Diet and Fitness Belief is Powerful
I’ve recently been doing research on what the placebo effect is and how strange this phenomenon can be.
It doesn't matter what system you choose to follow, but you have to believe it can work
In many health related scientific research studies a real treatment (a drug, or physical therapy) is tested against a placebo.
A placebo is either an inert drug (no active ingredient such as sugar pills) or even a sham treatment that does nothing (placebo acupuncture where the needle never actually even penetrates the skin but the patient thinks it has)
Throughout the scientific literature you’ll find out that the placebo group shows measurable results. In most cases placebo only applies to things like pain that are subjective in nature, but hey, a reduction in pain is still a reduction (even if it’s a change in your perception of that pain)
And this brings up a much bigger issue, and that is the perception vs the reality. If I tell you that you’ve received a pain killing drug (but it was a fake), and you feel less pain anyway…then the fake has to be considered a success.
This area of research is leading to a new understanding of how much your mind and body are linked and how important your belief in a treatment or a system is to the success you might hope to have with it.
And this also goes for diet and fitness programs. If you start to believe that one workout or one way of eating is superior to others you may very well start experiencing a better overall effect from doing that system. You might just stick to it longer or be more diligent following it, or even be happier and feel more confident about yourself while you’re following it. Whatever the exact mechanism the point is belief precedes action and results.
This is also why you need to pick one program to follow, one that you can believe in, and stick to it for a prescribed amount of time and see it through to it’s conclusion or to whatever time goal you’ve set (be it 12 weeks, or 6 months or whatever)
During your time on a given system you should also try to insulate yourself from reading diet or fitness theories from other sources as they could easily sway your belief and start making you second guess what you’re doing.
It’s this second guessing that could throw a monkey wrench into your current progress and sabotage any progress you were making.The more conflicting opinions you read the worse this will get to the point where you dont’ know what to believe…and this is the point when you will have become totally frozen, paralyzed by information overload and getting nowhere.
So if you have a diet or fitness goal you’d like to achieve (more muscle, losing some fat, or just getting into the best shape you can in the next 12 weeks) this is what I want you to do:
Pick one system to follow (obviously I am biased towards Adonis Index for men and Venus Index for women, but any system is worth a try).
Follow that system faithfully and to the letter for the prescribed amount of time.
During the time you are following that system don’t read or consume information about any other system or conflicting points of view until you’ve made it to the end.
This is the only way to give that system a fair shake and truly find out if it will work for you.
John
12 Responses to “Diet and Fitness Belief is Powerful”
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April 11th, 2011 at 11:01 am
John–along these lines, I have a theory that if more women trained “like men” and more men dieted “like women” we’d see a lot more people in better shape. What do you think?
It seems (unconsciously) most men want to be bigger at all costs and women want to be smaller at all costs–with no regard for shape.
April 11th, 2011 at 11:12 am
Jason I 100% agree. The fear and insecurity that each gender harbors is the exact opposite and thus the obsession can be fixed by adopting the other sides ideals of how to go about getting in shape.
April 11th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Information overload is a real problem. It’s so easy to get side-tracked by so many conflicting theories, and of course the rampant hysteria and scaremongering. I read a lot fewer diet/fitness blogs than I used to, and I’m so much the better for it.
Then again, I admit that I’ve probably replaced other people’s fixations with my own! lol. Almost nine months into my plateau, I tend to sit around and brainstorm and jot down notes, trying to figure out which strategies I’d like to pursue, rather than just picking one and sticking to it for a while. Our minds can play tricks on us like that. It’s like the human mind prefers the status quo, even if the status quo sucks! At the end of the day, we just need to buckle down and eat less and train. Simple, but not always easy.
April 11th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
I agree John, when I’m dieting I tend to research health/fitness info online even more so than when I’m not on a diet. I don’t know why, it just happens. Anyway great article
April 12th, 2011 at 8:13 am
Dead on.
I can’t count how many times I’ve talked to people who say that they tried a certain training formula or diet and that it didn’t work. But then when I dig a little deeper, they started with the protocol in the training/diet, but then tweeked it. and tweeked it some more. and more. Until it looked almost nothing like the original. But, if they would have stuck to the original for say 90 days, then evaluated what kind of results they got, then it would have been a fair “up or down” conclusion. We just need to treat ourselves more like guinea pigs.
April 12th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Most of the time the diet system they’re trying is too restrictive and has too many rules so they give up too fast. In reality many of the craziest diets will still work for weight loss…the only issue I have is that most of the restrictions and rules are unnecessary and those people could have achieved similar results following a simpler and lower stress path. That is what I talk about on a daily basis.
Dieting sucks as it is, there is no reason to make it even harder.
April 12th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Another common misinterpretation is that the energy balance equation doesn’t matter because of many confounding variables (TEF, NEAT, water balance, inaccurate calorie counts, etc.) but this is ignorance of a fundamental law of physics.
Therefore, “I believe in the energy balance equation”
(and truthfully, you don’t have to believe in science for it to be true).
April 12th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I know exactly what you are talking about John, i sit around analysisng and deciding which exercises and diet process works best instead of just diving in and doing it, and now just as i have starting a good strenght training routine, got all my weights and my personal gym ready, all my usual mentors Craig, Brad etc are now espousing bodyweight training and making me feel like jumping ship yet again!!!!
April 12th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Don’t jump ship. Bodyweight training is a good departure when you need a break, but it’s not the mainstay, lifting heavy weights is how you build an impressive physique…bodyweight training is how you take a break from weights to let everything heal without losing everything you’ve built. Then get back into the heavier weights.
So it’s not an ‘either or’ situation, but rather a way to ease off on the heavy weights every now and then to allow for more recovery.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
That is pretty much what I did. I followed AI workouts and subscribe only to few blogs that have similar approach as the AI.
I’ve noticed that this approach will help you achieve your goal quicker.
I would use Apple as an example or analogy. When you decide to buy a phone from them, you have only one option – to buy an iPhone, there are not any other phones, so you know you will not second guess once you buy this one from them, because there is simple no other one.
(hope this make sense)
April 14th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
This is very timely for me, as I’m having a current crisis of conviction with my program. I have CDO (it’s OCD, but the letters are in order, like they should be), so my diet has been nearly the exact same for over a year, as I have maintained meticulous records, and I have maintained a constant weight. However, over the last month, my weight’s been creeping up, 5 lbs over 4 weeks, very evenly. Literally, the only thing that has changed in the last several months is that I reintroduced deadlifts to my program a month ago, after an absence of 47 weeks, and I underwent a very, very lo-cal week (c.3,000 total calories, no typo) a month ago, as well.
So, since I know very closely what my calorie count is (or, as exact as one can be) should I just scrap everything that has been working for me to perfection and find something else? Or give it more time for a larger sample size? I don’t hydrate well, but this total layout has always worked for me, and I believed in it. Except for recently, and now I don’t.
At least I am able to sit back from a distance and appreciate the psychology of it all. I’m normally an Occam’s razor, no-nonsense kind of guy, but you really got me thinking, here. Especially as an OCD guy, when you have such a large change over a short period of time, and there has only been one variable, that is literally your worst nightmare, lol.
April 15th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
John–I just realized something (probably old news to you). Your “lean” weight is technically determined by how LEAN you are. Because if you lose weight, you lose water (aka lean mass) so your LBM technically decreases.
I’m wondering what bf% the “maximum LBM for height” table applies to.
In the end, it’s (just like you say) about how you look.