I’m killing the dream of a full time fitness career today on The Work IN. Working full time as a fitness instructor or coach and making a living is not realistic.  At least not the way we traditionally think of full time in other careers. But there are ways to make your wellness work work for you no matter what kind of fit pro you are.

Let’s face it, the fitness and wellness industry attracts all kinds of people and there are all kinds of ways to succeed in it. The assumption is that people who work in wellness, from instructors and trainers to studio and gym owners, are well. That these folks have already done their work and they are grounded, compassionate entrepreneurs who have their ego in check and the best interest of their students and employees at heart.  Sadly that isn’t always the case. In fact I would suggest that many of us are in the wellness and fitness community because while that’s who we are striving to be, we aren’t there yet and we know it. Without strong and grounded mentors and collaborators who are willing to tell the truth about this industry we can spend a lot of time floundering around trying to be something and someone we are not. To fit the woo woo wellness cookie cutter insisting we want to help others yet refusing to help ourselves first. The truth is we can’t help anyone if we aren’t in business, we can’t stay in business if we don’t get paid, and we can’t get paid if we don’t give people results beyond the woo woo wackadoodle world of wellness. Our work IN today is a look at how we as fit pros can find a balanced approach to the business of the body by grounding our business in the body.

The fitness industry is set up like a snake eating its tail. It gives certification and requires cecs to keep that certification and then offers limited sources of those approved credits. New trainers and educators in the wellness space are conditioned to believe that if it doesn’t give us some external validation through approved CEC’s or the magic of letters after your name then it’s not worth the time to study. So we look for more and more of what to teach clients instead of developing the skills to better communicate what we know.

Today I’m talking about coaching. When I say coach I’m talking about anyone who educates others about anything. From preschool to post doc, little league to pro athlete, boutique studios to big box gyms, school counselors to corporate consultants. Coaching of any kind is a business of change making and you can make it big or you can make it small and everything in between. But without courage, creativity and collaboration you can get lost in that cult of mediocrity filled with all the weight loss gurus, self love sisters and money making motivators out there.

Ideally we would all get everything our body needs to function optimally from real, whole food. Theoretically if we did that then we wouldn’t need to count calories. Or even watch portion sizes because the body has built in on and off switches for our appetite and is brilliantly designed to find the perfect energy balance. Sadly I think we can all agree that the standard American diet is deficient on many levels.

Our modern life of convenient hyper palatable food consumption has disrupted that delicate balance and led to food addiction, gut dysfunction and metabolic disease. Today, the lack of nutrition awareness and just basic general activity in modern life and you see most people deficient in many micro nutrients, using food as therapy on some level and desperate for a quick fix to fill in the gaps. That’s where supplements come in.

The fitness industry is notorious for fads. Fad equipment, Fad formats and especially fad diets and supplements. Each one with claims that this will finally be the thing that will give you the results you have been searching for. Even if nothing you’ve tried has worked before, THIS will. Every few years there’s new science, new understanding, new technology, new supplements and it can be as overwhelming for fitness professionals as it is for our clients. So how do we filter and curate that information in meaningful ways and stay within our scope of practice.

That’s our Work IN today. And we’re going to start with the diet piece.