I was sitting with my buddy working on the new weight loss program and this is a picture of a van that drove by

Best Van Ever!

How ironic!

Well this is about as blatant and in your face as food marketing can get, this might actually be the best van I’ve ever seen.

The moral to this short post is to remind you that you’re likely exposed to hundreds of marketing message that tell you to ‘Eat More’.

You’ll never, ever see a van drive by that says ‘eat less’.

It’s unfortunate but the simplest answer for weight loss is also the one that nobody (besides me!) will ever tell you.

John

Every bit counts no Matter how Small.

So how do you  lose weight?

Simple, you need to create an energy deficit. In other words, consume less energy than you spend and you’re body has no choice but to burn some bodyfat (after all that’s what it’s there for in the first place).

So how do you create an energy deficit?

1) The easiest is to eat less calories than you burn. This means less calories than your BMR or your daily energy expenditure. Sadly for most people their BMR accounts for all the daily calories burned. (the other things that can burn calories are purposeful exercise and lifestyle activity)

2) Increase your lifestyle activity level. But this only works if you don’t compensate by eating more calories. This is actually tougher than it seems. Most people who have a busier or more active day just end up eating more and erase any weight loss benefit from being more active.

3) Do more exercise (or start exercising). This is different from lifestyle activity because exercise is usually for shorter periods of time and at higher intensity. Again this only works if you don’t compensate by eating more calories.

4) Take a supplement, or coffee, or green tea, or anything that you think will help you stick to your weight loss program. This is likely more of a placebo effect than anything, but going through the ritual of taking a vitamin supplement or a workout supplement might just make it all seem more real and keep you focused.

I have a friend who is successfully losing weight and he takes a different mix of supplements and vitamins every day.

The Ritual of Taking Supplements Might Be More Important than what's in Them.

He doesn’t really care what they’re supposed to do, but the ritual of taking them reminds him to stay on track with his eating and so far he’s doing great dropping 3-5 pounds per week for the past 9 weeks. (can’t say anything he’s doing isn’t working!)

The point is anything that can help you stay on track and focused on your weight loss goal is worth doing. If it means having a special coffee or tea twice a day then go for it. If you think you’d rather have a post workout shake and it helps you avoid overeating in the evening then the post workout shake might be critical to your success.

You’re the only person who knows your weaknesses and barriers when it comes to exercise, weight loss and eating. So once you find a system and ritual that works for you stick with it.

Real weight loss success comes from consistency, and consistency is usually rooted in rituals that make you feel good about the process and that remind you to stay on course.

John

Once the Train is Rolling it's Hard to Stop

I’m in New York for a conference and I’ve been eating more food than I would normally have if I weren’t away at an event. There are open bar dinner and cocktail parties with free food. Free chocolates all over the trade show floor. And a constant invite to go out and have breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, late night snack etc with so many different people.

It’s very easy to end up overeating at events like these.

No matter what starts the overeating train going it seems that a few days of overeating are enough to keep the overeating train chugging along.

In other words, it seems that overeating itself is enough to keep you overeating.

It might be a psychological thing, it probably has to do with eating too many high sugar, fat, and salt foods (like pizza). But overeating can become a habit if you don’t stop it before it gets rolling.

I’ll be taking it light today to put the breaks on this patter because the past couple days were a bit too much. But if I don’t consciously do this today it could easily turn into a week of overdoing it.

This is the sort of thing that can easily get away on you if you’re not paying attention to it.

If you know you’ve overdoing it a bit with your eating, stop and take a moment to re-evaluate what your goals are and decide if you need to purposely take a day to go light and put the breaks on the overeating train.

John

Your Best Size and Shape has a Specific Weight

When someone says they want to lose weight what they’re really saying is that they want to change the look and shape of their body.

Weight loss itself isn’t much of a goal without a specific look that you think it’s going to produce.

In reality everyone that wants to lose weight is really after a specific look.

This simple thought experiment will prove my point.

Imagine an alternate world where weight didn’t add up to size…

In this world imagine someone who is 100lbs overweight, pretty big gut, big butt and big legs, flabby arms and just big all over.

Now imagine they lost 100lbs but their body stayed the same size but simply weighed less. In this imaginary world somehow dieting made you lighter without making you smaller. So your body could weigh 100lbs less but stay the same shape and size?

In this world do you think anyone would be concerned with weight loss? Ever? Not likely.

What they would really want is a way to change the size and shape of their body.

This thought experiment is to show you that ‘weight loss’ isn’t the goal, but rather changing the shape and size of the body is.

It just so happens that in the real world weight and size and shape are all connected, and we all have a specific weight range where we will look our best.

John

The only way to gain weight is to EAT BIG!

If you go to the diet book section of your local book store you’ll find dozens of books with their specific theory on how to lose weight. You’ll find explanation about blood type, parasites, ‘toxins’ (this one drives me nuts…well they all do, but especially this one), glycemic index, hormones, broken metabolism, and all kinds of genetic issues and bad food choices.

So here is an experiment you can do to prove to yourself that weight gain and weight loss is simply calories in vs calories out, and all of this other stuff is meaningless.

If I want you to gain 5 pounds over the next 10 days how would you do it?

Would you?

1) Carefully read through the blood type diet book and eat any of the three blood type diets that weren’t outlined for your type?

2) Read through the book about toxins and parasites and try to get as many parasite infections as possible and fill your body with ‘toxins’ (which by they way they never explain what the eff a toxin is)

3) Try to eat in a specific pattern that wasn’t ‘favorable’ for your fat burning hormones?

4) Try to actually ‘damage’ your metabolism so you were stuck in a mode of storing fat (I can’t even imagine what this would be or how it would be possible)

ORRRRR

5) Would you just eat as much food as possible every day until you gained the requisite 5lbs?

If you answered anything besides 5 please leave this blog and never return, because it’s clear you’ve lost your mind and long since lost your grip on reality.

John

Do Whatever it takes to remember what you've eaten.

So I’m in the middle of a short weight loss run (looking to lose about 10lbs) by mid sept…I’ll put pictures up when I’m at my goal size/weight.

I’m shooting for around 1200-1500 calories per day. As I eat throughout the day I keep a running total in my head (rough numbers) of how many calories I’ve consumed and when the number gets into the 1200-1500 range I just stop eating.

This is a pretty simple system and it’s working well (I actually have no idea how you could possibly lose weight any other way without knowing how much you’re eating, but I digress)

The crazy thing is how easy it is to forget an entire meal you’ve eaten. The other day I was thinking of having a snack or something to eat before going to the gym and as I was thinking of all the things I ate that I day I concluded that I was only at 1000 calories so far…so I thought to myself I’m good to go for a pre gym snack.

Then on my way to get my snack I remembered an entire meal that I had forgotten to count into my total daily calories! And I had only eaten that meal a few hours ago.

I was shocked how easy it was for me to forget what I had eaten so easily and so soon after eating it.

Well thanks to my memory kicking in (albeit a bit late) I realized it wasn’t the best idea to have the preworkout snack.

So I just headed to the gym without and that kept me right on track for my weight loss calorie total for the day.

The point is that calorie counting does work IF you can remember all the food you’ve eaten! That is the biggest trick of all.

If you don’t believe me try it right now. Try to think of all the food you’ve eaten in the past 24-48 hours, it’s not that easy, and I’ll bet you that you can’t think of it all right now and at some point later today another thing you’ve eaten will pop into your head.

Doing this exercise will show you just how much and how often you eat and how easy it is to forget.

John

Tasty Stuff!

I’m sitting at a local “Panera Bread” location waiting to meet up with a colleague and the picture on the left is what is staring at me! A counter of croissants, breads, bagels, danishes, pastries, tarts, muffins, cakes, squares, pies and other tasty things that I don’t even know how to describe (and that’s just the bakery side, there is also a deli/sandwich shop side).

I knew I’d be having this meeting here and I was fully prepared for the temptations of Panera Bread today, and I’ve adjusted my eating schedule accordingly. Basically I’ll consume most (if not all) of my calories here today before/during/after this meeting. And it won’t be hard, a soup/sandwich combo here with a coffee and one of the pastries will easily put me between 1000-1500 calories for the day. I’ll be very content and still on track for losing weight.

This is an example of situational control for weight loss.

I know full well that I cannot be sitting in a Panera Bread and not eat at least 1000 calories. So I make sure that my day (as far as eating goes) is set up for me to eat most or all of my calories here (if I know I’ll be visiting)

This way I can crush all the awesome food Panera has to offer without feeling guilty and staying on track for staying lean or even losing weight.

Just a little bit of planning can go a long way.

John

I don't care how many calories this burns, there's got to be an easier way.

This is a message I just got from a friend of mine which pretty much sums up the reason exercise can’t do much for weight loss unless you’re really watching your calories:

“30 minutes of very high intensity boxing– dripping sweat, almost puked: probaby burned 400 calories, tops

Some people in your life might try to sabotage your weight loss success.

If you’ve decided to lose weight and announced this decision to various friends and family you’ve likely been faced with mixed reactions.

This is because the idea of weight loss hits at a very deep emotional level for just about everyone. This is because it’s a conscious decision to change your body.

Which could also be taken as a open admission that you’re not currently happy/satisfied with your body…otherwise why the hell would you be trying to lose weight.

I think it’s perfectly fine and normal for people to want to strive to change the look/shape of their body. After all, it’s your body, so it’s your right to choose what you’d like to do with it.

When you tell someone you want to lose weight and you get a less than favorable reaction, it’s more than likely that they’ve got a body weight and self perception issue that is causing the negative reaction. It’s not that they’re really don’t want you to lose weight, it’s that if you’re successful it will somehow make them feel worse about themselves.

This is something you need to be aware of if/when you ever set out to lose weight and are looking for some social support.

Choose the people you tell wisely.

I like to call it ‘recruiting your weight loss team’. Some people will be very supportive, while others will be a drag on your progress and make you feel lousy about trying.  If this ever happens just realize that their negativity is not about you, it’s about them.

If you are in the middle of a weight loss program,  I suggest taking an inventory of everyone who is positive and supportive and those that are a drag and negative about it. From there you can either cut back the amount of time you spend with the negative people, cut them out completely, or if they’re really important people ask them to support you no matter how it makes them feel cuz it’s important to you.

Weight loss is tough enough, having anyone around you that is trying to sabotage it will make it almost impossible. It’s your job to be aware of who the likely saboteurs might be and insulate yourself from them.

John

Do you feel like someone is purposely putting barriers between you and weight loss success?!

Losing weight isn’t exactly a walk in the park, if it were that simple nobody would have a weight problem and we wouldn’t be talking about it right now (and I wouldn’t be writing an entire program on how to do it)

Through my experiences working with bodybuilders, fitness competitors, varsity athletes and regular personal training clients I’ve developed what I think is the simplest system for losing weight.

Most of us fall into rather predictable categories when it comes to our barriers and hurdles to overcome to achieve weight loss success.

But I don’t want to assume that I’ve seen and heard them all…so I’m asking you to let me know what your personal hurdles and barriers are for weight loss.

This could be anything from negative self talk (the battle that seems to be going on in your mind)

Hot button foods you can’t control yourself around.

People in your life who are negative influences that seem to pull you down instead of supporting you.

Situations and events you find yourself at that seem to promote overeating instead of sensible eating (this could be holidays, at work, with friends, with your kids, socially…wherever)

And anything else that I haven’t brought up here.

In general I think we all have something in each of the categories I’ve listed above but I’m sure there are other things I’ve left out here that you’re dealing with.

Whatever it is I’d really like to know about it, so if you don’t mind sharing can you put your personal hurdles and barriers to weight loss in the comments section so we can all feel a bit more normal with the challenge of weight loss (because we’re all likely feeling the same as each other and just haven’t really told anyone yet)

I’ll start.

I got caught up thinking I needed to be big (bulky muscular big). I actually got scared of losing muscle mass if I tried to lose weight (fat) so I got caught in a perpetual ‘bulking’ phase. I spent years just being fat/overweight simply due to my fear or being too skinny if I lost to much weight.

I also have hot button foods like chicken wings that I can’t stop eating if I’m in front of them (so I have to make sure I’ve budgeted them into my weekly calorie count if I go out to eat them…cuz man I’ll put back 30 of them no problem)

I also have buddies who are big eaters and when I’m around them it’s really hard not to overeat, so I have to pick and choose when I go out with them so that I can still eat and enjoy their company without it getting awkward while I eat a salad and they’re chowing pizza wings and burgers.

So those are my weight loss issues and I’ve managed to overcome them all but I had to become aware of them before I knew how to get over them.

What are yours?

John