The Three Biggest Lies in Weight Loss Programs

Okay, I may have been a bit dramatic in the title of this post by calling the topics I'm about to discuss "lies". I don't think that most weight loss professionals are trying to lie to you or that there is some huge conspiracy to keep us all fat. I am, however, very acquainted with how hard this journey is and what lies we tell ourselves and how they can damage our drive to stay healthy and to reach our goals.

I know I haven't written in a while. I have some confessions to make: I have been avoiding letting everyone know how poorly I have done since reaching my goal in January. I am back up about 15 lbs and I have struggled to get back to my good habits like logging food, strength training and cardio training, etc. It has partially been because I've had odd things going on like family coming into town, trips out of town, and my gym closing (a little bit of depression as well). Though these are all times where one can reasonably give themselves a break, I ended up coming to the realization today that I have another trip out of town in a week and a half, then my husband graduates with his MBA a few weeks later, then we go to the east coast for another trip, followed by practically my whole family's birthdays all in succession, and that takes me all the way until August. If I waited until August to stop my unhealthy habits, I'll end up right where I started in the first place. Guess what: then it's the holidays. That takes me to my first "lie".

1) There is a 'best' time to start a program.

Maybe when the kids go back to school or this crazy time at work ends. Then you'll suddenly have time, energy or money to devote to your program. Here's the truth: your life usually gets BUSIER as time passes, not less busy. You likely have LESS time, energy, and money as time progresses, not more. This will likely get harder, not easier. Now is best time for change. Have you ever heard the phrase, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" or "old habits die hard". Don't let yourself become OLDER and habits HARDER to break as you wait for... What? 

2) It is (or should be) easy.

Let's just clear something up right now: if this is hard for you, there is NOTHING wrong with you! You are fighting against your very nature which is to move less and eat as much as possible just in case of an emergency. Expecting a fight against your nature to be easy is pretty unreasonable to yourself. When you do begin to struggle it makes you feel like you have some sort of defect. You feel dissolutioned and are more likely to turn back to Lie # 1 and go back to waiting for a magical easy / convenient time to change.

3) Life will be better when you get to your goal.

You will be the same person as a size 4 as you were at a size 12 unless you were doing a lot of other soul - searching activities than simply eating less and moving more. Your troubles don't all go away when you drop a few pounds. Sometimes we wait to live our lives until we get to a certain health / fitness goal because we believe that we will somehow be better or deserve to feel good about ourselves when we are no longer fat. If you need someone to tell you all the reasons you are worth being happy now, please email me. Even if you don't know me personally, I will get to know you and then tell you how awesome you are. Try me if you don't believe me. I dare you. 

There is also the misconception that it GETS easier. That might be true after YEARS of following a healthy lifestyle but here's another saying: "once an addict, always an addict." Brining up this saying is not to say that everyone trying to lose weight is necessarily clinically a food addict. I am simply pointing out that you can't expect to suddenly not prefer sitting on your couch doing another Netflix and junk food binge to eating kale and going to the gym to lift super heavy objects over and over until you can't anymore. Please don't be so unrealistic. Unrealistic expectations kill motivation. Thinking you are not good enough because it is not somehow easy for you to change will kill that drive even quicker. Remember, it took years to develop the habits you have developed. It will likely not take weeks, months, or even a single year for good habits to feel like second nature. 

Now, you may know someone who seemed like they flipped the switch. I have a fantastic client who told me he would never need to log his food because he was simply going to get rid of everything in his fridge and start afresh. I was skeptical but he did it! I am so proud of him! I do, however, need to emphasize that I was skeptical for a reason. MOST people don't flip a switch! It is never uplifting to compare yourself to others so please don't compare yourself to someone who has been able to change all at once. Besides, some people may be trying to put on a brave face. They may really be feeling inner anguish over really wanting a Big Mac.

Again, I don't want you to feel like I am trying to be a downer and tell you that it will never, ever be easy for you to maintain your good habits. Just don't put a timeline on it and don't be discouraged if you are still dragging yourself to the gym and wanting to stuff your face after MONTHS. 

Personal Update (for those following my progress)

Like I said, I am up about 15 lbs from goal. Some of that is 'real' weight. Some is not. Here I am today:

It is frustrating to be up again but here is where I started:

So I have maintained some of my progress. I have come to a realization, though, that numbers are really bumming me out. Rather than weighing myself and setting a weight or even a body fat percentage goal, I think I just need to eat 2000 calories a day, do 4-6 weight workouts a week and do cardio every day until I stop nursing, stop progressing, or I can see my abs. Then I will weigh myself and reevaluate. Other than that, my only measurements will me weekly photos and my pants. 

I have noticed that I do a really good job getting into a routine, but having a goal that is a number on the scale makes be subconsciously think that there is an 'end' to this lifestyle. I don't plan on dying when I reach 145 lbs so I should probably stop thinking of that number as my 'end'. Maybe that is why I keep sabotaging my own program right before I reach that number... 

Challenge Extended ....

Hey everyone,

I have decided to extend and personally participate in a new challenge. It will start tomorrow (3/23) and end in 112 days (or 7/13). I am extending it because I seem to need a challenge of event to keep myself motivated and having it be a personal challenge isn't working anymore. I need to compete.

So here's how it will work:

I will be opening up a Paypal account and I will put in $10 every week. Anyone else who wants to participate may choose their weekly contribution based on your own desires. Simply put your contribution into the account every week and email me.

I (and anyone else who participates) will set a weekly goal which, if reached, will allow me to keep my contribution. I recommend setting a process - based goal rather than a results - based goal. That means that I am going to reward myself for doing the things that lead to change rather than basing my success on losing a certain amount of weight. You can decide what your goals are but keep in mind that there are so many factors that affect weight that it would stink to lose your contribution because of something silly like not losing two pounds due to eating Chinese food and retaining water.

My personal challenge will be to log ALL of my food EVERY day and to stay under 2400 calories every day. That is what is going to get me to my goal. I am also going to be cutting out sodas, eating out and "junk food" but I want people to know that it is not necessarily to get me to my fitness goals. As I have said before in this blog that I don't believe that certain foods keep people from their fat loss goals. I am mostly doing it because I have noticed that a) my daughter is now looking at and becoming interested in everything Mommy is doing and it is not going to be long before she really starts to mimmic me. I want to develop better habits for her sake b) I spend more money when I drink sodas and eat out and I don't make good decisions when I do and c) I don't tend to remember what I ate in order to log correctly when I eat "junk food". I will, however, have a fast food backup plan. It is better to eat SOMETHING every 3-4 hours than to go without eating just because I can't eat the "right" thing.  So I will have a backup for every meal at McDonald's and Starbucks but it has to be because I would otherwise have to go without eating.

There will be make-ups. For example, if I do have a slip up and eat 2600 calories one day, I can make it up the next day by doing an extra 50 mins of cardio. I have to do it within 2 days of the slip up or I forfeit that week's contribution to the account. I will stay accountable by doing weekly blog posts for everyone in the competition to read about. Anyone else who would like to participate may email me at kerri.allyson@gmail.com every week before Friday evening to let me know how you are doing with your own goals. I will contact anyone I haven't heard from for a week but if I go two weeks without hearing from you, I will assume you have quit and put all of your contributions into the forfeit pool (unless of course I hear later that there was a legitimate excuse).

At the end of the challenge, I hope to get 100% of the $160 I will be contributing to the account to put towards a prize for myself. However, if I didn't complete my challenge three out of the 16 weeks, I will only get back $130. $30 will be forfeit. What happens to that money? Well anyone who completes their personal challenges every week (this will have to be on the honor code) will get to split my forfeit cash. If everyone has a few slip - up weeks, meaning that no one was 100%, then the top 3 challengers will get to split the cash. 1st place will get half of it, 2nd place will get a third and 3rd place will get the remaining 20%. So everyone will get their money back, some will forfeit a contribution here or there, some may earn extra but you basically have to quit in order to lose it all.

I am personally motivated by being in a competition. I like to be accountable to others and proving to them that I can accomplish something. If even one other person joins me I am fairly certain I will be almost 100%. If there is the potential of losing something, my efforts will likely double. I hope that this is a good idea and a lot of people would like to participate with me.

If you are one of those people, I am giving you until Friday, April 3rd to join. You can join by simply emailing me with your weekly goal and your weekly contribution. If you need help deciding on a process-based goal, let me know and I would love to help you out. From there, simply do your thing and email me once a week to let me know how it is going. I'll be posting my progress as well.

New Beginnings

Well it has been way too long! In the past six weeks that I have not been writing I have reached my goal, gained a bunch back, lost it again, changed my goal to be more aggressive, given up entirely, and come back to the reevaluate stage again.

This week while in one of my sessions, a client of mine mentioned a theory she had recently heard that everyone has a "weight thermostat" in their bodies which kind of forces them to maintain a certain weight or body composition. That would explain why many of us plateau and struggle to get past certain milestones. 

I have heard this theory before in my own weight loss and fitness studies and it is my personal belief that, if the thermostat exists, it is PHYCHOLOGICAL rather than PHYSIOLOGICAL. Personally, I would feel much better about myself if I could simply say that my body is just set for 150 lbs and that is why I am stuck where I am but if I'm going to be really honest with you, 150 lbs happens to be the weight at which I begin to sabotage myself. I also see it with my other clients. I find that some people have a particular weight which, when they reach it, they simply stop progressing. As I have worked with these people and looked a bit deeper into my own progress, it boils down to a few mistakes we make when we reach our "set weight" and throw the breaks on our program. So here are the mistakes I have made in the past six weeks which I hope you can all learn from:

1) I got rid of my accountability - I thought to myself 'hey, I've made a lot of progress. I eat the same thing every day. No need to log.' I quit wearing my metabolic arm band because my activity was pretty static and I obviously stopped writing this blog and checking in with my workout buddy because I had 'made it'.

Here's the big problem with that mentality: I was only eating the same way every day because I was LOGGING it, I was only burning a ton of calories every day because I was MEASURING it and got competitive with myself to burn more and I was definitely going to be much more consistent when I had to tell people if I wasn't doing what I promised I would do.

Lesson learned: the time for more accountability is actually once you've already had some success and begin to feel complacent. It is much harder to motivate yourself if you are feeling entitled to a bit of a 'break'. Get your support group ready!

2) I decided to let loose and 'celebrate': there is nothing wrong with having a splurge every once in a while. My problem is, though, that I had my splurges AND stopped being held accountable at the same time. Essentially, I told myself that I didn't care anymore. I stopped my momentum dead in its tracks and had no mechanism to push the train back into motion

3) I decided it would be easier when ... : that's right everyone. Dispite my previous posts declaring that there isn't a magical day in the future where vacations, relatives, and social events don't exist and excuses no longer plague your thoughts - I succumbed. At first that magical day was called "NEXT MONDAY WHEN MY MOM IS NO LONGER HERE FOR A VISIT" the next week came around and I didn't miraculously have a burning desire to eat fruits and vegetables and lift weights for an hour a day. So I looked for another magical day which I called "NEXT MONDAY WHEN THE SUPER BOWL IS OVER AND I START MY NEXT CHALLENGE".  Can you guess what happened? The Super Bowl came and went, I had been not only eating junk but binging on it for over two weeks losing ground by the minute and I STILL hadn't magically transformed into a health nut!

4) I think my biggest mistake was getting rid of a clear and measurable goal: Perhaps subconsciously my mind decided that I would be too bored maintaining my goal so I on a subconscious level had to sabotage myself. My advice to anyone in my shoes is this: have a clear, measurable goal decided upon  BEFORE maintenance with a plan attached so you don't get there or get close and the aimlessly go back to what you were doing before. I've already lost 50 lbs. I don't want to gain it back just for the fun of having to lose it all again!

So I've realized the error of my ways and I am coming back to the fold. My new and measurable goal is  this:

I am going to log ALL of my food EVERY day until July 11th (the day I will compete in my first Olympic triathlon). 90% of the days between now and the triathlon will be under 2100 calories until I need to reevaluate my nutritional needs due to:

- getting below 135 lbs (I'll need to increase calorie intake to maintain)

- I may be weaning from nursing before the race (I exclusively pump which is EXHAUSTING but keeps me burning a TON of calories) 

- burning more than 3000 calories/ day with increased cardio training for the triathlon.

Each month that I complete with 100% food logging will yeild a prize (a PROCESS-based prize). And every time I hit a milestone in my weight loss, I will have a slightly bigger (or at least more desirable) prize (a RESULTS-based prize).

Currently, I'd just like to log everything that goes into my mouth between now and going to California for Spring Break in two-and-a-half weeks. My prize is a haircut because it has been WAY too long ... Excuse the pun in that, please....

See you next week with my post entitled : the Biggest Lie In Weight Loss!