Not long ago, one of the members of my health
club poked her head in my office for some advice and assistance.
Linda was a 46 year old mother of two, and she had been a member
for over a year. She had been working out sporadically, with
(not surprisingly), sporadic results. On that particular day,
she seemed to have enthusiasm and a twinkle in her eye that
I hadn't seen before.
"I want to enter a before and after fitness
contest called the "12 week body transformation challenge."
I could win money and prizes and even get my picture in a magazine."
"I want to lose THIS", she continued, as she
grabbed the body fat on her stomach. "Do you think it's a good
idea?"
Linda was not "obese," she just had the typical
"moderate roll" of abdominal body fat and a little bit of thigh/hip
fat that many forty-something females struggle with.
"I think it's a great idea" I reassured her.
"Competitions are great for motivation. When you have a deadline
and you dangle a "carrot" like that prize money in front of
you, it can keep you focused and more motivated than ever."
Linda was eager and rarin' to go. "Will you
help me? I have this enrollment kit and I need my body fat measured."
"No problem," I said as I pulled out my Skyndex
fat caliper, which is used to measure body fat percentage with
a "pinch an inch" test.
When I finished, I read the results to her from
the caliper display: "Twenty-seven percent. Room for improvement,
but not bad; it's about average for your age group."
She wasn't overjoyed at being 'average'. "Yeah,
but it's not good either. Look at THIS," she complained as again
she grabbed a handful of stomach fat. "I want to get my body
fat down to 19%, I heard that was a good body fat level."
I agreed that 19% was a great goal, but told
her it would take a lot of work because average fat loss is
usually about a half a percent a week, or six percent in twelve
weeks. Her goal, to lose eight percent in twelve weeks was ambitious.
She smiled and insisted, "I'm a hard worker.
I can do it"
Indeed she was and indeed she did. She was a
machine! Not only did she never miss a day in the gym, she trained
HARD. Whenever I left my office and took a stroll through the
gym, she was up there pumping away with everything she had.
She told me her diet was the strictest it had ever been in her
life and she didn't cheat at all. I believed her. And it started
to show, quickly.
Each week she popped into my office to have
her body fat measured again, and each week it went down, down,
down. Consistently she lost three quarters of a percent per
week - well above the average rate of fat loss - and on two
separate occasions, I recall her losing a full one percent body
fat in just seven days.
Someone conservative might have said she was
overtraining, but when we weighed her and calculated her lean
body mass, we saw that she hadn't lost ANY muscle - only fat.
Her results were simply exceptional!
She was ecstatic, and needless to say, her success
bred more success and she kept after it like a hungry tiger
for the full twelve weeks.
On week twelve, day seven, she showed up in
my office for her final weigh-in and body fat measurement. She
was wearing a pair of formerly tight blue jeans and they were
FALLING OFF her! "Look, look, look," she repeated giddily as
she tugged at her waistband, which was now several inches too
large.
As I took her body fat, I have to say, I was
impressed. She hadn't just lost a little fat, she was "RIPPED!"
During week twelve she dropped from 18% to 17%
body fat, for a grand total of 10% body fat lost. She surpassed
her goal of 19% by two percent. I was now even more impressed,
because I had only seen a handful of people lose that much body
fat in three months.
You should have seen her! She started hopping
up and down for joy like she was on a pogo stick! She was beaming&
grinning from ear to ear! She practically knocked me over as
she jumped up and gave me a hug - "Thank you, thank you, thank
you!"
"Don't thank me," I said, "You did it, I just
measured your body fat."
She thanked me again anyway and then said she
had to go have her "after" pictures taken.
Then something very, very strange happened.
She stopped coming to the gym. Her "disappearance" was so abrupt,
I was worried and I called her. She never picked up, so I just
left messages. No return phone call.
It was about four months later when I finally
saw Linda again. The giddy smile was gone, replaced with a sullen
face, a droopy posture and a big sigh when I said hello and
asked where she'd been.
"I stopped working out after the contest...
and I didn't even win."
"You looked like a winner to me, no matter what
place you came in" I insisted, "but why did you stop, you were
doing so well!"
"I don't know, I blew my diet and then just
completely lost my motivation. Now look at me, my weight is
right back where I started and I don't even want to know my
body fat."
"Well, I'm glad to see you back in here again.
Write down some new goals for yourself and remember to think
long term too. Fitness isn't a just 12 week program you know,
it's a lifestyle - you have to do it every day, as in& forever."
She nodded her head and finished her workout,
still with that defeated look on her face. Unfortunately, she
never again come anywhere near the condition she achieved for
that competition, and for the rest of the time she was a member
at our club, she slipped right back into the sporadic on and
off workout pattern.
Linda was not an isolated case. I've seen the
same thing happen with countless men and women of all ages and
fitness levels from beginners to competitive bodybuilders. In
fact, it happens to millions of people who "go on" diets, lose
a lot of weight, then quickly "go off" the diet and gain the
weight right back.
What causes people to burn so brightly with
enthusiasm and motivation and then burn out just as quickly?
Why do so many people succeed brilliantly in the short term
but fail 95 out of 100 times in the long term? Why do so many
people reach their fitness goals but struggle to maintain them?
The answer is simple: Health and fitness is
for life, not for "12 weeks."
You can avoid the on and off, yo-yo cycle of
fitness ups and downs. You can get in great shape and stay in
great shape. You can even get in shape and keep getting in better
and better shape year after year, but it's going to take a very
different philosophy than most people subscribe to. The seven
tips below will guide you.
These guidelines are quite contrary to the quick
fix philosophies prevailing in the weight loss and fitness world
today. Applying them will take patience, discipline and dedication.
Just remember, the only thing worse than getting no results
is getting great results and losing them.
1) Don't "go on" diets. When you "go on" a diet,
the underlying assumption is that at some point you have to
"go off" it. This isn't just semantics, it's one of the primary
reasons most diets fail. By definition, a "diet" is a temporary
and often drastic change in your eating behaviors and/or a severe
restriction of calories or food, which is ultimately, not maintainable.
If you reach your goal, the diet is officially "over" and then
you "go off" (returning to the way you used to eat). Health
and fitness is not temporary; it's not a "diet." It's something
you do every day of your life. Unless you approach nutrition
from a "habits" and "lifestyle" perspective, you're doomed from
the start.
2) Eat the same foods all year round. Permanent
fat loss is best achieved by eating mostly the same types of
foods all year round. Naturally, you should include a wide variety
of healthy foods so you get the full spectrum of nutrients you
need, but there should be consistency, month in, month out.
When you want to lose body fat, there's no dramatic change necessary
- you don't need to eat totally different foods - it's a simple
matter of eating less of those same healthy foods and exercising
more.
3) Have a plan for easing into maintenance.
Let's face it - sometimes a nutrition program needs to be more
strict than usual. For example, peaking for a bodybuilding,
figure, or fitness contest requires an extremely strict regimen
that's different than the rest of the year. As a rule, the stricter
your nutrition program, the more you must plan ahead and the
more time you must allow for a slow, disciplined transition
into maintenance. Failure to plan for a gradual transition will
almost always result in bingeing and a very rapid, hard fall
"off the wagon."
4) Focus on changing daily behaviors and habits
one or two at a time. Rather than making huge, multiple changes
all at once, focus on changing one or two habits/behaviors at
a time. Most psychologists agree that it takes about 21 days
of consistent effort to replace an old bad habit with a new
positive one. As you master each habit, and it becomes as ingrained
into your daily life as brushing your teeth, then you simply
move on to the next one. That would be at least 17 new habits
per year. Can you imagine the impact that would have on your
health and your life? This approach requires patience, but the
results are a lot more permanent than if you try to change everything
in one fell swoop. This is also the least intimidating way for
a beginner to start making some health-improving changes to
their lifestyle.
5) Make goal setting a lifelong habit. Goal
setting is not a one-time event, it's a process that never ends.
For example, if you have a 12 week goal to lose 6% bodyfat,
what are you going to do after you achieve it? Lose even more
fat? Gain muscle? What's next? On week 13, day 1, if you have
no direction and nothing to keep you going, you'll have nothing
to keep you from slipping back into old patterns. Every time
you achieve a goal, you must set another one. Having daily and
weekly short term goals means that you are literally setting
goals continuously and never stopping.
6) Allow a reasonable time frame to reach your
goal. It's important to set deadlines for your fitness and weight
loss goals. It's also important to set ambitious goals, but
you must allow a reasonable time frame for achieving them. Time
pressure is often the motivating force that helps people get
in the best shape of their lives. But when the deadline is unrealistic
for a particular goal (like 30 pounds in 30 days), then crash
dieting or other extreme measures are often taken to get there
before the bell. The more rapidly you lose weight, the more
likely you are to lose muscle and the faster the weight will
come right back on afterwards. Start sooner. Don't wait until
mid-May to think about looking good for summer.
7) Extend your time perspective. Successful
people in every field always share one common character trait:
Long term time perspective. Some of the most successful Japanese
technology and manufacturing companies have 100 year and even
250-year business plans. If you want to be successful in maintaining
high levels of fitness, you must set long term goals: One year,
Ten years, Even fifty years! You also must consider what the
long term consequences might be as a result of using any "radical"
diet, training method or ergogenic aid. The people who had it
but lost it are usually the ones who failed to think long term
or acknowledge future consequences. It's easy for a 21 year
old to live only for today, and it may even seem ridiculous
to set 25 year goals, but consider this: I've never met a 40
or 60 year old who didn't care about his or her health and appearance,
but I have met 40 or 60 year olds who regretted not caring 25
years ago.
Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) is a fat
loss program which acknowledges the simple truth that going
"on diets," entering "Fitness challenges" or competing in "Transformation
contests" without having long term goals and a lifestyle attitude,
is a recipe for failure. Don't let yourself be part of the latest
fitness dropout statistics: visit the Burn The Fat website for
more details on how to change your lifestyle... and keep the
change! http://www.BurnTheFat.com
About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder,
an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength coach
(CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book in the
world, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle." Tom has written hundreds
of articles and been featured in IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding,
Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men's Exercise. For
info on Tom's e-book, visit the Burn The Fat website at http://www.BurnTheFat.com.
To get Tom's FREE Fitness Renaissance monthly newsletter, visit:
www.fitren.com
