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Author: AJ
Date: 01-02-04 12:23
Having gone from 26% body fat to 4%, and more importantly, managing to keep the fat off for over seven years, people constantly ask what’s my secret. Although they are eager to hear that I used some miracle diet or weight loss pill, I simply tell them the secret to losing weight and keeping it off: is taking the time to do it right.
Anyone that has ever gone on a diet knows that losing weight isn’t difficult—keeping it off is.
It’s not hard to lose thirty pounds in thirty days. The problem is you end up gaining it back. In fact, what most dieters don’t realize is that 3 out of 4 people who lose weight on diets regain 90% of the weight within one year and all of it within 5 years (plus more). No one likes to face these dismal statistics when they begin the arduous task of losing weight. Instead, they opt for the quick fix rapid weight loss diets—that falsely validate their New Years resolution success—as the digits on their scale temporarily go down. What they don’t realize, however, is that weight loss is not the same as fat loss, and until they opt to differentiate between the two, they will always be stuck on the yo-yo dieting roller coaster.
So what exactly is taking the time to do it right? Well, the best way to answer that question is by learning what is ‘incorrect weight loss’.
The typical low-fat diet is high in carbohydrates and low in calories. And for the most part, this is the traditional fat-loss and fat maintenance recommendation echoed throughout the medical community. The Dietary Guidelines recommend 20-30% of daily calories come from fat, 10% from protein, and 60% - 70% from carbohydrates. Physicians and other fitness professionals are pressured from sanctioning government agencies and managed health care to support these guidelines. Statistically speaking, however, following these guidelines has provided no benefit in the area of fat management.
The premise behind low-fat/low-calorie dieting is based on the assumption that: when calorie intake is reduced, excess fat is burned for energy. This premise is oversimplified and flawed.
To your body, low-calorie dieting is the equivalent of a primordial famine. When deprived of calories, the body initiates a sequence of innate preservation responses to maintain equilibrium between calorie intake and calorie [energy] expenditure.
One of the responses is to reduce lean muscle mass. Lean muscle burns more calories per day than any other tissue. On prolonged calorie-restricted diets [more than three or four weeks], studies show that close to 50% of the weight lost comes at the expense of lean muscle. Since maintaining muscle requires more calories than fat, muscle is destroyed when there is a lack of calorie intake. Specifically, one lb. of lean muscle requires an average of 35 calories per day, in contrast to the mere 8 calories required to maintain an equal amount of fat. This means muscle is destroyed to reduce metabolic overhead; so your BMR may be decreased by as much as 25-40%. Accordingly, the decrease then causes fewer calories to be burned and more to be stored as fat (a significant factor contributing to weight gain after a diet). In spite of this known occurrence, calorie reduction is still the customarily recommended approach to fat loss.
If a complete understanding of the human body were placed in a 50,000-page book, modern medicine would only reflect page one. At present, there is no general consensus as to how the body works with regard to calorie storage and utilization. The majority of information we do have is based primarily on speculation and theory. What we do know, however, is that the body is equally efficient at storing calories as it is at burning them.
Over 100,000 years have gone into perfecting the body’s complex system of calorie utilization, and it’s unlikely that modern science will unravel the system anytime soon. Given that, if you want to lose fat and keep it off, you must first learn how to work with this system instead of against it. Your objective should not be weight loss, but rather fat management. It cannot be done with a pill, a personal trainer, a piece of fitness equipment, a fad diet, liposuction, or surgeries that induce calorie deprivation [Years from now, gastric bypass surgery will be viewed as the equivalent to the time doctors used leeches to suck out illness.]. Instead of trying to change the way our body has functioned and survived throughout time, our efforts be aimed at working with the natural accord of the body, and be focused on the way we’ve begun to feed it?
Fat management is complicated, but not impossible. To successfully control fat, you must do three things. First, prepare for the known obstacles of fat loss, both physically and mentally. The physical obstacles are the powerful survival responses already mentioned. Second, prepare a strategy that works with your body instead of against it. In our era of calorie abundance, we must reprogram our body to burn calories instead of storing them; this is essential to designing an effective nutrition and exercise routine. Finally, to maintain your success, you’ll need a lifelong fitness plan. Your plan should be designed with the intent of keeping you healthy, both physically and mentally.
Al Smith, Jr.
Author of TrainChange
“A Unique, Step-by-step, Analytical Approach to Fat Loss”
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Author: Fabulous@50
Date: 01-02-04 18:22
AJ,
Aside from providing us with a long-winded "infomercial" for the book you are obviously trying to sell--you've told many of us very little than what we already know.
If you REALLY want to help--and not just sell (another) diet book--then kindly fill in the blanks to your 3 secrets:
1. First, prepare for the known obstacles of fat loss, both physically and mentally. (JUST WHAT SPECIFICALLY SHOULD WE DO TO PREPARE FOR THE "KNOWN" OBSTACLES?)
2. Second, prepare a strategy that works with your body instead of against it. (HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GO ABOUT PREPARING THIS STRATEGY? GIVE US DETAILED STEPS TO FOLLOW.)
3. To maintain your success, you’ll need a lifelong fitness plan. (AND JUST WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND THAT SHOULD BE?)
Pardon my skepticism, but I smell a salesman at the door. Unless you start coming up with some good, solid, useable information quickly, and not a lot of generalized, advertisement double-talk, I'd like to "show you the door."
Fabulous@50
225/156/150
Program Start: May 12, 2003
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.”
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Author: AJ
Date: 01-02-04 20:04
One of the biggest problems we face with overcoming the weight loss battle is obtaining accurate and ‘thorough’ information. We’re constantly given half truths and partial pieces of information—and left trying to build a diet from it. I’m sure you are aware that happens frequently on message boards. With that, I took the time to provide enough information to help answer ONE of (the many) questions concerning weight loss; that being, the difference between fat loss and weight loss. While you may not have found my post helpful or informative, maybe someone in the 65% of the population still battling with their weight did.
You know, the irony is you call my post a long winded sales pitch, yet you want me to extrapolate on it?
“He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-man appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.”
- Henry D. Thoreau
Al Smith, Jr.
Author of TrainChange
“A Unique, Step-by-step, Analytical Approach to Fat Loss”
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Author: Tonya
Date: 01-02-04 21:04
I'm with Fabulous. Your post sounds more like an infomercial rather than sound advice that people can use to help in their weighloss and maintance journey. It's wonderful that you've lost the weight and kept it off, and I can understand your desire to sell your book. However, this board is more about support, not a means to profit from their desire to make life changes.
Tonya 154/136/130
Start date April 2003
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Author: Fabulous@50
Date: 01-02-04 21:04
>You know, the irony is you call my post a long winded sales pitch, yet you want me to extrapolate on it? <
Yes I do! If you extrapolate on it, it proves that you are willing to give the board members some useful information...if you don't--and you didn't--it proves you are using a "tease" in an effort to sell your book or your seminars. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you've got something to push judging from the way you signed your name. You're not the first salesperson whose darkened our door.
If you want to sell something, I suggest you write to the webmaster of this board and PAY to advertise your wares.
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YOU WROTE IN YOUR REPLY TO ME:
"One of the biggest problems we face with overcoming the weight loss battle is obtaining accurate and ‘thorough’ information. We’re constantly given half truths and partial pieces of information—and left trying to build a diet from it. I’m sure you are aware that happens frequently on message boards. "
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That EXACTLY explains the content of your first post--"partial pieces of information." So by your own admission, your post contributed to "one of the biggest problems we face." So, either "extropolate" or "exit."
Fabulous@50
225/156/150
Program Start: May 12, 2003
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.”
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Author: AJ
Date: 01-02-04 21:44
There is a reason why I didn't answer your questions. Each one requires more space than a board can provide. I’m sure once again I’ll be accused of being a salesman for answering them, but you asked, “JUST WHAT SPECIFICALLY SHOULD WE DO TO PREPARE FOR THE "KNOWN" OBSTACLES?”
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Identify Your Obstacles
The tricky part of the fat-loss battle is learning how to reduce obstacles down to manageable weaknesses. Once accomplished, conquering them is simple because you can view them as small personal development tasks.
Everyone from professionals to amateurs must deal with a matrix of personally weak areas on a day-to-day basis. For some, their area of weakness may be a lack of discipline and tenacity; for others, it may be shortsighted goal planning, an inability to resist temptation, or even a fear of success. In any event, the first step to overcoming obstacles is to create an honest list of weak areas in your life.
Asking the question, “Where is my life the weakest?” is about as thrilling as asking your spouse what the best thing was about dating the person they were with right before you. There are some things you really don’t want to ask but you need to know. Identifying and facing your weaknesses is definitely
one of those things, but you cannot make progress or even improve in those areas until you do. If avoided, weaknesses eventually become new obstacles. To prevent this, you’ve got to take a hard and honest look at yourself. Try to find your bad habits (some of us won’t have to look as hard as others) and examine the counterproductive things that prevent you from reaching your goals. But it doesn’t stop there. Simply knowing you should [exercise more, stop smoking, not eat so much candy, spend less time watching TV, call your mom at least once a week, or put the toilet seat down] is one thing, but doing it is another. Correct the weakness, and accept NO EXCUSES for not correcting it. Fortunately, as painful as this is, once you have identified your weaknesses you can create a strategic plan of action that allows you to treat them as minor hurdles rather than major barricades.
Envisioning the fulfillment and imagining the benefits of reaching your goal are powerful techniques to overcoming obstacles. While you cannot see the immediate results of following your nutrition and exercise routine, you can experience the interpersonal rewards of success right now! Stick mental post-it notes to your brain reminding you that “My life is now a work in progress,” and “Every challenge I undertake and every change I make brings me closer to my goal,” or “Although I have not lost all of the fat I want to at this point, the only thing that can keep me from doing it is me.” Creating this type of motivational map not only gives you a precise direction to move in but also the courage to face any obstacle. To conclude, I have identified three areas in life where the most common obstacles appear, and have given you fifteen empowering ways to deal with them.
Obstacle at Home
Usually in the form of a blissful indulgence that makes us tell the lie “I’m only going to take one more bite,” only to end up completely devouring it, without a doubt, food is a common weakness.
Whether it’s chocolate, cookies, candies, breads, ice cream, cake, pasta, or a glass (bottle) of wine, we all have food vices. Why must the edible delights that make us feel so good be so bad for us. In order to follow our healthy routines, we must remove these vices from our diet. But after several weeks (maybe even a few days), depravation leads to devastation, and a crack in willpower gives way to a hedonistic, guilt-ridden binge session. A burst of hunger encountered during this moment of weakness leads us to eating everything in sight.
Heaven forbid this happen while we’re home alone with no one to help stop us.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the average person thinks about food every thirty-four seconds and spends an average of fourteen hours a day in the house. Because of this, your home can easily become a major stumbling block of temptation. On the other hand, with proper planning and a little goal setting, it can also become your place of refuge.
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Obstacle at Work
The workplace is also full of fat landmines. Between the business lunches, birthday lunches, the holiday lunches, the morning doughnuts, and the vending machines, you’re subjected to constant temptation to veer off your path. Because of this, every move you make must be calculated and well thought out. You’ll realize that the obstacles at the workplace aren’t unique. They are pretty much the same ones you encounter while at home and with friends, so it would be in your best interest to transfer the knowledge you have about those areas into your work environment. In the end, you will be able to safely navigate through this 9-to-5 minefield by simply mapping out your plan of action—before walking into the office.
Similar to that of a preschool teacher announcing, “It’s recess time!” to a room full a two-year-olds, the noontime holler of “Where are we going for lunch?” generates the same type of frantically exciting office confusion. It’s easy to throw your nutrition plan out the window and agree to jump on the lunchtime, high-calorie bandwagon when you have partners in crime. Because of this, if you don’t bring your own lunch, or feel uncomfortable being the only one at the table eating a meal that’s fewer than 200 calories, the office is going to be a huge obstacle for you. Then again, you could be the inspirational one who says, “Hey, let’s eat something healthy today.” But why bother? You know you’ll only be outvoted—in favor of the new Mexican restaurant that just opened down the street.
To be successful on your nutrition plan at work, don’t leave meals to chance; plan them in advance. This is the purpose of the TrainChange meal planner. You can plan your lunches for the week then freeze them in individual containers. The extra time and effort put into doing this not only benefits your body, but also reduces the costs of eating healthy.
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Obstacles at the Gym
The only obstacle you will encounter at the gym is yourself. Exercise is one of the few things in life you have 100% control over. You are the only person who can make the results happen. But honestly ask yourself, although you may desire to have a beautifully sculpted body, how willing are you to work at making it happen?
For most individuals, just as their muscles begin to burn [fat] from exercising, they’ll say to themselves, “Wow, look at all of this work I’ve done. I’m tired. I deserve a break,” and quit. The truth is, they haven’t even started to work. Worse yet, they didn’t even bust a sweat!
Fictitious advertising and false claims of rapid weight loss have duped people into believing that results can occur with little or no effort. The biggest lie of all is that exercise is supposed to be fun and easy. Hardly. Results come from hard work and a firm conviction to train outside of your comfort range. Even after exercising for over fifteen years, my muscles still burn like it’s the first day in the gym. I don’t tell you that to boast or toot my own horn, but rather to give you a realistic idea as to what an intense workout is. Too often I see people do the same old workout, with the same old intensity, and of course, with the same old results (and that’s the worst type of consistency). When you are truly committed to getting the most from exercise, you should have one thing on your mind: making your current workout better than your last. In other words, it once again comes down to progress.
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All though a ‘quick fix’ simple paragraph would be nice, it's not the reality of long term weight loss. Regardless, it seems like you’ve already got all the help you need and found the answers you’re looking for—I wish you the best of luck.
Al Smith, Jr.
Author of TrainChange
“A Unique, Step-by-step, Analytical Approach to Fat Loss”
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Author: GymmyMac
Date: 01-04-04 06:58
a reference demonstrating that zillions of articles, research and other material explaining that reduced cals is basically craphouse for losing weight would be nice, considering it goes against so much...how does one lose fat when in calorie 'abundance' as you put it...please...go push your book to people who dont have a clue...because we do jnr.
~Short, sharp and intense = results~
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Author: sg
Date: 01-04-04 09:16
"We’re constantly given half truths and partial pieces of information—and left trying to build a diet from it. I’m sure you are aware that happens frequently on message boards."
you do realize you summed up your entire diatribe in that one sentence. Although your scheme of trying to get people to relate to you by getting them to agree with your logic (even though you don't even follow it) is clever, it won't work. In reference to the above sentence:
On the contrary, when it comes to weightloss (and this is one of the very few topics to which this is applicable), I think there are very few half truths and lies on this message board. I would attribute all of my weight loss to a combination of information from message boards and personal motivation. My friend Doug here has nothing to gain, so to speak, by telling me where I might be going wrong in my diet. I am not paying him for information, he's not losing weight by emailing me. He's doing it out of kindness and to genuinely help. Do you genuinely want to help people or do you want to make money? Don't feel bad if you want to make money. I want to make money too, that's why I go to school right now so I can eventually work. But this is a place, one of the very few places on the internet, on tv, in magazines, in books, where people are geniunely not trying to BS others about losing weight and getting fit. There are different ways to learn things. You want to be the teacher and you want us to be the class. We pay you a few bucks and you stand up there and teach. The people here prefer a more cooperative learning, firing ideas back and forth about what has worked and what doesn't work. How do we ensure that these aren't half truths? Simple. Because most of the things people say here are things people actually DO. Often at times the best way to learn things is to actually put them into practice. So your argument about message boards being filled with half truths may be true for other topics on the internet like celebrity gossip or chain letter emails, etc.. but when it comes to weight loss, I believe you are mistaken. Still, I think its great that you posted because now.. for once.. its like the commercial is coming to OUR territory and we can actually reply. I want to throw things at the TV when I see the ads for the south beach diet, the way they try to lure you with all their "secrets" that they can't disclose without your $19.95. You're like an interactive south beach diet ad, so now I can actually respond more productively than get irritated. I hope you understand what I'm saying. Good luck in trying to make your buck. There are millions of people out there to be duped and I guarantee they will be because everyone wants to get really skinny really quick. You've just missed your target forum by posting it here.
sg
190/150/130
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