Work-life balance is a popular topic these days as employees are quiet-quitting and pushing back against that constant grind that employers have been putting on them for years.
As we at Virtuo specialize with busy professionals we see many of the physical and mental health consequences of poor work life balance.
These include:
- Weight gain
- High blood pressure
- Physical pain
- Depression or other mental health issues
But that doesn’t have to be the case.
What we find with our clients that end up being successful in our program is there able to establish a healthy balance between work, life and personal health which is s essential for long-term health and longevity.
We recently had success with a client who is one of the busiest we’ve ever worked with by establishing simple routines and boundaries that have given him back much of his life and health in just the 6 months we’ve been working together.
Before I share James’s story I need you to know I’m here to help.
If you’re struggling to find balance between work, health and actually getting to enjoy your life then you need to take action…
Stop suffering and do something about it by booking a no-seat intro with one of our coaches.
Will break down exactly what’s holding you back and then provide some strategies to help reduce the burnout and start heading in the right direction.
Then if you’re interested and you qualify, we’ll invite you into our coaching program or we help you said those boundaries and get your life back one step at a time.
Book your no sweat intro here 👉 NO SWEAT INTRO
How James went from an overweight and burned out entrepreneur and grouchy dad to spending quality time with his kids, logging off work at 5pm and very nearly taking his shirt off at the beach.
Here’s James’s story…
When we first met James he was absolutely rundown and at his whits end.
When James reached out to us it took him a month and a half of back-and-forth just to get him to show up for his no sweat intro and when he did show up I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone more tired and rundown
James shared he had just started his own company two years ago and was now working 80 or more hours per week.
We often hear this from clients who tend to exaggerate, so I asked him to break down this week for me just to confirm and he actually was working nearly 80 hours!
On top of the stress of being a new business owner he was also a dad of three young boys and his wife was busy working as well.
The guy literally had no free time.
Like many others James was willing to do anything it took to make his business work and as a father he was willing to do anything for his family…
but it was taking a toll on his health.
He hadn’t gone on vacation in nearly 2 years and worked basically seven days a week.
His idea of a break was slamming a burger and a couple beers while he type away the computer late at night on a Friday or Saturday night.
He was so in the middle of the grind that he didn’t think this was abnormal in anyway but his wife had started to worry about him, he was one event with his kids after another and recent trip to the doctor had showed elevated blood pressure and he had been put on medication for the first time in his life.
The final sign for James that something had to change was the sudden death of a good friend who had been working long, stressful hours on his own business and now left his wife with two young kids to take care of without his support.
James was worried this was going to be him and so he made the time to come in and see us.
When I talked to James I realized that he was sleeping less than five hours per night on average and after getting on the scale and checking his body fat he was well in the at risk range for obesity and trending in the wrong direction.
He admitted that he was stressed out around the clock and often couldn’t sleep because he was so worried about work.
I told James that based on the pattern he was describing to me that his health would continue to decline and although we are not doctors, we can all predict where something like that is going to end up.
He admitted that he was at his wits end and would have changed things if he could so he was willing to do anything we said to make this happen.
I agree to help James on one condition.
He had to commit to getting away from he computer twice a week to visit the studio.
This would show me he was serious.
He agreed and we got to work.
At Virtuo we pride ourselves at meeting clients where they’re at and in James’s case it wouldn’t have done any good to add more to his already full plate.
Instead we started with small changes that would have the biggest impact.
The thing that we started with was the fact that James wasn’t drinking any water throughout the day and even worse, he was drinking 4 cans of coke a day.
Beside the sugar, this we causing big energy crashes throughout the day.
During out first month together all I only asked James to do two things.
1. Show up to the gym twice a week and we would stretch and do some basic mobility
- Switch to diet soda and reduce his soda intake by one can per week.
For our next step we started to focus on the fact that James didn’t move throughout the day.
Everyday James woke up, helped get his kids get ready for school and then parked himself self at the computer for the next 12 hours without taking any steps.
To help with this I had James buy a cheap Fitbit that he would wear throughout the day and gave him the goal of hitting 5000 steps on the the tracker.
I also had link it to our fitness app so that his coach could check in and make sure that he was getting his steps each day and then message him if he wasn’t to hold him accountable.
Within two weeks James was up to 6000 steps a day and had started to walk voluntarily even when not on calls because it gave him a break in the middle of the day.
James was one of many entrepreneurs and business owners and that he didn’t eat much in the morning and then would binge eat through the later part of the day as his energy crashed.
Rather than overwhelm him with big steps to combat this all I asked him to do was to starting eating a protein bar and banana at 9 am everyday. To help him remember we set a reminder on his phone.
After a week he had breakfast down and we found a meal prep service to deliver healthy lunches for the week and used the reminder system for that as well.
A month and a half in working with us dinner was still sometimes pizza or sometimes burgers for James but at least his eating was on a consistent schedule, he was getting his steps and workouts and he was hydrated throughout the day.
As a result he was down 8 lbs.
As it is for many entrepreneurs sleep was going to be the hardest thing for James to tackle.
To fix this we first started looking at the schedule as a whole.
I had him break down his schedule for the week into the 30 minute increments listing exactly the task he was working on during each of those hours.
By looking at his schedule we were able to identify that he did 3 main tasks for work each day. The problem was that he was constantly cycling between these tasks which meant a lot of lost time and work efficiency.
These work transitions added up to over an hour of lost time each day.
Seeing this, James came up with the idea to batch his day into three separate sections so that he could focus on one task at a time. In between tasks we included a brief walk and a midday meal.
It took about another month until the system was set but James had literally found another hour in his day. That meant he could end work earlier move his schedule up and get to sleep an hour earlier.
While James can speak better to how amazing that extra hour of sleep has been, on our side we saw his weight drop another 6 pounds bringing him to a total of 14 lbs lost after only 2 1/12 months.
Mind you all we had done was get him walking, eating breakfast, drinking water, sleeping one more hour a night and seeing us twice per week for light workouts.
Best of all James felt in his words “human again” and was noticing he was actually enjoying time with his kids rather than feeling worn out all the time.
With sleep improving we now focused on moderately improving on what we had built.
The intensity of the workouts in the gym picked up and our nutritionist taught James how to record photos of his food at each meal.
At the same time James bought a dog for his kids so his daily step count moved up to 7500.
At the 4 month mark James was 26 lbs down and had gone from XXL shirts to XL and dropping.
While he had been streamlining his health with us, James had been streamlining his business by hiring an assistant which had taken hours of work off his plate each week.
He had “reinvested” that time as we had taught him into his sleep and more time with his kids.
James is now 6 months into his journey with us and has lost a total of 36 pounds, is sleeping 7 hours a night and is off the blood pressure meds his doctor put him on.
Best of all he’s been able to free up time and feels fit enough to start playing tennis again on Saturday mornings.
James has a family vacation planned this summer so our next goal is to get him to the point where he feels comfortable hitting the beach with his shirt off again.
This is “operation kill the dad bod” (His words not ours)
James has put in some serious work and like the risk he took to start his own business took a risk in listening to our advice.
When you’re barely keeping your head above water it can be hard to see how it’s possible to cut back without letting everything topple.
Believe me, as a fellow business owner I know that feeling.
But the reality is that if you don’t have your health then you have nothing.
If you’re sick in the hospital your business will crash so you might as well be proactive for your sake and the people that care about you.
Finding balance between work and health is possible and it comes down to three things.
1. Small targeted changes that get big results right away leading to buy in.
2. A plan that takes into account your lifestyle and goals.
3. People who know first-hand how to guide you from burnout to outstanding health and business success because they’ve done It before.
If you feel like there’s never enough time in the day or your doctor has read you the riot act or you just want to make a change then I want to help you.
I’ve been where you are, burned out exhausted and unhealthy.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
You can get back your time, your health and your sanity like James.
Here’s what you need to do.
First book a no sweat intro with one of our master coaches here 👉 NOW SWEAT INTRO
Then we will help build a path to freedom and health just like the we did for James
And finally we’ll guide you every step of the way until you hit your goal.
And if for any reason you do everything we say and don’t hit your goal then we’ll continue to coach you for free until you do.
We are that serious about what we do and we know you will be too.
Book your no-sweat intro now
Send me a message at [email protected] if you’ve got any questions.
Always at your service,
Brandon
