Health & Fitness Is Not A 12 Week Program
Copyright 2005 Tom Venuto
Not long ago, one of the members of my health club
poked her head in my office for some advice. Linda
was a 46 year old mother of two, and she had been a
member for over a year. She had been working out
sporadically, with (not surprisingly) sporadic
results. On that particular day, she seemed to have
enthusiasm and a twinkle in her eye that I hadn’t
seen before.
"I want to enter a before and after fitness contest
called the “12 week body transformation challenge." I
could win money and prizes and even get my picture in
a magazine."
“I want to lose THIS”, she continued, as she grabbed
the body fat on her stomach. “Do you think it’s a
good idea?”
Linda was not “obese,” she just had the typical
“moderate roll” of abdominal fat and a little bit of
thigh/hip fat that many forty-something females
struggle with.
“I think it’s a great idea” I reassured her.
“Competitions are great for motivation. When you have
a deadline and you dangle a “carrot” like that prize
money in front of you, it can keep you focused and
more motivated than ever.”
Linda was eager and rarin’ to go. “Will you help me?
I have this enrollment kit and I need my body fat
measured.”
“No problem,” I said as I pulled out my Skyndex fat
caliper, which is used to measure body fat percentage
with a “pinch an inch” test.
When I finished, I read the results from the caliper
display: “Twenty-seven percent. Room for improvement,
but not bad; it’s about average for your age group.”
She wasn’t overjoyed at being ‘average’. “Yeah, but
it's not good either. Look at THIS,” she complained
as again she grabbed a handful of stomach fat. “I
want to get my body fat down to 19%, I heard that was
a good level.”
I agreed that 19% was a great goal, but it would take
a lot of work because average fat loss is usually
about a half a percent a week, or six percent in
twelve weeks. Her goal, to lose eight percent in
twelve weeks was ambitious.
She smiled and insisted, “I’m a hard worker. I can do
it”
Well, indeed she was and indeed she did. She was a
machine! Not only did she never miss a day in the
gym, she trained HARD. Whenever I left my office and
took a stroll through the gym, she was up there
pumping away with everything she had. She told me her
diet was the strictest it had ever been in her life
and she didn't cheat at all. I believed her. And it
started to show, quickly.
Each week she popped into my office to have her body
fat measured again, and each week it went down, down,
down. Consistently she lost three quarters of a
percent per week – well above the average rate of fat
loss – and on two separate occasions, I recall her
losing a full one percent body fat in just seven
days.
Someone conservative might have said she was
overtraining, but when we weighed her and calculated
her lean body mass, we saw that she hadn’t lost ANY
muscle – only fat. Her results were simply
exceptional!
She was ecstatic, and needless to say, her success
bred more success and she kept after it like a hungry
tiger for the full twelve weeks.
On week twelve, day seven, she showed up in my office
for her final weigh-in and body fat measurement. She
was wearing a pair of formerly tight blue jeans and
they were FALLING OFF HER! “Look, look, look,” she
repeated giddily as she tugged at her waistband,
which was now several inches too large.
As I took her body fat, I have to say, I was
impressed. She hadn’t just lost a little fat, she was
“RIPPED!”
During week twelve she dropped from 18% to 17% body
fat, for a grand total of 10% body fat lost. She
surpassed her goal of 19% by two percent. I was now
even more impressed, because I had only seen a
handful of people lose that much body fat in three
months.
You should have seen her! She started hopping up and
down for joy like she was on a pogo stick! She was
beaming… grinning from ear to ear! She practically
knocked me over as she jumped up and gave me a hug –
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Don’t thank me,” I said, “You did it, I just
measured your body fat.”
She thanked me again anyway and then said she had to
go have her “after” pictures taken. Then something
very, very strange happened. She stopped coming to
the gym. Her "disappearance" was so abrupt, I was
worried and I called her. She never picked up, so I
just left messages.
No return phone call.
It was about four months later when I finally saw
Linda again. The giddy smile was gone, replaced with
a sullen face, a droopy posture and a big sigh when I
said hello and asked where she’d been.
“I stopped working out after the contest... and I
didn’t even win.”
“You looked like a winner to me, no matter what place
you came in” I insisted, “but why did you stop, you
were doing so well!”
“I don’t know, I blew my diet and then just
completely lost my motivation. Now look at me, my
weight is right back where I started and I don’t even
want to know my body fat.”
“Well, I'm glad to see you back in here again. Write
down some new goals for yourself and remember to
think long term too. Fitness isn’t a just 12 week
program you know, it’s a lifestyle - you have to do
it every day - like... forever.”
She nodded her head and finished her workout, still
with that defeated look on her face. Unfortunately,
she never again come anywhere near the condition she
achieved for that competition, and for the rest of
the time she was a member at our club, she slipped
right back into the sporadic workout pattern.
Linda was not an isolated case. I’ve seen the same
thing happen with countless men and women of all ages
and fitness levels from beginners to competitive
bodybuilders. In fact, it happens to millions of
people who “go on” diets, lose a lot of weight, then
“go off” the diet and gain the weight right back.
What causes people to burn so brightly with
enthusiasm and motivation and then burn out just as
quickly? Why do so many people succeed brilliantly in
the short term but fail 95 out of 100 times in the
long term? Why do so many people reach their fitness
goals but struggle to maintain them?
The answer is simple: Health and fitness is for life,
not for "12 weeks."
You can avoid the on and off, yo-yo cycle of fitness
ups and downs. You can get in great shape and stay in
great shape. You can even get in shape and keep
getting in better and better shape year after year,
but it's going to take a very different philosophy
than most people subscribe to. The seven tips below
will guide you.
These guidelines are quite contrary to the quick fix
philosophies prevailing in the weight loss and
fitness world today. Applying them will take
patience, discipline and dedication. But remember,
the only thing worse than getting no results is
getting great results and losing them.
1) Don’t “go on” diets.
When you “go on” a diet, the underlying assumption is
that at some point you have to “go off” it. This
isn’t just semantics, it’s the primary reason most
diets fail. By definition, a “diet” is a temporary
and often drastic change in your eating behaviors
and/or a severe restriction of calories or food,
which is ultimately, not maintainable. If you reach
your goal, the diet is officially “over” and then you
"go off" (returning to the way you used to eat).
Health and fitness is not temporary; it’s not a
“diet.” It’s something you do every day of your life.
Unless you approach nutrition from a “habits” and
“lifestyle” perspective, you’re doomed from the
start.
2) Eat the same foods all year round.
Permanent fat loss is best achieved by eating mostly
the same types of foods all year round. Naturally,
you should include a wide variety of healthy foods so
you get the full spectrum of nutrients you need, but
there should be consistency, month in, month out.
When you want to lose fat, there’s no dramatic change
necessary - you don’t need to eat totally different
foods - it’s a simple matter of eating less of those
same healthy foods and exercising more.
3) Have a plan for easing into maintenance.
Let’s face it – sometimes a nutrition program needs
to be more strict than usual. For example, peaking
for a bodybuilding or fitness contest requires an
extremely strict regimen that’s different than the
rest of the year. As a rule, the stricter your
nutrition program, the more time you must allow for a
slow, disciplined transition into maintenance.
Failure to plan for a gradual transition will almost
always result in bingeing and a very rapid, hard fall
"off the wagon."
4) Focus on changing daily behaviors and habits one
or two at a time.
Rather than making huge, multiple changes all at
once, focus on changing one or two habits/behaviors
at a time. Most psychologists agree that it takes
about 21 days of consistent effort to replace an old
bad habit with a new positive one. As you master each
habit, and it becomes as ingrained into your daily
life as brushing your teeth, then you simply move on
to the next one. That would be at least 17 new habits
per year. Can you imagine the impact that would have
on your health and your life? This approach requires
a lot of patience, but the results are a lot more
permanent than if you try to change everything in one
fell swoop. This is also the least intimidating way
for a beginner to start making some health-improving
lifestyle changes.
5) Make goal setting a lifelong habit.
Goal setting is not a one-time event, it’s a process
that never ends. For example, if you have a 12 week
goal to lose 6% bodyfat, what are you going to do
after you achieve it? Lose even more fat? Gain
muscle? Maintain? What's next? On week 13, day 1, if
you have no direction and nothing to keep you going,
you’ll have nothing to keep you from slipping back
into old patterns. Every time you achieve a goal, you
must set another one. Having daily and weekly short
term goals means that you are literally setting goals
continuously and never stopping.
6) Allow a reasonable time frame to reach your goal.
It's important to set deadlines for your fitness and
weight loss goals. It's also important to set
ambitious goals, but you must allow a reasonable time
frame for achieving them. Time pressure is often the
motivating force that helps people get in the best
shape of their lives. But when the deadline is
unrealistic for a particular goal (like 30 pounds in
30 days), then crash dieting or other extreme
measures are often taken to get there before the
bell. The more rapidly you lose weight, the more
likely you are to lose muscle and the faster the
weight will come right back on afterwards. Start
sooner. Don't wait until mid-May to think about
looking good for summer.
7) Extend your time perspective.
Successful people in every field always share one
common character trait: Long term time perspective.
Some of the most successful Japanese technology and
manufacturing companies have 100 year and even
250-year business plans. If you want to be successful
in maintaining high levels of fitness, you must set
long term goals: One year, Ten years, Even fifty
years! You also must consider the long term
consequences of using any "radical" diet, training
method or ergogenic aid. The people who had it but
lost it are usually the ones who failed to think long
term or acknowledge future consequences. It's easy
for a 21 year old to live only for today, and it may
even seem ridiculous to set 25 year goals, but
consider this: I've never met a 40 or 50 year old who
didn't care about his or her health and appearance,
but I have met 40 or 50 year olds who regretted not
caring 25 years ago.
Tom Venuto is a certified personal trainer, natural
bodybuilder and author of the ##1 best selling diet
e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle. You can get
info on Tom's e-book at:
http://www.burnthefat.com
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