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Responsibility vs Blame: Do you know the difference?

February 9, 2012 by

You and I can choose to change our bodies, or we can choose to stay as we are. Regardless of your circumstances it’s still a choice. And you will always be responsible for that choice and your body.

Not the path to successful change...but great poster...love despair incs posters.

There are very few people who simply have no choice when it comes to making a real change in their bodies. For the vast majority of us and that likely includes you, there is simply the choice to make a change and then following through with that choice. There is noobody to ‘blame’ and nobody who will take responsibility for your body besides you.

There will be real effort involved, there will be considerations and attention to detail that will be required on the diet and there will be time and dedication required in the gym. Make no mistake about it, you can change as much as you want once you commit to it.

There is however another type of change that you may not realize has to happen in order for you to get where you want to go. And that is a mental change.

Many of us has self defeating mental mindsets and programs that we are almost completely unaware of.  We can easily fall into a self destructive pattern for one of many reasons. We may me too critical of ourselves, or want perfection when it simply does not exist. Holding yourself to an unrealistic and unattainable standard is a sure fire way to sabootage your success just when you start to make real progress.

In order to make a lasting change in your body you need to also make the associated mentall changes that will make the process possible without defeating yourself. The reason most people eventually give up on a diet or gain the weight back that they have lost is not because they weren’t tough enough, it’s because they never worked on the mental side of the change along with the physical side.

You must make the process a mind AND body transformation.

The process won’t be perfect, there will be ups, and there will be downs. You will doubt yourself along the way…you will stumble, you will fall, you will feel like giving up. This is normal, we all have moments like these. The key is to get back up after you stumble and after you fall forgive yourself for being human, accept that you’re not perfect (nor is anyone else), dust yourself off and get back to work.

 

In today’s podcast, I speak with Dr. Nicola Bird about the process of change and how we learn to blame external factors for stumbling and falling. We discuss how our inner mental voice can be very critical and what the real difference is between blame and responsibility. It’s a bit of a lesson in tough love but it’s the words that many of us need to hear to stay on track and finally make a body transformation that will stick for good.

John

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Filed Under: Podcasts, Uncensored Podcasts S01, weight loss Tagged With: ,

When Does Bodyweight Matter?

December 14, 2011 by

There are many different metrics you can use to measure a change in your body shape and composition. The short list includes, bodyweight, bodyfat %, and the circumference of your waist, hips, and shoulders. All of these measurements can be made at home relatively easily with a decent degree of accuracy.

At what point does the scale become useless?

All you need is a scale, a cheap set of bodyfat calipers, and a measuring tape and you can keep a pretty good eye on the shape and composition of your body.

These metrics can give you a snap shot of where you’re at during any given point in time, but how much information will they give you about how much you are changing over time?

The answer to this question is dependent upon where you currently are.

If you’re BMI (Body Mass Index) is in the overweight or obese category it’s likely that the only metric that is even worth measuring is bodyweight. Indeed if one is large enough calipers are problematic to use, and it may not even be obvious where to put the measuring tape to get a true ‘waist’ measurement etc.

The point is when an individual has between 50-100lbs to lose, bodyweight itself is likely your most useful measurement tool. The goal is simply weight loss, regardless of what the weight itself even is…it will likely be a mix of bodyfat, excess body water, and even some pathological forms of lean mass (remember not all lean mass is muscle mass).

Reducing total bodyweight is the key for people who are in upper range of the overweight BMI and all those in the obese range.

Once your bodyweight enters the ‘normal’ weight range of the BMI things like bodyfat % and the tape measure on the waist, hips and shoulders (as well as arms, legs, chest etc) start to tell more of the story.

Bodyweight becomes less useful as you approach the 10% bodyfat range, and becomes almost totally useless below this level. As a man enters the single digit bodyfat % range the only thing left to track changes is the mirror.

In today’s podcast we’ll discuss where the break points are for using body weight, body fat % and measurements as an accurate way to track progress. In the end the only measurement that will truly matter is the mirror.

John

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Filed Under: Podcasts, Uncensored Podcasts S01, weight loss Tagged With: , ,

How Much Protein for Weight Loss

December 7, 2011 by

Losing weight requires a caloric deficit. You can choose to create that deficit with a combination of caloric restriction below your daily energy requirement as well as raising your daily calorie burn with a combination of cardio and weight training.

Will this help you burn fat?

These are the basics and they don’t change, and it doesn’t really need to get any more complex than this.

However you will find many claims from the diet and fitness media that suggest it is much more complex than this, and one of the most persistent claims is about protein and it’s benefits for weight loss.

Eating a high protein diet is claimed to be a benefit for weight loss for any one of the following reasons (and probably a combination of them):

1. Increased thermic effect of protein foods

2. Higher degree of satiety per gram

3. A change in fat burning and fat storing hormones to favor fat burning

4. Nutrient repartitioning (ie: more of the calories from protein will go to muscle instead of fat)

These claims sound pretty good and some of them do have scientific evidence that suggest there might be some fire under the smoke.

For example, the thermic effect of protein can be measured and has been shown to be higher than fat or carbs. This means that if you eat the same number of calories from protein instead of carbs, it will cause your body to burn a few more calories digesting and assimilating it. This effect is small, and might only make a noticeable difference for bodybuilders and fitness competitors who are dieting down to single digit bodyfat levels.

Another claim we often see relating to protein is the effect on satiety. Many studies and anecdotal reports suggest that protein itself will satisfy hunger better than the same amount of carbohydrate. This could help you stick to a diet and keep you from overeating at other points throughout the day.

It’s also known that dietary protein will increase amino acid pools, increase nitrogen balance, and contribute to intramuscular amino acids. This is all part of the ‘nutrient partitioning’ story. Essentially the protein you eat is much more likely to end up contributing to amino acids in muscle and repairing tissues all around your body before it will ever contribute to fat.

It would appear that there are many benefits of increasing your protein content when trying to diet down and keep your lean muscle mass up.

In the “How Much Protein for Weight Loss” UNCENSORED audio program released today, we’ll review some recent research that looked at the effect of high or low protein on weight loss. We’ll discuss the merits and limitations of this research shed whatever light we can on the results and what they mean to you in your efforts to build muscle and burn fat at the same time.

John

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Filed Under: Fat Loss, Podcasts, Uncensored Podcasts S01, weight loss Tagged With: ,

Long Term Adaptations To Weight Loss – Oct 2011 New Research

November 23, 2011 by

Well all know someone who has lost weight and put it back on…and then some. We hear phrases that 99% of people fail on a diet and put the weight back on. This however isn’t a scientific claim as much as it is an assumption.

Weight loss isn’t a straight line but rather a series of peaks and valleys. People can ‘go on a diet’ to get rid of a chunk of weight and then try to maintain that new lower weight.

When you look at it from this standpoint there are 3 ways to eat.

Are we all doomed to always put weight back on after dieting?

1) The way you can eat that causes you to gain weight

2) The way you can eat that causes you to lose weight

3) The way you can eat that keeps your weight stable

These must be viewed as 3 distinctly separate phases and treated differently. Most weight loss programs and studies focus on getting people out of the first phase and into the second phase, which is pretty easy. The only real action needed to cause weight loss is a reduction in calories eaten until body weight starts to fall.

The real trick is figuring out how phase 3 works and keeping the weight off. And this is where many diet interventions fail. Most people can fight their way through a 10-12 week hard diet, but it’s the months and years following the hard diet that are trickier to navigate.

Once the hard diet part is over, you’re not relying on a strict deadline or an ‘iron will’ to get through the next month, but instead you’re looking at a whole new way of eating from here on out. What happens after the hard diet is rarely studied, but a recent research paper did just that.

In a study published Oct 2011, researchers put people on a hard low calorie diet for 10 weeks then followed up with their subjects a full year later to see how much weight they kept off and test multiple hormones and other markers of health.

This same paper has been reviewed by various fitness commentators who seem to have selectively chosen to spin the information from this study in a negative light vs a positive light. This one sided approach to reporting the science seems to be rooted in an academic and political will to try and prove that obesity is a disease and out of our control to deal with.

In today’s podcast, we review this research paper and show you what the results really say and how the fitness media and even the researchers themselves distort their reporting in order to put a doomsday spin on the findings.

This is an important lesson in diet and fitness science reporting and how information can be twisted and used to tell a very different story from what the facts say.

John

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Filed Under: Podcasts, Uncensored Podcasts S01, weight loss Tagged With: ,

Overcoming Emotional Eating: Reprogramming Your Mind to Control Your Weight

October 10, 2011 by

Changing the look and shape of your body requires a holistic approach. This means the change has to come both with your physiology and psychology especially if you struggle with emotional or stressful eating.

Physiology simply means getting your calories under control, making more sensible food and eating decisions as well as sticking to a regular exercise program that is well designed to move you towards your health and fitness goals whatever they may be.

Dr Nicola Bird Founder of Self Imaging Therapy

You can even think of the physiology part as the things that are obviously outwardly such as going to the gym, choosing smaller portion sizes, and ensuring that your diet is based more on whole foods that satisfy your needs without over consuming calories from dense sources.

The physiology is what you read about in fitness magazines, and it’s the information that gets cluttered, contradicted, and over consumed. This is because the physiology for many people isn’t the problem. For some people it’s the psychology.

Getting a handle on the psychological aspects of weight control is an entirely different matter and it’s not so obvious what is happening in your mind and with your emotions. Taking control of your psychology and learning to reprogram yourself for weight loss success requires just as much work as the physiology, but this is a different kind of work.

If you think you have an emotional or psychological issue with eating and weight control the first step is getting to the root of the issue. This is hard and in many cases uncomfortable work, and the answer isn’t always obvious. In many cases you’ll be the last person to know what the real issue is until you start doing the work to find out.

Click this image to check out Nicolas book on Amazon

These are usually deep rooted issues that touch on your sense of identity and self worth. It will involve undoing old psychological patterns and laying down new ones, and it requires repetition to make it stick, just like working out.

To truly change your body for good, you must change both your physiology AND your psychology. Changing one without the other isn’t enough.

In today’s podcast, I interview Dr. Nicola Bird about changing your psychology to help overcoming emotional and stress related eating to make a real lasting change in your body. She is my psychotherapist and the ace up my sleeve that helps me stay balanced and keeps me moving forward.

We’ll discuss the root of the identity crisis that many people face when they do finally make a change in their body. We will also talk about why so many people self sabotage and become their own worst enemy when they try to change their bodies.

This is a great interview and I suggest you take notes if emotional or stress eating is an issue you’ve been struggling with.

Finally if you like what you hear from Nicola you can visit her website here and even book a session to start working through your own issues with her over the phone. I highly recommend it if you feel stuck or hitting a sabotage point that you cannot overcome. I find that her methods are the most effective way to start getting your psychology inline with your physiology for a lasting change.

John

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