Ep. 6 – The Holy Grail Of Fat Loss: How Your Brain, Body, and Environment Make Or Break You
Tim?
The Holy Grail of Fat Loss is to be able to be as in control as you can be of the 3 most important factors affecting your progress: Your body, your mind, and your environment. Easier said than done …
- Should you meditate before you eat beef?
- Peter misses sunny Phoenix now that he’s back here in the Portland rain forest
- How “trying harder” doesn’t always work … despite what Nick’s T-Shirt says
- The moon is not only made of cheese but also of John Cleese.
- The major environmental factors you must deal with to lose weight
- How big is your motivation jar?
- Can you make your jar bigger?
- At 9pm, Nick can’t say no …
- Why Failure is the Foundation of Success
- Care Less, Win More
- Why you MUST do your best to get your family (or roomates) on board with you
- How you can control your environment more than you think you can
- Peter can’t have a house full of pancakes …
- Why young/new personal trainers over-coach and see less success because of it
HOHAW (High Octane Homework Assignment of the Week): What are your biggest triggers that cause you to slip up on your diet during the week? Just write them down.
AND … assess the size of your jar (we explain what that means in the episode!)
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Triggers: the smell, sight, sound and thought of food.
Seriously, the fasting helps me control many triggers. After four weeks doing High Octane Body, I’m finding that I can almost “forget” about eating, at least for the first half of every day. Usually when dieting I obsess over food, to the point of dreaming about it. I find the fasting removes that obsessive thinking, which is in itself a trigger. I’m starting to think of the fasting as a respite from “dieting”–a result I never expected!
@MicheleThornton Michele, that’s fantastic! I’m glad to hear you’re responding so well. And what a great observation. If anything can help clear our heads from the endless cycle of dieting, it’s taking a break from dieting. Thanks for sharing!
Wow, thanks for the name drop!
Such great points here! I love the analogy to alcoholism – I use this all the time when I try my best to explain why even after losing weight, this is something I will wrestle with my entire life. You’d be amazed at the amount of people who think that now that I have lost the weight, that the battle has been won and I no longer what to watch what I eat. No matter how much I encounter it, it still blows my mind.
I am a HUGE cheerleader for living in the moment you are in. As a runner/triathlete, I always try and live by the motto: “Run the mile you are in” because when you’re about to embark on several hours of endurance, trying to think wayyyyyy head of yourself will overwhelm and smother you. Think about it; at mile 1 of a 56 mile bike ride if you start thinking about how much longer you have to go and how much work is involved, it’s going to feel out of reach and that’s going to make you feel hopeless. Approaching any goal like that will likely result in failure. To this some point, I wake up every day and live….that day. That’s it. If I have a bad day….. I wake up, start over and skip the guilt trip over what I did the day before. This isn’t to say I don’t recognize it (because denial is a big reason why and how I found myself overweight); rather I acknowledge it happened and consider it a lesson learned but I don’t beat myself up over it. This is a very simple but when I first learned it, it felt HUGE and I had to teach myself to embrace. In the past, I would feel very disappointed in myself when I would slip up and the poor esteem would make it easier for me to slide back into my old habits. Living moment to moment has helped enforce the fact that I am human and every once in a while I’m going to fall. The difference is that now I just keeping getting up every time it happens. I think if more people did the same, there would be a world of accomplishments, especially ones they considered out of their grasp, in their future!
As you both discussed, I intentionally DO NOT keep junk food in my house. This is not truly by choice, but a calculated aversion on my part to prevent me from eating crap. Coffee cake, cheesecake…these things are NOT safe in my path. Simply put: If it’s there, I’ll eat it. If it’s not there and there are instead GOOD whole foods there, I will eat the good whole foods because I am hungry and that is all that is available. I know myself well and got to where I now am by learning to NOT set myself up for failure. This is also why I pre-make many of my meals and bring them to work. Like anything in life (including exercise!) it’s all about scheduling/time management/pre-planning. I often hear people at work talk about how they didn’t or forgot to pack lunch so they had to run out and get what was available (aka fast food.) They will try and imply that this is the world working against them and that their hands are tied, when in fact this is actually them working against themselves. As you said, you just have to try harder which is, duh, hard at first and it will take time to get over that. But once you get into the habit of making time to pre-make healthy meals and setting aside time to exercise, it becomes a staple in your life. So much so, you don’t even think about it – you just, do it!
(FYI – I also pick a day where I don’t pay attention to what I eat. This isn’t to say I stuff my pie hole all day, but I kind of play the day by ear (or rather, mouth!) – if I’m out that day somewhere and there is cake and I want some – game on! I use this day as a ‘carrot (cake) on a stick’ kind of mentality to keep myself grounded so that if I have a craving during the week, I remind myself on Sunday I can treat myself to whatever the hell I want!)
Look forward to to next episode!
Also, just to reinforce where I was and where I am now……a before/after photo set! http://www.flickr.com/photos/letsgetdecadent/sets/72157604056149320/with/3936085291/
@krfaughnan Thanks for the comments again, Kristen, and for sharing your photos! Congratulations on such an awesome achievement! Very inspiring.
That being said, staying in the moment is a great tool to develop mental endurance and strength, which comes into play in so many different aspects of our lives, including eating!
All great points. I like the alcohol analogy, too. Being mindful in the moment is key, but I’ll be honest if I had to ride my bike for 56 miles I’d be thinking of all those miles at once and probably wouldn’t get very far. I guess that’s why I like to lift heavy things instead.
Great stuff.
@krfaughnan First off, Holy Heavens your transformation pictures are amazing!! Great job
Second, I like this line you said, “They will try and imply that this is the world working against them and that their hands are tied, when in fact this is actually them working against themselves.”
It is soooo easy to blame the world for every problem we face. And to be fair, sometimes the external environment IS out to get you, LOL. But, as you said, we have a much higher level of control over our own lives that many will admit.
Of course, if you admit that you have some control over your results … then you are more responsible for the outcome – eegads!
Great podcast, great insight. Reminds me of a quote: “The mistake we often make is to put far too many eggs in the willpower basket. We say to ourselves, “I’ll just do it!” as if we could bend our entire universe with the force of our will. It turns out there is an exponentially more successful approach to influencing change.” They go on to explain how surrounding yourself with the right people makes it so that you can change your habits pretty much on autopilot. http://www.trainingmag.com/article/science-career-success
@VictorMoreno Indeed, brother! As much as we’d love to, we can’t make the world do everything WE want it to.
I was finally able to listen to this episode this morning. Thank you for answering my question and explaining how you go about advising your clients regarding quantity and quality of food. Your approach mirrors what I do with people very closely. I try to explain to those I consult with that you can do a lot of things wrong (less than optimal) with your eating and training and still lose weight as long as you create a caloric deficit. However, you can eat the “cleanest” foods , have a “perfect” training program, and live a monk-like existence and still fail to lose weight if you do not enter into a deficit.
Not a problem, Andrew. Indeed, that whole duality is often very difficult for people to get through their head at first. That’s why we try to keep it simple and work with what they understand. Grasping the concept of a calorie deficit seems to be a good place to start for most people. Thanks for listening!
Sounds like your approach is very close to ours. Like you said, It’s important to preach quality, but without the deficit … what do you have?