If you are overweight, then the likelihood is that you have eaten too much and exercised too little, but have you ever stopped to ask yourself the reasons why you are overeating and under-exercising? I have- time and time again. I ask myself why this is when my clients don’t lose fat, and I bang my head against a brick wall when they tell me the things they believe will make them lose fat.
Insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”- Albert Einstein
Losing weight- or more accurately, fat- is about balancing your lifestyle. Before we go about balancing your lifestyle, we need to learn and understand the basics of fat loss.
The following extract from my new book, “The Bottom Line Of Fat Loss”, helps you understand what I term the “ABC’s of Fat Loss”. My book is available now on Amazon both as an e-book and in a printed edition.
The ABC’s of Fat Loss
There are three ABC’s of fat loss that we will simplify and summarise for you. We will expand on these key ideas as we progress through the book.
Awareness: Be aware of your fat habits so that they become a conscious choice. Remember you wear and carry the consequences of poor choices.
Boost your Metabolism: Breathing, eating, digesting, eliminating ,and sleeping have a daily metabolic cost. Movement, and in particular resistance training, boosts your metabolism to a degree that it burns excess body fat.
Consistency: Whatever you do, do it regularly.
In this extract, we look at Awareness and Andrew’s Case Study.
A: Awareness – Be aware of your fat habits
“Be the change” is Gandhi’s often-quoted inspirational saying. When I see this, I think to myself, “Yes, but do people know what they have to change and how to action those changes?”
The first step to overcoming any addiction is to come out of denial by becoming aware of it and all the factors that contribute to it.
In some social occasions involving food, I watch those people who are overweight, and especially those that complain of being overweight, to see what and how much they eat and drink. If they are clients, then in the next session I will point out some of their fat habits–most often they are oblivious and surprised to the little things they did not realise and how they contribute to their waistline and ill health.
Awareness can be broken down into three steps:
1. Pre-Contemplation: The thought process you went through to decide to pick up this book.
2. Contemplation: Reading each page, reflecting on the concepts, activities and strategies and thinking “what if?” You may seek out additional resources and information until you become convinced. Procrastinators over-contemplate.
3. Preparation: There are many activities in this book that prepare you to change your lifestyle, your mindset, your nutrition, and your exercise. The more prepared you are to change, the easier it will be to act and have sustainable change. Make a plan.
Each step provides a foundation for the next. Success depends on completing all steps in order: skipping over any step reduces the impact of your efforts.
Your fat habits will most likely be around your:
• Lifestyle: stress, mindset, and the response your hormones manifest in your body.
• Food: you are what you eat and drink.
• Exercise: what, how much, and at what intensity.
Action! After creating your plan (what this book will help you the most to do), you must put your plan into action. My advice here is to avoid extremes of obsessive action and no action by being flexible and adapting to changing circumstances and aiming to act on your plan about 80% of the time. Consistently.
Reward the journey just as much as the destination! Just as people say “It’s the journey, not the destination,” the reward is the increase in health, fitness, and performance you experience along the way as opposed to an external incentive like a diamond ring. Enjoy the moment you pull your belt buckle in one hole or go down a dress size and reflect on the effort it took to achieve that.
Andrew’s Story
Andrew lives and works in Hong Kong. He enjoys custom-made business suits by an Italian tailor who visits customers around the world. Andrew was taken aback when his tailor told him on one visit that he had gained so much weight that all his suits needed to be re-tailored. This was a “wake-up call” for Andrew, who came back to train with me having reflected on his fat (bad) habits: excessive wining and dining, jet lag and lack of sleep, inconsistent training, and general complacency about his health. Andrew refocused on his training, food intake, and lifestyle with renewed vigor so that he would not have to re-cut all his suits!
Tip: The most practical measurement of fat loss is tracking your clothing size or your belt buckle hole.
