text: Written by: Mackennon Klink, Executive Contributor
  Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
  As a business owner, you know to build anything worthwhile requires patience, focused effort, hard work, and another healthy dose of patience. At the heart of any successful endeavor, our success is driven by the power of our habits, the guiding light of our actions and behaviors.
  We know if we do the work, and continuously do the work (i.e our habits), our results will come. Unfortunately, a lot of people prioritize the wrong aspects and their results suffer. There is nothing more disheartening than knowing you’ve been focusing on the wrong things, realizing all your hard work was for nothing, thus wasting your precise time.
  The following habits are immutable truths to achieve your nutritional goals. Don’t just take my word for it as you can see how my client & friend Ben completely transformed his life by following these highly effective habits.
  Habit No.1 Knowing Your Budget
  Dieting is similar to managing your budget. As a business owner, you need to be aware of the revenue coming in and out so your business can succeed. That same principle applies to your nutrition.
  Think of your calories as a “dietary budget” aka how many calories you can spend in a day. Let’s say you have a goal to save $10,000. To achieve this goal, you’ll need to look at bank statements, expenses, savings, and the treads of your cash flow month to month.
  That doesn’t seem neurotic right? Not really, because it makes sense in how you’ll achieve your goal (saving money). That same principle applies to your nutrition and it’s looking at the data that allows you to achieve outstanding results. This is why it’s crucial to your success to build some awareness and control with your daily allowance of calories. Once you’re aware of your budget, you can better manage your calories throughout the day.
  Habit No.2 Protein with each meal
  Protein should be a staple within any diet and the reason is simple: it’s an essential macronutrient, meaning your body literally cannot survive without it. In addition, protein is what helps us improve our body composition (the ratio of lean body mass to fat mass) as it provides the literal building blocks for our muscles.
  When compared to carbs and fats, protein is also the most satiating and filling food choice. In addition, protein is extremely difficult for the body to store as body fat. This isn’t just my opinion as it’s backed by science!
  With all my clients, we focus on building each meal around your protein. I’ve always found that once clients are able to do this, then this makes the whole dieting process sooo much easier as their food choices improve. This is why identifying your ideal protein sources is critical to your overall success.
  Habit No.3 Eat a Big Ass Salad
  A great coach in the online coaching space (Jordan Syatt) has popularized the idea of having one big-ass salad a day. This is a great way to easily get plenty of veggies and fruit and keeping you full while fighting off hunger and eating a ton of food.
  The reason why veggies, fruits, and salads are a staple of any successful weight loss journey as they are relatively low in calories so you can eat a ton of it which fills your stomach up! Plus, they are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and fiber to maximize your fullness while providing your body with all the nutrients it needs.
  As your coach, I want you to eat as much as possible while being in a calorie deficit, not eating as little as humanly possible. That’s right, I want you to eat as much as possible while still making consistent, measurable progress.
  Habit No.4 Get more Sleep
  Did you know that as many as 30% of adults sleep fewer than six hours per night, which is the minimum amount of necessary sleep?
  While you may be thinking you can get by with a minimal amount of sleep, get ready for some knowledge bombs. The scientific research is clear: Sleeping less than 7 hours of sleep has been linked to:
  Decreased cognitive function
  Increased appetite, cravings, and hunger
  Decreased muscle growth
  With these forces combined, it makes it difficult to actually adhere to your diet and training. Plus, you’ll be more prone to snacking and cravings due to having lower willpower.
  The solution is to make sure you prioritize 7-9 hours of sleep to maximize your daily performance. This is something we keep an eye on and manage as much as possible with sleep routines and lifestyle modifications.
  Habit No.5 Prioritizing Enjoyment with your Workouts
  You should be looking forward to going to the gym and executing your training program because you ENJOY doing it! Your training program should be something you look forward to!
  As a coach, I cannot tell you how many times clients told me they dread going into the gym to do their workouts. Your training program should get you excited and motivated to go into the gym while making consistent progress.
  A training program that gets you excited to hit the gym is one you’ll stick to and go hard at. More than anything, this is how we create a lifelong habit - by turning this into something you want to do, rather than something you need to do.
  Habit No.6 Consistency > Perfection
  This might be the most important one, which is why I saved it for last.
  You might think you’ll need to be 110% perfect (trust me, those impulses are hard to fight off), follow everything to the T, or else you’ll ruin your progress.
  As business owners, we know that consistency will always trump perfection. One day off your diet or over your budget doesn’t mean you ruined all your progress and one “perfect” day doesn’t produce insane results.
  This same principle applies to your progress. Building a business, like your body, requires time, effort, and patience, which is why you need to track your consistency. The gold standard is 80-90% consistent, which equates to 25-27 days out of 31 days. If you do that, I promise you, you are going to see incredible results.
  Mackennon Klink, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
  Mackennon Klink is a certified strength coach and nutritional coach with a simple message: lose weight and add muscle to become your leanest and strongest version of yourself. After a devastating snowboarding injury that forced him to undergo duel knee surgeries, Mackennon found his passion by helping others unlock their potential. Mackennon has a decade of coaching experience from helping elite professional athletes to busy professionals to weekend warriors achieve their fitness goals. My mission is to give you the necessary knowledge and confidence to sustainably incorporate the best program into your lifestyle so that you can lose that unwanted body fat while building real strength.