ON Monday evening I was invited to deliver a workshop for a community group running a six-week health and fitness initiative.

I was more than happy to oblige and help them in any way I could. If any group, club or business has a desire to educate and support the people within it around how to improve themselves, I’ll always try and make myself available to help.

So up I pulled to the community centre and on into the main hall where I was greeted by about 20 tables all laid out. Eight chairs per table. I start thinking to myself I’m going to need a bigger projector here.

I was told there would be 20 or so in for the workshop, so I was pleasantly surprised when my quick math worked out that there could be over 100 in attendance. I scanned the room to suss out where I’d set up and spotted a couple of girls prepping a tea and coffee station. Over I went to put my order in and show my appreciation for their efforts in having everything so fantastically set up for me.

“You’re looking after everyone very well tonight, girls. Great to see so much of a buy-in from the community for the workshop.”

“Ach hello Pauric. Em….no. There’s an anniversary mass arriving in here shortly. You’re in the little room in the corner there.”

With the face red and the tail between the legs off I went to the room in the corner, lights off and a dozen chairs stacked up against the wall.

From the cogs turning in my head to get the arena tour up and running to a swift chop to the ego and back to reality. The thing is, whether I’d been speaking to 10 or 110 my presentation was the same. And it was going to positively impact whoever was there to listen. So I’m going to share with you some of the key points I covered and hopefully, they hit home too.

1. Get to know what’s on your plate. Counting calories can be daunting. It seems overly complicated, time-consuming and difficult to know where to start. But so did your phone when you first got one. So did driving. So did so many things you could do with your eyes closed now. If you familiarise yourself with the make-up of half a dozen of the lunches and dinners you have across a week or two then you’ll have the information on hand that will shed a light as to why you are or are not losing/gaining weight. If you’re trying to lose weight and you’ve absolutely no clue how many calories you’re consuming day to day it’s like trying to reach a destination you don’t know how to get to without any directions. Don’t get lost on the way, use what’s available to you to reach your goals!

2. Separate ‘Fitness’ and ‘Fat Loss’. All too often I see people try to out-train a poor diet, but the truth is you can’t. No amount of exercise is going to offset the negative impact of poor eating choices. Look at training as a vehicle to get fit, healthy, strong, mobile, to help with your mental health, be social, etc, etc. There are so many benefits to exercise I could fill a whole column on that alone, but one thing that I don’t want you to place into that category is fat loss. Of course, you’re burning calories, so theoretically it’ll make weight loss easier but it’s so far down the list of the things which will impact your calorie balance it shouldn’t be looked upon in this way. It’s a whole lot easier to not eat 1000 calories worth of food than it is to burn it off through exercise. Remember that and straight away not only does your fat loss journey become easier but your relationship with training improves ten fold.

3. Spend more time with radiators and less time with drains. If you were to plan a road trip down the country for the weekend but in one car you had to fill it with the people you spend the most time with and in the other with the people who you would like to spend the most time with, what do those two loads look like? Is there anyone in both cars? Because in an ideal world those two sets of people are the same. We spend far too much time with people who drag us down, drain us of energy and infect us with their negative outlook on life instead of people who build us up, make us feel better and push us to be our very best. Actively make an effort to reduce the time you spend around drains, and purposefully try and spend more time with those who lift you up.

Those are three of the points which resonated the most with the room on Monday night, but they’re just a flavour of what we spoke about. If you’d like something similar delivered to a group you’re involved with just shoot me a DM on my socials and we can arrange something.

Just let me know in advance if there are any anniversary masses at the same time.