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
- like... 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 the primary reason 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 nutrtion from a 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 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 a lot of 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? Maintain? 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!
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
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