Category: Fat loss

We’re going to take a break from the ever-growing array of Gym Etiquette faux pas that we encounter any given day at the gym and talk about diet faux pas instead. If you’ve spent ANY time Googling diets or how to lose weight you’ve encountered literally THOUSANDS of hits. Anything from low carb and paleo, to high fat, prepackaged foods and shakes, to fasting. There’s no shortage of know-it-all’s in the diet marketplace. Interestingly enough, if you already have an idea of which one you want to do, you’ll most likely be able to find multitudes of very scientific sounding articles supporting whatever you’ve chosen. I Googled Cabbage Soup Diet, (did you even know that one is still out there?) and found all kinds of things supporting it. Thank goodness there are also a multitude of sites debunking it.

My point is, the Internet is full of complete and utter nonsense and rubbish and it takes someone with knowledge and discernment to see through the often times erroneous information they’re feeding you. And as everyone who has been in the fitness industry long enough knows, what’s good for you today may end up being detrimental to your goals tomorrow, so think twice, maybe three times, before you jump on ANY bandwagon.

There are some hard and fast truths when it comes to your nutritional choices, and after that, it depends upon you; your metabolism, how your body functions, your activity level and what you’re needing to fuel (think desk jockey vs. Olympic sprinter), food allergies or intolerances, disease processes (diabetes, for example), lifestyle and, quite frankly, determination, focus and DESIRE. All of those things taken into consideration are necessary in figuring out YOUR best course of action. Do you think, in reading all of those articles on the amazing and jaw dropping benefits of DIET X, that they are talking directly to you? How could they? They don’t even know YOU! They have statistics supporting their plans and it all sounds very legit to the average person. But how many of you have actually gone in search of those studies and read through them to determine the factors and parameters used in order to judge the efficacy for yourself? VERY FEW to none would be my guess. And yet, someone throws some case studies at you and BAM, it’s a nutritional truth! And even if the stats are from a credible source, is it the right choice for you based on the parameters I’ve listed above?

And testimonials? There are millions of testimonials.! You’ve read them…”Miracle diet!” “Nothing else worked until I took this pill and now I have the body of a supermodel!” “I lost 57 pounds in 3 weeks and have kept it off and I don’t even have to exercise or change my lifestyle at all!” Complete and utter HOOEY.

So, I mentioned some hard and fast truths when it comes to diet. Here they are, and forgive me if I’ve missed a few, this is a blog and not a thesis, but you get the idea…
1) You must eat to survive; food is NOT optional.
2) Your body requires a multitude of nutrients in order to function, and the right balance of nutrients in order to function optimally.
3) The more processed foods you eat, the unhealthier you will become. It may not show on the outside, but it WILL wreak havoc on the inside. And quite frankly, if it’s full of chemicals and hormones or is made in a lab, it’s not good for you.
4) Exercise is not optional in the quest for a healthy body. Like it or not, our bodies are DESIGNED for movement and in the absence of movement, dysfunction begins. And like a domino effect, one dysfunctional process leads to another and another….It may begin with a few aches and pains, but it will lead to a complete breakdown of functional movement which in turn leads to disease.
5) If you eat far more calories than you burn, you will gain body fat.
6) If you don’t eat enough calories every day, your metabolism will slow to a crawl and you will hold onto body fat.
7) Water intake is absolutely necessary for proper metabolic function.

Now, let’s take this short list and match your diet du jour against it and if it fails in any of these rather obvious dietary necessities, RUN AWAY. The Cabbage soup diet? FAIL. Eating 500 calories a day? And I don’t care what magical formulation they give you for weight loss to ingest along with this extreme calorie depletion, its terribly UNHEALTHY and a definite FAIL. Anything that says that exercise is unnecessary? FAIL.
ALL of the extreme diets out there fail this first test miserably!

Once you’ve weeded out the obvious culprits to an unhealthy weight loss plan, it’s time to put the others to the next test and see they fit your lifestyle and goals. And here’s a very important question to ask of your self. Can I do this diet FOREVER? Is it maintainable and will it provide me with a lifetime of dietary health? Can I manage this on my own on a daily basis? Now we’ve eliminated a few more, haven’t we? You see, people have gotten away from a diet of long-term health and wellness and we’ve become a society of REACTIVE diets. Instead of a nice steady current of food management, we’ve taken it to extremes. For example…”I’m so tired of dieting so I’m going to eat everything in sight, then when the fat gets out of control I’ll starve myself and run everyday for weeks until the weight is gone. Then I’ll go back to eating whatever I want until the fat takes over again!” We’re not living a continuous life of good nutrient intake anymore, now we’re just attempting to counteract our consistently poor nutritional choices. Our bodies get tossed around violently going from one unhealthy situation to another, and yet we expect it to continue to keep functioning properly for us! In my humble opinion, the diet that will take you through life giving you the absolute best chance at long term health is quite simply this; consistently eating healthy and nutrient dense foods that you tolerate well while allowing for special indulgences along the way so as not to develop an unhealthy need to binge on things you believe to be “bad”, all the while keeping your heart, lungs, and muscles in top shape. There it is. BOOM. I don’t even need to link to any statistics or scientific studies! And it wouldn’t even fill up the first page of a book!  It’s time to get off the diet rollercoaster, stop being REACTIVE and start treating your body like the beautiful and incredible gift it is.

If you’ve gotten yourself into a situation where food is controlling your life and your self-esteem and consuming your thoughts, then you have a problem and you may need to seek outside help. And the help you need is out there! But you need to look hard to find someone that isn’t endorsing a particular product to give you the direction you need to live the life you deserve. Find someone that spends the time asking about YOU! Someone that listens to what you’ve been through and not someone that is thinking the whole time how to make their product your savior. And once you’ve found that person that you know truly cares about your future, has the knowledge to help you overcome the obstacles and not just in the next few months, but in the long term, then listen to them. That person should be willing to admit they don’t know everything. They should leave their ego behind and admit if something is beyond their scope of knowledge and point you in the right direction. And if you find that person, then let them be that ONE VOICE. Stop listening to your friends and colleagues raving about their latest magical fat cure. It doesn’t matter if they lost 15 pounds in 2 weeks and they can fit in their skinny jeans, it’s not forever and I guarantee a few weeks or months from now they’ll be on the next magical diet bandwagon. Don’t be that person! Treat your body with respect EVERYDAY and I guarantee that it will thank you!

The old story of the tortoise and the hare rings very true in this case. And if you’re too young to have heard that story while growing up, or if it’s been awhile since you’ve read it, then I suggest you spend time Googling that instead!

Until next time, eat well, laugh often, exercise your body, and most importantly, be thankful for the gift that looks back at you in the mirror everyday!

Is that a question that you’re asking yourself? The pretty obvious answer to that is that you ate too many pizzas and plates of lasagna and then followed it up with cookies dipped in tubs of ice cream, right? But wait…you didn’t do that? You don’t eat bread and pasta because THOSE things obviously, are what make you fat! And you eat little snippets of food a few times a day, and certainly you NEVER eat dessert because everyone knows dessert is EVIL. How could you possibly get fat from so little food? And why do some people eat GOOD stuff and still manage to stay pretty lean? Must be some pretty crappy genetics that were handed to you, right? You even do enough cardio each day to burn off literally everything you ate that day plus some!

So you ask again…why am I so FAT???

My guess is that you’ve spent a fair amount of time bouncing from one diet to another. Trying this and that, having a bit of success but never keeping it off for that long because, well quite frankly, dieting sucks and there are times when you just want a slice of pizza. But you can’t eat “bad” food or “bad” carbs because that’s the real culprit! Sinister carbohydrates! Or maybe you got caught up in the hype of a diet trend at one time or another. Someone told you that you should try the diet they’ve been on for 2 weeks because they feel FANTASTIC and they’ve lost weight and they have all this energy that they haven’t had in years! Or you saw the “transformation” photos and when they said you don’t even have to exercise and that you get to eat all your favorite foods that really struck a chord with you and they reeled you in like a trout on a line. But each time you dieted, you suddenly found yourself eating less and less food and yet the fat stubbornly remains.

Why am I so fat???

Were you aware that you will get fatter by not eating ENOUGH food? What? Calories in calories out, right? Cut calories, burn them off and the fat should go away! Nope, not how it works. Let’s not forget that food is fuel for your body.   Your entire system runs on food and water. Without it, you die. Period. Food is where we get nutrients and energy, those important things necessary to be active, have a sharp mind, and that keep our engine humming along. And everyone knows about metabolism and in rather simple terms, how it regulates whether you are one of those lucky people that can eat pizza and still stay lean. So you inherited a terrible metabolism? Thanks Mom and Dad! Well, it’s time to stop blaming the family tree for your fat. More likely is that you CREATED a slow metabolism by under eating.

Here’s what happened to you. Somewhere along the way you put on a bit of body fat and you wanted it gone. So, naturally you cut your calories and added some exercise. Maybe you started running because that’s what everyone does. You had some success and you lost some body fat. Yay. Fast forward a few weeks and you keep weighing but that scale isn’t changing. Must be time to cut some more calories. Bingo, a few more pounds drop. Then another plateau. This time you add more running. Works for a bit then ANOTHER PLATEAU!! WHY??? So you cut even more calories. Now you’re barely eating enough to keep a squirrel alive and you pound away at the pavement for what seems like hours and hours every week but the cellulite remains, and nothing seems to be changing for the better, in fact, you feel SOFTER. Congratulations, you just told your body that you are heading into a famine and that it better store some fat in case your squirrel food disappears altogether because something needs to keep your systems functioning! Your body, meanwhile, has been raiding your muscle for energy, further damaging your metabolism. When you finally get so sick and tired of running and eating lettuce and tilapia, then at some point you go off the deep end and actually eat some bread. And you bloat. Must be the glutens! No! Your body actually got fed with something it can work with! Finally, fuel!! And since you’ve been starving it of nutrients for so long it is left with no choice but to store that up for later when you get another crazy idea to head back to Famineville. (which is probably the next day because guilt and remorse are always just a slice of pizza away) And worse than the obvious repercussions to your physique is what it has done to your self-esteem. You feel like a failure, you can’t look at yourself in the mirror and you lament over the obvious fact that you have been dealt a pretty crappy hand in life.

It’s time to stop the madness. Stop starving yourself. Food is fuel and food is your ally, absolutely NOT your enemy! Carbohydrates are NOT your enemy. They are what drives the machine. It’s time to stop focusing on the fat and start focusing on your health. Gradually start adding food (proteins, fats, and yes, carbs!) back into your diet and stop running it all off on the treadmill. Do not go from no food to thinking that you can suddenly eat what you want. Your body has been trained to get you by on barely anything, so it’s going to take time for it to adapt to being fed again so add those calories back in slowly. Lift some weights to get some muscle back on your body that you have decimated with all of your diet shenanigans. It’s a long, slow process that requires patience and focus and determination. Rome wasn’t built in a day as the old adage states. And it’s often quite scary. Somewhere in your head it’s been ingrained in you that to stay slim you have to eat less. LET. THAT. GO. If this is your situation then you need to change your plan and you need to eat to lose. Find someone to help you through this process if it feels scary to try it alone. Trust me, you may need someone who sees the big picture to talk you down off the ledge on occasion. And that’s okay, we’ve all been there and there are days when you’ll swear it’s not working. Or you may be tempted yet again by someone trying to sell you an easier way. It’s during those times when you just need to remember that food and exercise is not optional on the path to getting and staying healthy and fit. Keep your eyes focused forward on creating a strong and healthy body and mind and stop focusing on the fat. Listen to that ONE VOICE that cares about how you feel and think about yourself throughout your whole life and not just for the short term. And if the only sane voice around you is your own, then so be it. You are the one that needs to live with YOU and you need to treat your body like the treasure it is. I recently read something that carried so much truth in it’s simplicity and sums all of this up in one phrase and it said this……

EAT LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOURSELF!!