Copyright 2005 Tom Venuto
Not long ago, one of the members of my health club poked her
head in my office for some advice. 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 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 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 level.”
I agreed that 19% was a great goal, but 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”
Well, 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 - 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 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
“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. But 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 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 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 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 lifestyle changes.
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 the long term consequences 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 50 year
old who didn’t care about his or her health and appearance, but
I have met 40 or 50 year olds who regretted not caring 25 years
ago.