Radical 180

Chuck, a bud on a forum I frequent, was talking about his new eating plans, going low carb for a couple of weeks.  Then the following conversation took place.  It was so eye opening to me!  I thought it might be eye opening to someone else!

Hugggssss Chuck!!
Me:
Wow great Chuck!

I was tryng to do what you are or similar, I am NOT good at it. I bomb LOL!
Chuck:

Well, see there is something important to consider here. All diets are not equal, nor are all people in their dieting journey.

And allow me to expound on this topic if I may for my own good mental excercise.

Think about the reality for a moment maybe from a different perspective.

A person usually has to go increments regarding changing diet habits. I mean, the typical starting place is usually a person eating anything they want, far too much, and all the wrong foods and—>for all the wrong reasons, at all the wrong times.

There are many specific things going on in that scenario.

A person that is just beginning to look for the fist time at nutrition and diet, is facing a daunting task, if they are changing every single thing at once. This is reality. They might be able to change the WHAT of eating at first.

They start eating better healthy foods, yes that is better than before. But if they still eat too much, they will stay fat.

Usually, people (at the) beginning, keep the food choices on the bad side, ie, fatty, sugary, processed, etc, but learn to cut the volume of food down. That is ONE step.

They still eat comfort and mood foods too much.

Now that they are better at eating smaller portions, they work on eating less calorie desnse foods, more whole foods, less sweets and starchy carbs.

This is a much tougher change and can take a lot of retraining. People tell me, is this not THE numero uno biggest issue most of us face in dieting anyways?

Who doesn’t love crackers and cheese, or chips and hot sauce, or bagles with cream cheese? Not to even mention candy, donuts, ice cream, cookies (hello?)!

Then they learn that they eat at the wrong times, stress eat, or eat for comfort, rather than hunger or nutrients. This takes time to work out too.

Then they dial in on excercise in the midst of all this upheaval.

What I would like to convey is this: All four or five of these things usually need to be addressed as an issue, and well under control to some degree before a person can attempt any diet that is what I might call…….Ummmmm……challenging.

A low carb, very low cal diet, is not easy, not even to experienced disciplined dieters. It is not fun. Lets tell the dirty little truth: It sucks.

The Holy Grail really, is the ability to hit your basic healthy comfortable weight (usually 15-20 higher than your potential target weight), and learn to maintain it with clean dietary habits and excercise.

Dieting is going into some form of caloric deficit, of course. Dieting sucks ok? It does, and it just does. 

But once a person’s weight is under control, and they have learned the tricks, and developed the habits that allow them to try differnt ‘tactical’ approaches, they can do a lot of different diets to see which works best for them under certain conditions.

I mean the more aggressive diets here. The one’s that limit carbs, or calories to a large degree.

This diet I am doing right now….is not long term. I’ll do it about two weeks, and then up my calories to around 2200 for slower losses, and more food.

If you find yourself failing over and over again, blowing it time after time after time, maybe there are too many components, too many habits trying to be tackled all at one time.

Realize whats going on, what can be done to adjust it, and make those adjustments. Don’t bang your head against the wall in frustration.

Oh, as as a matter of reference, I just remembered something important about my own personal journey from overweight to back in shape.

Many of you who know me from BFFM days, well I STARTED my weight loss ‘journey’ one year ‘before’ I actually made it stick and work.

Back in 2004 I hit a world record for me at 220. At the start of 2005, I did I guess what you might call a ‘challenging’ diet. Very low cal, low protein, and added in weights and jogging with the the tennis.

I quickly lost down to 193. Sounds good eh?  It piled back on quickly back up to 215, then down to 210, then up to 213, down to 210, up, down, up, down. I was stuck at 210 for a while.

Here was the real problem. I hadn’t put all the components together yet. I would have a deficit, but eat that wrong foods. I would skip meals, eat at the wrong times, and get hungry. I did most everything wrong.

I never gave up. After a whole friggin’ year, I didn’t give up. I kept reading, hanging onto one more piece of information I would pick up from a reputable source. After I put enough pieces together— this guy named Chris, found me on some board, and said I sounded like BFFM (Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle By Tom Venuto), and I should check it out.

BFFM put the pieces into the puzzle so I could see a picture. All the little details I had, finally were put into the right order.

From there I had a base to learn from, and have since of course, found others like Dr. Berardi and the like. I have a reference point.

What am I saying here? It took me a year of not giving up before I got my transmission to quit slipping, and when the gears locked in finally, the weight came off, and stayed off.

Sure, I say I want to optimize, and lose 15 lbs here and there, but it’s gravy now. I am dealing with different issues now than I was when I started.
 

Me:

That was good Chuck. It made sense. I am doing too much at once. I did start little by little but I bit off the diet in one big chew. I started to lift again and got that down, but saw very little change except in strength, I excelled!

I just am sick of the way I am. Me and 2 billion others roflol!

Baby steps, baby steps… I really want this to be the last time forever.
 

Chuck:

Hey, excercise is huge. I would prefer a person be overweight and in shape, than light and out of shape, and I am serious.

If you are truly bombing, you need to sit down, and take a close look at everything, and determine what are the main things derailing you.

Are you hungry, are you bored, are you scared to succeed, do you have support of family, do you eat emotionally, do you eat out of habit, do you eat whole foods, do you hate vegtables? It can be a LOT of things that derails people.

Zero in on your biggest challenges and know what specific problem you are trying to solve, or it cannot be addressed.

Some people CAN tackle everything at once, but it’s very hard. Most have to go in stages. Never ever ever give up though. You can’t afford to just let your health and weight go.

I’ll tell you one thing for sure. TV diets, and fad diets, informercials, and diet pills, are the plague of most overweight Americans. You will find the truth in grassroots forums like TNP, BLC, with BFFM, Precision Nutrition, New Rules of Lifting, etc. Look no further than these things, and what it takes to ultimately master their principles.

It is so worth it, isn’t it, to have the real answers, and not have to flounder in false hope on how to lose weight the long term way?

You can absolutely do this. You can take control with patience and persistance.
 

Me:

Chuck you are truely a breath of fresh air!

Yup I need to sit and take stock. Wanna know something silly? I was trying to go PN. But I love cereal in the morning!

They only want it after workouts! I have eaten whole grains most of my life in the morning, I love em and I want em and they are NOT bad food.

I am kicking and screaming! And I just don’t like meat 6 times a day. So those are my barriers. When I don’t want to do that I seem to just throw the day away, because, I just do LOL!

There, I said it, it is out. I love oatmeal so shoot me LOL!

Yeah I gotta put this in perspective…
 

Chuck:

Kelly, PN is a great plan ok? But remember the principles behind it. You are talking about carb cycling with PN. And that is

another level, but it is not all or nothing.

We can break the laws of man, but we can never break the laws of physics and biochemistry. One way or another, energy in must be less than energy out. That is the FIRST principle to master.

If you are determined to eat oatmeal or carbs in the morning, the by all means do it. I do it. I do it right now on a LOW CARB diet. I have oatmeal every morning. Yes is is good food, absolutely. I lower carbs the rest of the day, so no biggie.

You don’t like meat 6 times a day? Find other protein sources that don’t violate principle number one above.

Construct something you can work with. Get your list of acceptable foods together, and feel GOOD about it. Do the best you can today.

So I would take a step back, and do the following:

First and foremost, don’t stop excercising – no matter how small, do something, do anything, but don’t stop the body moving.  You own this part already.

Make up your mind on exactly and specifically what you want to accomplish, and write it down, and keep it visible.

Diet:

1. Determine your calorie level needed to create a decent caloric deficit. Know that number, it is the ultimate success

factor here. Nothing is more important that this one thing. Nothing.

2. Get a list of acceptable foods that you know you will eat – I mean – seriously, you know you are going to be ok eating them.

3. Try to fit some form of protein into at least 2/3 of your meals. Try to improve on that, but start somewhere.

4. Start practicing. Plan the diet, and start eating it. See how it’s working for you. Take stock, make adjustments, but find a way to eat what you plan.

5. Get out of the ‘all or nothing’ mentality. You are NEVER EVER more than one meal away from successfully getting back on target with your diet plan – that is reality. Your perception is that if you failed on meal 1, you failed it all. That is simply subjective perception, and nothing more.

6. Get thee in a GOOD MOOD. Nothing sucks more than waffling around feeling defeated all day, that you just are not executing something you planned. Change the plan, and ensure that you can execute it.

Remember, you can get on course on the next meal,don’t defeat yourself mentally if you blow a meal. SMILE!!! 

Thats enough for now. Remember something key here, and we all learned this. This is an ‘iterative’ process. You have to learnfrom your mistakes, and keep making adjustments. That is exactly how a missle gets to it’s target. It is a servo mechanism.

It goes slightly off course, makes a tiny adjustment, goes off course, makes a tiny adjustment, etc, etc, until it hits the target. Your target is your GOAL. The guided misslie is your mind. The direction to your target is your diet.

Look at every mistake as a positive oppotunity to make an adjustment. Iteration…not failure.

Be happy