Years ago, I told my first weight loss coach that I wanted to be like Oprah (who doesn't?). I had read in O, the magazine, that Oprah exercises habitually like she brushes her teeth. If she misses a day, she feels it, as if she had carpet on her teeth.

My coach and I set up an accountability system where I called her every day for three weeks when I got up at the crack of dawn to run. After my habit had been firmly established, my coach casually asked me, "What do you think about when you run?" I paused for a moment, and then I said, "How much farther I have to go." My coach told me to slow down. "Slow down?!" I was incredulous! I run an 11-minute mile as it is - if I slowed down any more, I'd feel like I was crawling. "Slow down," she told me, "and return to the joy of the exercise.

I grudgingly slowed down, and to this day, I walk for my morning ritual rather than run. The piece that I was missing in my weight loss plan was sustainability. What are you missing?

It's a paradigm shift to seach for what's missing in your weight loss plans. Most people seek to eliminate foods, to deprive themselves, to berate themselves for how bad they are in not sticking to their vision of what they want. People are not bad, they simply lack support, information and key skills. As I design workouts with my clients, we seek the root of what's keeping them from their goals. What's in the gap between what they want and what they're doing? What's in your gap?