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Goal Shorts

A while back, I posted on the 4 things essential to successful dieting. I thought I’d expand a little on goal setting.

Last time, I said that you shouldn’t be using scale weight as your goal. It’s a fickle number and it’s a poor indicator of progress. Your body is made of up of, well, lots of stuff, but broadly it’s made of muscle, organs & bone, fat and water. Organ weight is something you can’t really manipulate. You can change the amounts of the other three; but here’s the kicker, though: muscle, which you want to maximize, weighs more than fat. This means that someone at 10% body fat at 200lbs is going to look better than someone at the same weight with 20% body fat. Suppose the guy at 20% bodyfat lost 20 pounds but stayed at 20%, so that he lost about the same amount of muscle as fat: Would he look better and hence feel better?

The final factor is water. Water weight is ephemeral but it’s very real if you happen to have a lot of it at weigh-in time. Say your goal for the week was 1.5 pound loss. But you ate just the right (or wrong) mix of carbs and fat that causes water retention so you actually post a gain for the week! It can be incredibly deflating when you worked so hard all week just to post a gain because of a poorly timed meal.

There’s got to be something better to measure.

We just had a burst of abnormally warm (for the time of year) weather in Ottawa, that required whipping out the summer clothing. I’ve been losing weight since October, so I haven’t worn my summer shorts or shirts since at least then, maybe even earlier. Nothing fit! It was all too big. Some of it just hangs there precariously on my hips waiting for a jaunty trip down the stairs to fall off and trip me up. Others require just a small tug downwards to do the same. My shirts, likewise don’t show off my gut anymore, cause I have a much smaller gut 🙂

What an unexpected motivation!

One of the toughest things about physique transformation is you can’t get away from yourself. Because you’re always around yourself, you don’t really get to see the changes. So putting on a piece of clothing that you haven’t worn in a while can give you a real boost.

We were in Costco two weekends ago, probably buying big hunks of meat, when I came across a mountain of shorts at $16.99. Since none of my shorts fit quite right, I thought why not get a pair of shorts at a smaller size? If I didn’t fit into them right away, I’d work on getting into them. They’d be my goal shorts. So I bought them (the fiancee bought a pair of goal capri pants – which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it), took them home and tried them on.

They fit! Well, kinda: they fit at the waist a little snugly, so my muffin top got bigger, but I could sit in them comfortably. I try them on again this weekend. I shan’t disclose actual sizes for my fiancee, but she did better than I

Getting into some skinny pants or goal shorts is a great goal. It’s specific, measurable, and it’s clear if you succeeded.

Other good ways of measuring progress that don’t involve the scale are pictures and tape measurements. You may not see it in the mirror, or see it on the scale, but you will see it in the tape. Pictures are good to compare from time to time, especially in places that you don’t look at in the mirror, like in the neck and face. Make sure you take pictures with same clothes in the same spot in the same poses every time to compare properly.

If you are going to use scale weight as your main goal, I strongly suggest you use the other methods mentioned above in tandem. Here are some tips on making sure you’re using the scale effectively:

  • weigh yourself officially once a week; I say officially because I can’t help but weigh myself at other times, but I don’t change what I’m doing based on those unofficial measurements.
  • weigh yourself at the same time under the same circumstances. The time and circumstances I hear about the most, and the one I use is: in the morning, after peeing, totally naked.
  • Keep in mind what you did that week if the number isn’t what you were expecting. Last week I had a little too many carbs, which caused me to gain water weight. This masked any progress I made at the time that I weighed in. But the progress was there, so I didn’t fret or do anything drastic this week (just watched my carb intake a little better). I should post a good number this week.

Edit: The picture below isn’t me. It’s just an example of a good use of before/during photos. If you’re going to use photos as a measure of progress, take one of your front, side and back. Don’t flex, don’t suck in, don’t pose. The photo below is from the Physique Clinic at T-Nation. This guy lost 60 lbs in less than six months, most or all of it was fat, not muscle. You should check it out; it’s pretty inspiring.

Bartl's transformation on the T-Nation Physique Clinic: 60 lbs in under 6 months

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The 4 things you require for successful dieting

I recently wrote about my ongoing success with the Cheat-To-Lose Diet. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why this time is successful and the others weren’t. The diet is effective and pretty easy to follow, but I think I’m successful on it for other reasons; those reasons are why I don’t think I’ll be regressing to my former heavy self. So here they are, the four things you need to be successful at dieting, no matter the diet.

Motivation to change

This is the most important aspect of transforming your body. There are thousands and thousands of articles, books, videos, and products of all other sorts all focused on how to lose weight, how to diet, how to exercise available everywhere you turn. So why does everyone obsess over losing weight? Why hasn’t everyone just done it already?

You have to be ready to change the way you do things, maybe everything: eating, drinking, sleeping, cooking, exercising, working, even socializing. Without that willingness, all the good intentions and all the advice won’t work on you.It could be anything to give you that little spark of motivation, it doesn’t matter what it is; for me, it was pictures of myself. You can’t hide from the lens of a camera; it sees everything, including your fat face and two chins — well, my fat face and my two chins. 🙂

Once I decided enough was enough, it’s time for a change, then dieting didn’t look so daunting; I was willing to try something new. I knew that whatever I had to go through to lose the weight was worth doing. From what I’ve read of others’ transformations, they had that same motivation. Think of it this way: everything you’ve ever done has gotten you exactly where you are. Are you happy with that?

Self-awareness

This comes part and parcel with the first one. You need the motivation to start changing, and a little introspection to keep changing. Succeeding at diet is a challenge, and a transformative one: you won’t be the same person when you finish. The habits that got you where you are and the habits that will get you where you’re going have to be at the forefront of your mind. Modifying behaviour, if you’ve never done it before, requires a concerted effort.

How do you feel about food? What do you do when you’re hungry? Are you surprised by your hunger? My colleagues often go ’til 2pm before they realize they’re hungry, then eat less desirable food. Can you handle eating the same thing for long stretches or does every meal need to be an adventure? These are some of the questions that you have to know the answer to before any diet you go on will work.

Fostering self-awareness can be difficult when you have a lot going on. In the first few weeks, concentrating on the details of dieting will go a long way to success. If you’ve decided to do this with someone else, obsess over it in the first few weeks with each other. Talk to one another; try different strategies out, see how you feel after each one, and find the ones that’ll work for you. By yourself? Talk to yourself then. I’ll be talking about the habits that have helped me in future posts.

A specific, challenging goal

You want to lose weight? How much? Don’t know? Find out!If you’re interested in “losing weight”, or “toning up”, or “getting ripped”, you’re not going to get very far. How do you know when you made it? You need something specific to measure progress against. You also want a challenge; something that will take some effort to achieve. Don’t pick 5 pounds or 10 pounds, that’s too easy, and you can’t really see the difference. Go big: even if you don’t quite make it, you’ll still achieve a lot. Don’t sell yourself short.

It doesn’t have to be a number of pounds to lose (in fact, that’s not the best indicator, which is another blog post); it could be a body fat percentage, a waist measurement, or a pair of pants that you haven’t fit in for years, as long as you can measure your progress toward that goal and it’s challenging. Once you make it to the goal, make another goal! Why stop?

Confidence in the kitchen

This is the one that I was lacking the other few times I tried to lose weight. You often hear the complaint: “I really don’t like diet food. I’d totally diet if I didn’t have to eat boring chicken breasts.” You don’t. You just need to learn how to cook. Whether you feel the need to count calories or not; whether you’re on a low carb diet or low fat diet really doesn’t matter if you’re more comfortable heating a dinner from a box in the microwave than putting a pan on the stove and actually cooking. Do you think Stouffer’s really has your back with that low-fat Tuscan Pesto Chicken in Fettuccini Sauce? It’s loaded with sugar, corn and soy food products that you have no hope of ever pronouncing correctly. Think that’s good for you? It’s cheaper and healthier to cook your own, and it really doesn’t take that long after a couple weeks of practice.

Once you start mastering a few dishes, you’ll want to try more and more cooking methods, different ingredients; you’ll start planning your meals, food at chain restaurants won’t taste that good and neither will that microwave dinner. You’ll want to invite people over to share in the meals, and, let’s be honest, show off a little. And all the while, the fat is coming off your body because you are in charge of what goes in your body.

These four things aren’t the only things you’re going to need, but based on my experience, they’re the fundamental foundation for a successful physique transformation. If you work on these four things, you’re well on your way to the new you.

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Review: The Cheat to Lose Diet by Joel Marion

The Cheat to Lose Diet: Cheat BIG with the Foods You Love, Lose Fat Faster Than Ever Before, and Enjoy Keeping It Off!

If you’ve been struggling to lose fat for a year, say, and someone came up to you and said you could drink a 2L bottle of pop a week, ice cream, cookies, and pizza (my favourite; also note the “and”) and still lose up to 2.5 lbs a week*, would you believe them? I wouldn’t. How many offers do you see on TV and the internets that promise insane losses in insanely short time periods? C’mon! I know better, move on, we don’t want any.

But this is different.

So far, on this diet, I’ve lost 31 pounds in 19 weeks for an average of 1.6 lbs/week. I started on Thanksgiving (the Canadian one, naturally, so beginning of October). My performance in the gym hasn’t waned nor has my size in the right places, which leads me to believe that I haven’t lost much muscle. And, once a week, I can eat whatever I want for a whole day.

It’s a remarkable diet; it works by manipulating the hormone leptin, a hormone at its peak when the body has all the energy it needs, when calories are abundant. Leptin levels decline quickly in the absence of calories, as much as 50% in a week. Therefore, every week, during the core phase of the diet, you get a cheat day where there are few limits on what to eat, to keep leptin at its peak. I’m simplifying of course, the book has far more detail about the how and why, but it is a very simple diet and exercise routine that takes very little time to master if you’re prepared to diet.

Joel writes in a clear, conversational tone throughout the book, making it easy to grasp the ideas and zip through the book, so you can get started pretty quickly after the book arrives. The book is very well researched and has a detailed reference section highlighting all the studies that Joel Marion read if you want to follow up. One thing he does not do, thankfully, is force you to count calories. Instead, he encourages you go by sight which is refreshing, if you, like me, hate counting calories.

One more note about the exercise portion: I made the mistake of assuming I knew better than Joel when it came to exercise. I thought that whatever he recommended couldn’t possibly be better than the weight workouts I’d come up with or follow. When I wasn’t quite getting the 2lbs/week that the diet promises, I figured I’d just have to keep going with weight workouts but push just a little harder. In truth, I didn’t even read the exercise part! What a giant mistake! It wasn’t until my girlfriend pointed out that she does it every week did I listen; she was losing more bulk than I was. So I started on 1 Jan 08 with the exercise routine outlined in the book and I’ve lost 12 pounds since then for a much better average.

I’m someone who loves to eat with a sweet tooth. If this works for me, then it can work for anybody. If you’ve tried to lose weight, but failed, then I can’t recommend this diet highly enough. I saw results after the first week. Do yourself a favour and try this out.

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This Isn’t Working Out

When I first started lifting, I thought I stumbled on some magic that I had to tell everyone about. If you do this and this and this, you’ll have the a body of Adonis and you’ll feel great too. Well, it didn’t take long for me to realize that while people wanted the latter, they didn’t like being told to do a bunch of things. I realized that there is a difference between interest and accomplishment. (People also have a hard time not realizing they’re being a smug asshole giving unsolicitied advice. ;)) I was interested in accomplishment, so I just carried on with lifting and stopped telling others how to do it.

After a while, hard-to-answer questions were asked elsewhere. Then after a longer while, I turned into the geek trapped in a fat man’s body that you so enjoy reading about. When I decided that enough was enough and I had to get back in the gym, I thought that blogging about it — to re-teach myself the things that I had so enthusiastically wanted to pass on to others –would help me motivate myself. It turns out I have no problem motivating myself to train and re-learn everything I forgot; I do have a problem blogging about it, though.

So this post is the final, official post on getting back in shape again. I can’t justify giving my advice on training and eating, when there is much better stated advice elsewhere. And if you’re motivated to get in shape, you’ll go and learn it yourself. I started this blog to be part of the group of blogging developers, not bodybuilders. And to force myself to stay current with development. So expect more technical posts.

However, lifting is still something I’m interested in, so from time to time, I’ll post links to great stuff on fat loss, muscle gain and what not. Hey, it’s my blog.

For those interested in my progress, I’ve had a personal trainer assess me for squats and then he offered to make a routine for me: it’s hard as hell; I can’t remember a harder routine. And, people have started to notice a change. Two staff at the gym asked me if I lost weight and I can now wear jeans that are “easy” in the thigh, instead of “loose.” I’ve lost between 10 and 15 pounds, which is on target for my ultimate goal.

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Record Your Progress

I’ve written before about the importance of setting goals. In that post, I also wrote that you have to record your progress, so you’ll know whether you’re on track to achieving your goals. Recording what you’ve done is also a great way to plan for the near future. If your goal is months away, planning for the next month may be difficult if you’re not sure whether what you’ve been doing for the past month is effective.

One of the things you’ll hear about often is keeping a workout journal. It’s one of the most effective tools, especially when you’re starting out. I’ve been keeping one for as long as I can remember.

  • You can set your goals for each workout – Before every workout, I write down the exercises I’ll perform and the weights I’ll lift. The only thing I don’t write at the beginning is the number of reps — I’ll write that after I’ve finished the set.
  • You have an immediate record of what you did last week – This is related to the point above. I don’t write the number of reps until I do them, but I can refer to last week’s workout to find out what I did for that exercise, then set my target for that set. Suppose I’ll only increase the weight for the bench press after I’ve done 3 sets for 13 reps. If I look at last week and see I’ve done that, then I increase the weight. No need to remember some little detail about my workout last week.

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