such as Intermittent Fasting and IIFYM (neither of which I promote FYI) that guarantee results while still remaining flexible with your diet. But even these diets won't work in the long run if your ultimate goal is to lose weight and you are in a constant caloric surplus.

But how many calories should a person consume each day if he of she wishes to lose body fat? Should they decrease their carbs? Increase their protein? Or take their fats completely out from their diet?

Well obviously the answer is different for each individual as there are multiply factors to take into consideration such as age, gender, fitness level, weight loss goal, lifestyle, etc. However the fact remains that if someone truly wants to lose weight, then they need to have a general understanding of their overall daily caloric consumption and macronutrient allowance. And neither of which can be calculated accurately if there are no portions set in place for each meal that is consumed throughout the day.

The other day I received an inquiry from a potential client pertaining to our Personal Training Services. This person had been referred to us from one of our long term clients who has lost over 80lbs since she began working with us almost two years ago. He was so impressed with our client's results that he wanted to know the "secrets" to her success.

On a side note, let me start by saying, there are no "secrets" to any of our clients' success stories. Quite simply, the clients that put in the work and follow the plan that we lay out for them, are the ones that achieve results. However that's another story all in itself.

It occurred to me the other day that I have been training consistently with weights for over twenty years now. And during this time I can count the amount of training partners that I've had on one hand. Now you might think that as someone who trains people in the gym and online for a living, that I would have had multiply training partners over the past two decades. But I like to think that I'm loyal to the people I train with and therefore don't just jump into a training relationship with just anyone. As is the case with dating, I believe that there should be a certain criteria that a person looks for when seeking out a good Training Partner.

But what exactly should that criteria be?

According to Statista.Com, 57 percent of Canada's population admits to consuming alcohol at least once each week. And according to this same study, 19.1 percent of Canadian consumers the age of 12 and over, were reported as heavy alcoholic drinkers in 2018.

Although these stats do not surprise me, they do concern me.