How to Learn from Past Failure: Intervew with Kelly Hancock

It’s time for the next interview, today with Kelly Hancock who won the third Venus Index Transformation Contest.

Check out her amazing transformation for yourself:

Kelly has undergone an unbelievable transformation.

She did a great job.

Simply Amazing!

Kelly said that she feels proud of her body and is very happy with the results and she has a damn good reason to be. A lot of things change when you get in shape, not only that other people will act differently toward you, but your own behavior will change as well. For example what people find out after a big transformation (both guys and girls) is that you become a calm and confident person. Things you are not capable of controlling will stop affecting you and the things that are in your control, well you suddenly realize that you can change them, so there is no reason to get upset because of those either.

Kelly’s Journey

Kelly while at school was an active person, she played lots of sports and didn’t really worry about her look. Well, as lifestyle changed after school, her weight changed as well. She wasn’t playing any sports and with her job stress became a big challenge.

Based on this it probably comes as a no surprise that she gained some weight.

In 2008 she started doing cardio on the elliptical for an hour every night and eating salad for dinner. She had no idea how to get in shape, but this seemed like a logical approach.

She lost about 20 pounds while doing this. Well, because she had no idea how to lose weight and how to keep it off, due to her lifestyle circumstances she gained it all back.

This cycle of losing and then regaining continued for a while and was causing her a lot of frustration.

She also joined gym and started reading bodybuilding forums, because she was interested in having a toned and defined body and the gym seemed to be the answer.

Ultimately she found the Adonis Index that had some great information, but the workouts were focused on guys. Luckily there was a program with the same approach for women, enter the Venus Index.

This was what she was looking for all those years.

Losing and gaining showed her that she has no control over her body, so she needed to try a different approach and the information provided at Venus Index was logical, based on science and made sense to her.

In November 2010 Kelly bought the program and started doing the workout.

She was also very active in the Venus Community and learned some great tips there. For example she found out that fat loss is all about calories and that based on the Eat Stop Eat approach many of girls were fasting on a weekly basis.

She incorporated that in her lifestyle as well.

She wanted to try a little experiment and fasted six days in a row.  It wasn’t scary like you might think, she realized that her body could function without food for multiple days, in fact the only side effect was that she  just got bored. No kidding, it’s not exactly a fun thing to do.

This was good enough proof for her that it works.

She wanted to take it to the next level and fast until she got to 130 pounds and ripped.

Well, she did exactly what she set out to do. The only issue was that after 12 days of being without food, she ended up blowing it completely. Kelly started massively overeating and beating herself up over that, which lead to overeating again. This wasn’t a good experience and she felt ashamed of those months.

Today when Kelly is going through her old diary, the feelings come back and like she said, she felt like a failure and was disappointed by what she did.

She was intentionally stuffing herself with food, not working out and all this justifying by her studying and making excuses about not having time for the workouts.

Ever did something you knew is not right for you, but you did it anyway and just rationalized the behavior afterwards?

Like she said, not a very positive chapter of her life. She felt like she let herself, her friends and the girls in the community down.

Obviously she had to do something to get out of this less than positive space.

She decided to turn this upside down and start over again.

She moved to a different city, changed her job to a more flexible one with less stress. She regained control over her food and her workouts and got back on track with the Venus Index.

This resulted in feeling control over her life again, having freedom in her choices, not being a slave to her work schedule and finally being able to take care of her body again.

After listening to several podcasts and talking to her friends in the Venus Index community she knew that  she could do it.

Kelly’s Approach for the Contest

After four weeks Kelly was able to stop counting calories, because she already got to level of being able to ‘eyeball it’.

You can do the same. Most of us eat pretty similar meals every week, so it takes as little as four weeks to know the calorie content in those meals and once you do you can just focus on the portion and “eye ball” it. This is the big difference between the calorie counting and calorie guessing approaches.

Calorie guessing is more freeing and simpler than weighing every meal and tracking down the exact calorie content of that food. Plus if you over guess the content you are consciously leaving some room for error. So even if you make a mistake, it will be accounted for.

There were days when Kelly would eat half a pizza and have some beers, but there were also days when she would have just a few apples and a salad. If you balance it and stick to calorie restriction you can lose fat on almost any diet you choose. In other words you can lose fat while eating your favorite foods.

Sounds nice doesn’t it? There are some modifications you will have to make, for example if your favorite meal is pizza then you will have to restrict yourself a lot, because a whole pizza is pretty high in calories. So, it makes sense to stick to low calorie choices like vegetables, fruits, chicken and other foods that can fill you up and then from time to time you can have your pizza or whatever your favorite denser calorie choices are.

You can chose whatever you want to eat, the rule is to limit the amount. Do that and you will lose fat.

After Kelly got her calorie intake in check she moved to the next thing and that was her workouts.

She started going to the gym right after work, did one hour of weights, following the Venus Index workout protocols (for those more interested it was specifically the circuits and the shoulder specialization) and then she did two hours of low intensity cardio.

This was enough to get into contest shape, and most importantly to stay there instead of gaining it all back like she did before. The maintenance point is important as well. It’s not as hard as getting in shape, but it still requires some effort and figuring out on your part.

However, this was all just the “mechanical” stuff, in order for this to work and really win the contest and stay in a great shape even afterwards she needed to figure out how to stay sharp as well. There is a quote that sums this up perfectly:

Success in any area is foremost 80% psychology and only 20 % mechanics.

Tony Robbins

For Kelly it was her internal reflection that made it possible. She began with the question: “What pressure have I put on myself that is unnecessary?” From this point she started shutting down things that were robbing her of energy and not helping her achieve her goals in any way. She started putting herself first and taking care of her life first.

This is something that you may have a hard time grasping.

Would you be comfortable saying this: “I put myself first, I am the priority in my life”?

Give yourself a sincere answer.

You absolutely need to get to a state of mind where you can say “Yes!”.

Why?

It’s simple and don’t worry it doesn’t mean you should be arrogant or selfish, quite the opposite.

Here is a great analogy and if you’ve ever traveled by plane you already heard it. When you sit down and prepare for the flight you are filled in on the basics of what to do if something goes wrong. In that case you are supposed to put a gas mask on yourself FIRST, even if you have a child sitting next to you, you are supposed to put it on yourself FIRST.

Does this mean that the airlines don’t want you to save your kid? Of course not. But if you start putting the mask on your kid and you faint, then you can’t help them anymore.

Are you starting to see where this is going?

If you ever want to help other people achieve their goals, help them get over their challenges and get that great feeling of knowing that you are contributing to this society in some way then you have to take care of yourself first. This is true in all of the areas of your life – relationships, finance and both health and look.

So to get back to Kelly’s challenge, when she put herself first and stopped doing what other people wanted her to do she suddenly gained control over her actions, could achieve what she wanted and that lead to many other great things. When she got to where she is now, other people started to seek out her advice.

The moral of the story is to make yourself a priority and then you will be able to take care of others as well.

If you want to look like Kelly, here is a summary of the things she thinks are important to someone in the position she was in:

• Cut everything out of your life that is putting unnecessary pressure on you
• Stop doing what other people want you to do and make yourself the priority
• Don’t get affected by the things you can’t control and handle the things you can control – that is the path to happiness
• Intelligent hard effort pays off
• Figure out when you can go to the gym on regular basis and start going there
• Walking on a tredmill in front of TV may help you avoid stuffing yourself with unnecessary food in the evening at home in front of the tv…if you’re going to watch tv anyway, might as well workout at the same time
• It’s okay to have few bad days, just stay on track
• Eat less and only when you are hungry
• Find yourself a support group
• If you assume you are alone you create your own isolation – remember that you’re not alone
• Don’t be scared to ask for help

Words & phrases mentioned in the interview:

Adonis Index – Workouts for men

Venus Index Workouts – Workouts designed to maximize your genetic potential to look your best both in bikini and clothes

Venus Index Community – You will never find a more supportive, accepting, forgiving, outgoing, and RESULTS based community like you’ll find with the Venus Index Community.

Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle and diet protocol by Brad Pilon focusing on fat loss

Listen to the interview here: View Profile: jwilliams – The Official Hugo Community – Online Slots

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