02/11/2026
Did you guess the answer?!😉
Let’s start with Aoife. Every time she starts, she goes all in. 5 gym classes a week: spin, bootcamp, the lot. Up at 6am, drive to the gym, home, shower, work. Chicken and broccoli, no bread, no chocolate, not even a biscuit with her cuppa.
And all week, what’s she thinking about? The chocolate. The bread. The glass of w**e she’s “not allowed”.
Because that’s what restriction does. The more you ban something, the louder it gets.
So come Friday night, it’s a takeaway, half a bottle of w**e and the kids’ leftover chips. And by Sunday she’s promising herself she’ll start again on Monday.
After 4 weeks of early alarms, aching legs from classes that were way too much too soon, and being hungry all the time, she’s wrecked and sick of it. So she stops completely, sometimes for months.
Now Mary. Mary has one kettlebell at home. Two 30-minute sessions a week, Tuesday and Thursday, in the sitting room before the dinner. No driving anywhere, no changing into fancy gear, no 6am alarm. Not too hectic, just enough to feel it.
She has a few squares of chocolate most evenings. If she fancies a takeaway on a Wednesday, she has it. Newsflash: treats aren’t just for weekends. 🍫
And because nothing’s banned, nothing’s a big deal. No Friday blowout. No Monday guilt.
So by the end of the year, Mary has done more sessions, more swings and more reps than Aoife.
And over the whole year, she’s probably eaten less too, because she never had the weekend binges to make up for.
Not exciting. But it works. 💪
Be a Mary. Which one are you? Tell me below 👇
Sarah x
