Josh Hillis - Habit-based Fat Loss
Intro
Josh has been a personal trainer, kettlebell instructor, and a food habits coach since 2004. Specifically, he has chosen to specializes in working with clients who have 20 pounds or less to lose. In addition to his in-person work Josh has built up a large following through his blog, Lose Stubborn Fat, which recently surpassed 35,000 followers. He recently moved to Denver, started working out of a personal training studio, and will be coming out with a new book soon.
Matt: Josh, a real pleasure to connect. I was happy to hear that we have a mutual friend in Coach Stevo. How did you two meet?
Josh: Dude! Coach Stevo is the man at connecting awesome people in the fitness industry. He reached out to me after I wrote the first draft of my book. Dan John sent him a copy and he gave me a call right away because he loved it. The book is focused on building fitness habits around which happens to be Stevo's main interest/passion in the space as well. We started talking and just hit it off really well. It was cool to see how we had such a similar direction even though we had really different backgrounds. We have the same type of perspective on what’s actually going to make a difference for people.
Matt: Well when I asked Stevo who I should talk to you were one of the first people he mentioned so this is going to be a lot of fun!
I want to ask you about your current book that will be coming out soon. Coach Stevo says it’s the best book he’s seen yet on fat loss. Can you tell me about the process you went through to research and eventually write this book?
Josh: Oh, that’s a good question. So the book came from working with Dan John. He happened to be in Denver and he stopped by my place. We were just talking about stuff and he took some of the concepts from Intervention, which he was going through writing at the time, and outlined them for me. He then took some of these concepts that he used to coach athletes and applied them to my business. It was absolutely extraordinary. Because Dan’s a genius he completely sharpened what I do with my clients down to a few key concepts. He was like, that’s your book. He told me to write that book right now and it grew into the ebook I released called System Six. This book was the original base for my new book. I wrote System Six, I sold it, and had a bunch of people use it across the world. I then sat down with Dan again and my publisher Laree. They wanted to put it into a hardback book but told me what parts of System Six were great and what I could cut completely. It went from System Six to like, System Three or Two. I just went way deeper into trying to replicate the conversations I have with my clients.
The only thing that I’d done in terms of research is follow a method of Alwyn Cosgrove’s. Alwyn had a interview where he talked about keeping all of clients files and writing essays on them. I’ve kept 10 years of client files from Denver and started digging through them. I looked for commonalities to see what was really working. That was the research in terms of the workout program and big chunks of things that made a difference. When I outlined the original habits I went back through my online nutritional clients conversations which were all through email. I had about a dozen habits I was teaching my clients, but there were about five different ways I would deliver the information to the people that needed them.
Matt: If you don’t mind me asking, how big was the client base over the past 10 years? Was it more focused on short-term consulting or long-term change with your clients?
Josh: When I first got to Denver I hired Ryan Lee to mentor me while writing my first book. He had me get really focused on just one thing and what that was basically getting clients to lose the last 5-10 pounds in eight weeks. So for two years that is what I did. I would get clients to get the results within that time frame and then I’d kick them out and get new ones. What was really interesting was that I got really good at getting those type of results for clients who were already super fit and what I noticed that what seemed to work in the eight week period seemed to hurt me and my clients in a longer period of time. That’s actually a big part of where System Six came from. I had these clients who I tried to do the same thing 3-4 times and it was getting harder each time when it should have been the opposite. That’s where I started to take a harder look at overdieting and overtraining people. I just realized that on a longer time line it has to look different. I decided to go the other way and started to learn. I looked and played with trying to figure out what was the Minimum Effective Dose. I pushed it as hard and as far as it would go. I found the line, you know? It really doesn’t take nearly as much working out as people think, but it does take some (laughing). What I did find out is that I could have someone working out 1.5 times a week, maybe twice a week, fairly easily….if they were doing a smart periodized program and adding reps every week….we could keep on building with smart dieting and maintain the fat loss process for years. Once the client hit their goal they could actually maintain and they wouldn’t yo-yo up and down.
Matt: So you wanted to make the results sustainable compared to the rapid fat loss you were doing before.
Jose: Yeah. Now one thing I stand for is that people should know how to do both. There’s nothing wrong with once a year just kicking ass and trying to go to the next level. I have a sports background right? I ran track and cross country in high school (laughing). But we were good, you know? I ran a 4:26 mile and we tied for the best score in state history….and then lost (laughing). Anyways, we were elite at that level. So I’m still connected to the concept of seasons. You have this long, easy preseason, then the season where you ramp up, and then the finals. Actually you’ve probably peaked before the finals and then you’re backing off, but it’s this really seasonal perspective of working out and it works really well. It’s one of those things where people like to have eight weeks in the summer where they are going to go hard. We’re going to get a little ridiculous with the diet and workouts and it’s a short-term thing. Most importantly, the clients know what they are getting back to. The lifestyle changes we’ve made that we built in the previous six months…that’s what they are going back to when the short-term push is over. So it can be a short-term blast, but they know the answer lies within those sustainable long-term habits.
Matt: Last week when I was interviewing James Fell I asked him this question. How could reading your book benefit fitness professionals even though it’s targeted towards the consumer side of the industry?
Josh: That’s funny. I’ll have to backtrack to explain this, but I actually just bought a personal training business and I’ve been looking at what point can I hire my next trainer. I’ve been thinking that since my book is out it’s like the perfect manual for teaching my philosophy. This book is going to teach fitness professionals how to put nutrition habits first and then that there is more than one way to deliver these habits. There is no magic bullet. I mean it is the diet, but it’s not a diet, you know? It doesn’t matter if it’s Paleo, zone, eating clean or whatever. How do we get the planning, the preparation, the logging, the accountability, and most importantly, who needs what? For example I have a lot of advanced clients who just want numbers to hit. Then there are other clients where we need to work on shopping. So that’s the thing, the different ways of attacking and creating these habits, figuring out where to go when one of the routes stops. So if someone’s just reading this what I want them to think about is how they are impacting their clients habits and if they are hitting all of them the exact same way to be aware that’s probably not the best way. People have different needs and are coming from different places. Some clients come to me who have been reading my blog and keeping a food journal for two years. With a client like that I can jump ahead with a lot of steps. Well, maybe. I’ll find out quickly. That’s another thing you can try out. Try something out and if things don’t happen fast, you know that the changes aren’t working. The first focus I would want trainers to have is to think ok, this didn’t work…how can I do less? Don’t try to do more to fix the problem, instead can I give my client a smaller goal this week that they can actually achieve. The next thing I would want them to look at is whether was it a failure of planning….do they just need a structure? This is the case more times than not. Many of these people have never had a workout plan or a plan to eat. Do they need a weekly reminder phone call to go to the grocery store? Do they need to text me after they’ve gone shopping? That’s the kind of stuff fitness professionals should be thinking about. This all completely ignores the workout side of the book, but that’s what I think are a few important takeaways.
Matt: Is there a timeline for the book coming out?
Josh: It will be interesting to see. Things are picking up now, but I’ve been saying January 2015. It could come out faster because some things fell into place. Basically I was doing the typesetting myself because I think it’s really cool. There’s a craft part of it I have a lot of fun with, but with moving to Denver and starting the business it was taking forever. Now it’s getting handled by a professional and it could move up the timeline.
Matt: Well I’m super excited to read it!
To build off of our discussion, focusing on building long-term, sustainable habits is a skill that is viewed by several as criminally overlooked in the fitness industry. There’s fitness professionals making progress in this space, but what do you think needs to be done for this industry to fully embrace the power of a habit-based approach?
Josh: I would say that the biggest thing is that there’s actually a sales gap. Right now there’s a lot of people selling diet concepts that are very good marketers. Most fitness professionals are kind of getting subdued by the same marketing as their clients are. It’s not even an education gap, it’s fully a marketing gap. A habits-based approach needs to be sold to the industry and that’s it. It’s kind of a weird, silly thing, but people in the industry need to be sold on it. Look at the people who got sold on Paleo for example. I’m neither for nor against Paleo, but just look at how it took off as a movement. There’s offshoots, factions, entire education companies, multiple books, and much more. It’s become a thing, right? Paleo has hit that tipping point. The people who are into it are aggressively pursuing information on it. That’s what I think it’s going to take for a habits-based approach. Some kind of marketing and community movement. Past that, all the technical parts will come with it once people are sold and inspired. People will start to look at motivation interviewing, what habits should I deliver and in what order, what’s a big enough habit vs. what’s a small enough habit. They will start to ask what Precision Nutrition doing. What is Coach Stevo doing that’s different? I really do think there is a huge gap between people that are desperately trying to make a difference with their clients and them not realizing that they do not have the tools to do it. Their clients who are getting results are usually the ones who were going to figure it out anyway. Their clients who they aren’t making a difference for are not failing because they were lazy or unmotivated or anything like that. The clients are failing because they didn’t get the information delivered in a way that could actually work in their life.
Matt: That’s super interesting. I’m still new to this industry, but I feel as if I’m seeing the shift happening. The evidenced-based movement is very strong in the industry right now. To me it only makes sense that the next movement is focused on a habits-based approach. It’s only a matter of time.
Josh: Take a look at evidenced-based fitness right? There’s really clear evidence that a motivational interviewing approach is more effective for doctors and nurses when attempting to make real changes in their clients lives. That’s going off of just one visit. So if you have a trainer that sees someone once a week and has the same type of conversation with the same tools that trainer should be able to change lives! I mean we have statistics that show ONE visit with a doctor and these tools can make a difference, you know? Organizations have extrapolated out that a motivational interview approach for physical therapists would be 10x more effective. Unfortunately we don’t have statistics to back up that this is possible for fitness professionals yet. Despite the lack of evidence for trainers I think that this approach would get similar results.
This is another thing. I’m a huge fan of evidenced-based interventions for fitness, especially because I love what the evidenced-based approach has done for physical therapy. The industry was not nearly as respected as it is now twenty years ago. I would love for the fitness industry to take the same path and twenty years from now for fitness professionals to be respected professionals.
Matt: Well I hope it’s going to happen a lot sooner than that.
Last question for you. A running theme that I’ve seen in these interviews I’ve been doing is that the best people in the industry are working just as hard to learn and improve their craft. What are you focusing on improving right now?
Josh: The biggest thing that I did this year was fly out to Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove’s gym, Results Fitness, and do a two month internship. It’s funny because most of what I’ve learned has been through weekend courses, which I love. Fitness professionals are mostly self-educated these days. To go out and spend two straight months with people who are masters, not just Alwyn and Rachel, but the head trainers there as well….it was phenomenal. It’s funny because I’ve done a lot of coaching and I thought that I was great. To have people who are really great evaluating you everyday for two months was amazing. The team did semi-private training which was a different scenario for me since I’d always done 1 on 1. To get good practice at how to really make a difference for eight people at a time was extremely valuable to me. I also got a completely different perspective on how to use the Functional Movement Screen, like completely different. I realized that this is how people really use the FMS to make a difference for 350 people at once. Most of the things the anti-FMS crowd say just make it clear to me that they have never seen it used like this. It’s not being used for any of the things they think it’s being used for. It was huge in terms of getting an idea of how to set up programming for 350 clients quickly based off the information I’m getting and then retest to see if it’s working.
Right now I’m doing their online business mentorship. One of the things I’m working on is figuring out what is my culture. In theory, its supposed to be culture for my employees. Well I don’t have any real employees yet, but shouldn’t this culture be the same for my clients? Now I’m doing semi-private training and having these people interact with each other. How I’m interacting with my clients is just as important as how I interact with my future employees. What am I doing to create a culture of winning and support and fun? It’s been interesting to try to instill my values on a group over the last 8 weeks. Could they do this on their one so I could not be there and it would still be supportive and fun. So that’s what I’m working on right now and I’m very excited to continue learning.
If you’d like to read more from Josh check out the links below: