FatGuyThin

The Truth

I could tell people what they want to hear: that losing weight and shaping up is easy. I could slap my before and after photos on food supplement bottles and sell them as a miracle fat loss cure. I could compile a load of crap about diet and aerobics and flog it as an ebook for $37 a pop. God knows plenty of people are doing just that and making money. But I won’t. 

I choose to tell the truth. The truth about the stuff I wish I had known sooner. The stuff I found out the hard way by sorting through all the bullshit – bullshit that can keep you from your goal and separate you from your money. 

My message is not what most people want to hear. Most people are buying up worthless books, magazines, and supplements that tell them what they want instead of what they need. This is why 99.5% of people are failing to lose weight and keep it off. 

To lose weight successfully, you need the truth. And the truth, as they say, will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. 

Accountability Part II

Do you tell yourself that your loved ones, friends, and co-workers will keep you accountable and help you lose weight? 

Do you ask them to stop you from overeating and to tell you to exercise more?

If you do, what you are really doing is using your loved ones, friends, and co-workers as a crutch for your lack of personal responsibility. 

Your loved ones, friends, and co-workers cannot keep you accountable even if they wanted to. It’s not their job to save you from yourself - that’s your job. When you try to delegate that responsibility to someone else, you give up the power that comes with it. You give up the power to change.

Ask yourself this: if your loved ones, friends, and co-workers hold you accountable, how come they let you get fat in the first place? Are they accountable for that too? Of course they're not. You are. You got yourself fat, and only you can get yourself thin. 

Do you tell yourself you are doing it because you don’t want to let them down? The only person you are letting down is yourself.

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.”

- Jim Rohn

It’s good to have support from your family and friends but, once you become an adult, they are not accountable for your actions. They can support and encourage you, but they cannot be held accountable for you and they cannot help you hold yourself accountable.

Taking responsibility can be scary. Instead of trying to ease your fear by blaming others, you need to take full responsibility and act.

Until you do, you are powerless.

The Weigh-In

People will do almost anything except eat less in order to get a lower reading on the scales.

Saunas, running in a rubber sweat suit, and taking water pills are a small sample of the things people tell me they do on weigh-in day. The thing these activities have in common? They are nothing at all to do with fat loss.

3500

Something I (foolishly) assumed that most people knew until this week: there are approximately 3500 calories in one pound of fat. 

To lose one pound of fat, you need to eat 3500 calories less than your body uses. 

On the flip side, if you eat 3500 calories more than your body uses, you will gain one pound of fat.

Once you understand this, it becomes easy to spot the bullshit peddled by some weight loss “experts”.

A diet I heard about recently claims you can eat unlimited amounts of pasta and potatoes and still lose weight. This is nonsense. IF YOU EAT MORE CALORIES THAN YOUR BODY USES – regardless of where those calories come from – you will get fat. 

Interestingly, the same diet tells you to limit the amount of bread you eat. It seems you can gain weight by eating too much bread but you can lose weight by eating unlimited amounts of pasta or potatoes. Bullshit! 

Worryingly, people are paying five pounds a week to so-called weight-loss councillors (read: slimming club agents) who believe this fairy tale.

Blame

“It must be water”, “I can’t understand it, I’ve been good”, “I’ve been in the car all week”. Some of the excuses I’ve heard this week from people who have failed to lose weight.

Not one of them was prepared to admit to the real reason. Not one of them would admit that they had eaten too much.

This is not rocket science. It’s easy to work out what the problem is. If you eat too much you get fat. Blaming something else will keep you locked into a cycle of denial that will stop you from reaching your goal. 

Accountability

Have you ever signed one of those contracts you get in some diet books - the ones where you commit to losing weight and you tell your spouse, friends, or relatives so they can help keep you accountable? 

It doesn’t work. 

It doesn’t work because you are accountable to one person: you.  

It’s the same as buying a gym membership and telling yourself that you’ll use it because if you don’t you have wasted money. 

If you need the threat of embarrassment or loss of money to force yourself to lose weight and shape up, you are not ready. You have to want to lose weight and shape up; you cannot force yourself to do it.

If you start to entertain thoughts of signing a contract or forking out for a gym membership to keep yourself honest, stop. It means that you really aren’t ready. Better to wait until you are.