Weight for Me

Warning: This is my favourite rant

We all come to this earth with a basic shape and for most of us it is some variation of either an apple, where we carry weight around the middle, or a pear where weight tends to accumulate in the vicinity of the hips and thighs. Nothing will alter it. Not thighmasters, fat cream, a million sit ups, or even diet pills will have an impact.

You can lose weight, but you will be a smaller apple, or a smaller pair, but you can not spot reduce.  Anything that promises anything otherwise, is well…..a big fat lie.

Exercise regularly. Be the best you can be, but let of what you think that should look like.

Have you ever noticed some people seem to be able to eat absolutely anything, but miraculously never put on a pound?  While others (like me) methodically add up calories as they enter our mouths, exercise like crazy, and still battle the bulge.  How can this be?

Well, just like a Cadillac, some people burn so many calories they have to keep filling up at the station.  It may not be fair, but the rest of us are more akin to a Honda Civic.  Our bodies are efficient machines, running forever on only a teacup, which means the excess gets stored as fat.  Sigh.

If you happen to be a Civic, you can burn more calories through regular cardiovascular exercise.  And although weight training is not a calorie burner in and of its self, it can help raise your basal metabolic rate, the equivalent of miles per gallon, through increasing your muscle mass.

Above all else, try…. and try hard to realize, you need to do all the right things.  Eat reasonably and exercise regularly, but let go of what you think the results should be.  We were meant to come in different shapes and sizes.

I struggle to say the words Fitness and Professional in tandem, and still have people take me seriously.  Its no wonder.  ”Loose belly fat with these fat burning yoga exercises“, claims a recent Women’s Health internet article.  ”Beat Ab Flab with this 2 minute move,”  headlines the recent cover of a fitness magazine.

Yoga does many, many wonderful things, but it is NOT a fat burning exercise, nor can you target fat burning to occur in your abdominal region, particularly with a 2 minute move. Our bodies store fat where they choose to. Exercise, gimmicks and surgery will NOT alter that.  Ever. 

Fat burning occurs when the heart and breathing rates are elevated through activities like walking, running and swimming, which involve sustained repeated contraction of the body’s largest muscles.  However, your body, without your consent, decides where to take the fat from,  Generally this means when you loose weight you become a smaller, fitter, but overall same-shape version of your self.  

Claims to the contrary are part of a massive marketing brainwash.  The idea that we can alter the shape of our body enables companies to sell billions, and billions of dollars of magazines, fitness products, diet plans, special meals, supplements and plastic surgery in North America every year.  Tragically, to no avail.

False advertising is any type of advertising that deceives consumers. Even advertising that only has the potential to be misunderstood by consumers may be construed as false advertising. In most cases, false advertising leads the consumer to believe that he is somehow profiting from a purchase. He may think he is getting a good deal, saving money, or buying something that will perform in a specific manner. Actually, the advantage is all on the side of the advertiser and companies who practice false advertising. Any potential benefit to the consumer is usually non-existant.

Thankfully, true fitness professionals, those dedicated to helping you create your best life through moving your body, do exist, as does extremely effective exercise equipment.  And there really are weight management programs that work.   Fulfillment comes comes when you find what you are looking.  When it comes to fitness we need to reframe this or we’ll be left singing the famous U2 song for the rest of our lives.

Here are my tips:

1. Stop trying to obtain a perfect body.  You can’t, and so finding fulfillment means making the best of the one you have.
2. Avoid any product promising a quick fix.  They don’t exist.
3. Don’t buy products claiming to melt away an area, like abs or inner thighs. 
4. Emphasize how exercise makes you feel, instead of how you hope it will make you look.
5. Stop believing you need products.  True fitness is not expensive or complicated.
6. Enjoy your body…. it’s the greatest instrument you’ll even own.
7. Close your eyes and listen to this link.

If after reading my  twelve step weight loss plan , you are still convinced a diet is necessary for holiday season recovery, I’d like to offer up my top five diet finds and flaws.  These recommendations are based on the American College of Sports Medicine’s Position Stand on Proper and Improper Weight Loss Programs.

Top Five Flaws

1. Avoid any diet involving prolonged fasting or severe caloric intake restriction.  Not only can these be dangerous, they often result in loss of water, electrolytes, minerals and even metabolically active  muscle tissue.
2. Watch for programs promising effortless weight loss.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is.  The bottom line is to lose weight you must expend more calories than you ingest.  It’s just good, honest, hard work.
3. Aggressive sales tactics are a pretty good indicator that profit, not your success, are paramount.
4. “Scientific breakthrough,” claims the ad.  Yeah, sure.
5. Pills and supplements that reportedly burn fat by increasing metabolism are almost always harmful.  Buyer Beware.

Top Five Finds

1. A program recommending weight loss of two pounds per week or less is desirable.   More rapid weight loss can be harmful to the body and statistically is not likely to stay off.  In fact, many people who lose weight rapidly, gain it back and then some, ending up at a higher weight than before.
2. Adequate caloric intake for nutrition is at least 1200 calories for women and 1500 for men.   Ensure any program you embark on includes at least that much.
3. A sound diet will allow the dieter to make choices from all food groups, and preferably not involve specialized frozen meals.  It doesn’t matter how tasty they  are, calorie reduced frozen entrees will eventually lose their appeal.  Check out Health Canada’s interactive tool for building your own personalized food guide.
4. An effective weight loss program will focus on lifestyle change, nutrition education and behavior modification.
5. Most importantly, a weight loss reduction plan worth its weight in gold, must include recommendations for regular cardiovascular exercise at a sufficient intensity.  (More on that later)

The myriad of diets, and weight loss plans, promoted at this time of year is staggering.   If you feel that a January plan is required to get you back on track, use these guideline to select  one that will work safely and effectively for you.

I must confess over the years I have tried more diets than I care to admit, the most ridiculous of which was my own variation of the Cabbage Soup diet.  I only ate Ichiban because I didn’t like cabbage.  (It was the eighties I plead)  I also remember purchasing a small kitchen scale to weigh my portions and I’ve attempted to live on meal replacements, tasting a lot  like dirt, only to fall victim to inevitable desperately large  doses of chocolate.

It turns out I am not alone.  Collectively in North American we spend a whopping 40 million dollars per year on diets, and sadly, the majority of us will ‘relapse’ to our current weight within 3 – 5 years.   This is not money, energy or time well spent.   

That being said, many of us, and I would be among this group, struggle to maintain a weight we are happy with.  Many of my clients over the years have found this very simple approach extremely effective, and its free.

For each month of the year identify something you will take out of your regular diet and/or something you will add.   Here are some examples:

1. Take away whole milk; add skim milk
2. Take away store bought salad dressing often laden with fat; replace homemade oil and vinegar
3. Take away butter; replace with becel
4. Take away packaged pre sweetened cereal; replace with oats, or red river cereal

My own personal favourite last year, which has really worked for me, was to brown bag my lunch and stop stupidly grazing on high calorie foods while cooking dinner.   Being hungry as a result of not eating a good solid lunch was leading to some really poor choices between 4 and 5.

Once set up, you can track your goals by posting on your fridge,  or check out Jason Fitzpatrick’s great blog post on Five Best Goal Tracking Tools found on www.lifehacker.com.

Let me know how you do, and if you have some innovate ideas,  I’d love it if you’d share .

That’s my word for New Year’s Fitness gimmicks and fads, and it best expresses my feelings about said gimmicks and fads when the vowels are drawn out making it sound a lot like giiiiiiifaaaaaaw. 

I go crazy at this time of year when even my closest friends, who have been subject to my endless rants about how to achieve true lifelong health and fitness, still feel irresistibly compelled to purchase some trendy piece of fitness equipment destined to become a very expensive clothes rack, or worse yet start some ‘special’ three month fast guaranteed to take off pounds fast.

So I ask myself why, and maybe you can help me, but I think like pretty much every thing in our society we want the quick fix now, especially if we can buy it.  Peter Senge, writes about sustainable change in his recent book The Necessary Revolution.   He talks about how our addiction to short term easy fast fixes often keeps us from dealing with the deeper cause of a problem or issue, but that truly sustainable change only comes from dealing with the fundamental root issue which usually requires more initial effort, hence, we avoid it.

Yes… every year on January 1st, millions of us embark on countless new diets.  We purchase reams of useless and bizarre exercise devices (for lack of a better word), and we allow ourselves to be talked into gym memberships, signing contracts in our moment of weakness, binding us to monthly dues for years to come.  Yes, we spend billions and billions on quick fixes, which ultimately don’t work.

There really is another way, but it means we need to look at how we live our lives each day and commit to making healthy change.  The good news is this method endures.  Its effects are viral, touching all aspects of our lives and those around us positively, and it costs far less than all those listed above. 

This year I am dedicating this blog to providing you with information, gleaned from my twenty year career as a fitness professional, and hopefully inspiration, to assist you in creating long term effective, sustainable health and fitness changes in your own life.  Remember though, you won’t find any giiiiifaaaw here.

Here’s to real change in 2010!