Towards A Looser Approach
If you’re like the majority, you’re great at losing weight. You’ve done it so many times in the past. Sure, you might have weight to lose right now… but that doesn’t imply that you’re not good at losing it. It simply means you’re terrible at keeping it off. And you’re not alone.
Call it the yo-yo effect or whatever… but it’s definitely a serious issue.
People reach an intolerable point of fatness where enough is enough. In an instant, motivation revs up and action ensues – lots of it. While the iron’s hot, they strike with a vengeance by slashing calories and crushing their bodies with exercise. In their eyes, the more strict, difficult, and rigid the plan of attack, the faster the results will be. They view their bodies as the enemy and they run it through a gamut of abuse.
And weight is lost. At first.
Unfortunately there are some problems. For one, motivation is a short-term phenomenon. It’s not something that can be relied upon in the long run. The utility and novelty of conquering your weight problem wears off relatively quickly. Excitement dies with enough exposure to even the most awesome of things.
At around that same time, your body begins realizing that something’s up. It gets grouchy when you go from overeating to undereating when referring to calorie intake or when you go from riding the couch to warp speed on the treadmill overnight. And to show how much it hates it… it slows down your progress.
When you’re slapped with these realities, one of two things happens. You either slash calories even lower and jack up exercise even more. Or you give up. If you don’t give up this time, you will eventually. In the game of deprivation and torture, your body is going to win in the long run.
I’m sure some of you think that I’m exaggerating but you don’t see what I see on a daily basis. Women who are cutting calories by as much as 60%, lifting weights 3 times per week, and performing high intensity sprints or circuits 5 days per week are a dime a dozen where I come from. Hell, some of these women might even throw a few lower intensity conditioning sessions into the mix as well. Their exercise load is that of an advanced athlete yet their calorie intake is that of a sedentary, 100 lb female. Not only are they depriving their bodies, but their neurotic tendencies are bordering on addiction.
Sure, a calorie deficit is necessary in order to tap into fat. But it seems that energy availability is a foreign concept to most people. They disregard the fact that after ‘calories in’ and ‘calories out’ are accounted for, there has to be something left to support health, muscle, energy, basal functions, and metabolism. The deeper you cut calories, the bigger the hit to recovery ability. Logic would tell us that if recovery ability is drastically reduced, it’d be wise to govern how much recovery is needed. But that’s not what’s happening when I see these people slaving away at soul crushing workloads and intensities day in and day out while being energy deprived.
With dwindling motivation and a body that’s reluctant to give you what you want, it’s only a matter of weeks, if not days, until you’re back to your old, fattening ways.
Not this time?
Are you sure about that?
Add up every pound that you’ve lost in your adult life. I don’t care if it was the same 10 lbs over and over again. Add them up. Now subtract your highest adult weight from your lowest adult weight. If the first number is substantially greater than the second number… you’re likely a yo-yo dieter. No matter how much you think things will be different this time, they’re likely not going to be. At least not without a serious shift in your perspectives and beliefs about dieting.
We’ve all heard it before – diets are a temporary way of eating that leads to temporary results. This led to everyone labeling it a lifestyle. Now that everyone’s practicing new ‘lifestyle habits’, the overweight and obesity trends have really declined. Or not!
You can call it whatever you want but if the outcome doesn’t change, it really doesn’t matter… does it?
Yes, they’re right… in order to effect lasting change, certain behaviors and habits need to be adopted – permanently. But that’s not what’s happening. In the heat of excitement surrounding the prospects of a sexier body, people are losing rational judgement and objectivity. They’re falling victim to extreme dieting strategies and inflexible thinking.
The conception most people have about what must be done in order to reach their goals is absurd. A peek inside the mind of your average dieter is frighteningly confusing and frustrating.
All of this rigidity and confusion is of no surprise. While people understand the concept and importance of lifestyle modification… they do not know how to implement it. And marketers slice right through this confusion and desperation by telling you something that you’re dying to hear – a fancy sounding answer.
