If you want to lose fat, you have to get uncomfortable.
Not the kind of message you’ll get from your celebrity fitness DVD or see on the label of your favorite fat burning supplement and for good reason: discomfort doesn’t sell supplements or DVDs. But the hard truth is you’ll get nowhere until you accept discomfort.
“You must become uncomfortable. Feeling good does not create change. Feeling uncomfortable creates change.”
Larry Winget
Diet and fitness books tell you what you want to hear; to look for ways of making exercise easier – to potter about in your garden until you work up a “light sweat”, to roll around on an over-inflated beach ball and to eat every two hours so you don’t get hungry.
Don’t want to sweat or get hungry? Poor baby!
You need to get hungry and you have to get uncomfortable. How else will you find out what true hunger feels like and how else will you send your body a strong enough signal for change when you workout?
If you want to believe that effective exercise involves a leisurely jog along a golden beach while you grin like a Cheshire cat on heat, and if you want to believe that you can buy a slimmer body over the counter of your local health food store, then be my guest. Just don’t expect to lose fat.
Discomfort is where progress starts and fatness ends.
When things start getting uncomfortable, you know you are on the right track.
I had to get really uncomfortable before I decided it was time to do something about my weight. The discomfort was very real, very personal, and very scary. Instead of running away from it, I faced it head on. I discovered it wasn’t so bad after all. For 46 years I tried to bury my discomfort with food. I fed it until it became a 320lb behemoth that I could no longer ignore.
“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
John F. Kennedy
The good news is that once you accept discomfort, it gets easier. The more willing you are to accept discomfort, the easier losing fat becomes.
Diet books and magazines want you for a repeat customer. It’s in their interests to keep you fat. That’s why they set their word processors to find words like “uncomfortable”, “hard”, and “work” and replace them with words like “enjoy”, “easy”, and “relax” - words that give you a warm glow inside but do f**k-all for losing fat.
Did that make you feel uncomfortable? Good! We’re on the right track.
“That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run…”
That’s about the best reason I’ve ever heard for running: no particular reason. You’ve got to love the simplicity of Gump’s thinking. He wasn’t running to lose weight, or for his health. If he were, his momma – who was wise beyond her years - would probably have put him right. Running is bad for your health and crap for weight loss.
“…so I ran to the end of the road.”
It seems that just thinking about losing weight flips a switch in peoples’ heads that gives them the overwhelming urge to run. Otherwise intelligent people start stumbling around the streets in shell suits and tight T-shirts, but all they get for their trouble is injuries and a potbelly.
“And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town.”
The Oxford Dictionary defines health as “the state of being free from illness or injury”. Does that sound like any runner you know? Does it? Really?
If you run, eventually you will get injured. Tapping a keyboard can give you repetitive strain injury, imagine how much damage you can do to your bones and joints by repeatedly striking a pavement with several times your bodyweight.
And please don’t be fooled into thinking that running shoes will save you. Running shoes are like the filter on a cigarette: they only reduce some of bad things – in this case impact forces - but not all of them. The big difference here is that cigarettes have a government warning on them. Maybe it’s time the government put a warning on running shoes?
Warning: running can seriously damage your health.
Or, maybe:
Warning: running shoes won’t stop injury but at least you’ll be trendy.
“And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County.”
When the little running switch in your head flips on, wellbeing is relegated to the dark recesses of your brain and “endorphin rush” and “enjoyable scenery” suddenly become your life’s purpose.
People tell me running helps take their mind off of their worries. Now, I fully understand the need to get away from the daily grind, but you can do this without guilt, injury, persistent colds, chest infections, comedy shorts, or expensive running shoes.
While we’re on the subject, there’s something I simply must get off my chest. Many fat people say they are too intimidated to use a gym - which I can understand to some degree. However, they don’t seem to mind mincing around the street in tight shorts and a headband looking like an extra from Shallow Hal. Now what’s THAT all about?
“And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going.”
And don’t tell me running is a fantastic calorie-burner because it ain’t.
The average marathon runner burns about 2800 calories. Now, 2800 might sound like a big number (and it is a big number if you place a “£” in front of it - well, it is to me), but when you consider a pound of fat packs a whopping 3500 calories things become a little clearer. It turns out that our marathon runner slogged away for 26 miles on the energy in a paltry 13 ounces of fat. That’s 13 ounces, NOT 13 pounds.
What’s more, our runner would use 300 calories if he just sat and watched the marathon on TV instead of running it. So those 2800 calories are really 2500 and that paltry 13 ounces of fat just dropped to 11 ½ ounces.
“I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going.”
You were designed to use energy efficiently; that’s how the human race survived. It’s also why you can run for half an hour on the calories in a jam donut. The same jam donut can keep your brain alive for 50 hours. Though, judging from the level of thought that many people seem capable of, I suspect that number is on the low side. I digress.
“When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.”
If you still consider running a viable exercise, let me ask you this: Do you feel compelled to run after eating a “treat” to “burn it off”? I have two words for you: guilt absolution.
That’s the name for what you are doing when you try to absolve your feelings of guilt by running after eating a “forbidden” or “naughty” food.
Does this sound healthy to you?
Running will not make up for dietary indiscretions. What it will do, however, is reinforce indiscriminate eating.
Many runners I know binge eat. Despite what they believe, there aren’t enough hours in the day to run off the amount calories in the chocolate, pizza, and beer they binge on. How do I know? Because they’re fat.
Feeling guilty after eating, and compulsive exercise are unhealthy.
“I had run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours…
…I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now.”
That’s what I love about the producers of Forrest Gump: they keep it real. After running all that time, Forrest didn’t lose an ounce of fat. What’s that? He wasn’t injured, either? Don’t count on it. I’m waiting for the sequel where Forrest has double hip replacement surgery and tendonitis in his knees.
“If Arthur Jones were alive today, he’d walk into the nearest commercial gym and open fire with a machine gun!”
Best-selling fitness author, Ellington Darden, is angry that Arthur Jones’ legacy is in danger of being forgotten.
From the early 70’s, Darden worked closely with Jones, who was the genius behind the Nautilus exercise machines that revolutionized the fitness industry.
The Present State of The Fitness Industry
“The fitness industry is in a mess”, says Darden, glaring at me across his desk. “Much of what Arthur Jones stood for is in danger of being lost.”
I was on holiday in Orlando and earlier that day Dr Darden invited me to his house for a chat. A few hours later, we were sitting in the study of his beautiful Florida home.
One half of the room is a fully equipped Nautilus gym with framed book covers and magazine articles hanging on the walls. The other half of the room is an executive office that looks out onto a private lake. Bookcases crammed with fitness books spanning several decades line the office walls.
“Toward the end of his life, Arthur was worried that he wouldn’t be remembered”, says Darden. It’s a legitimate concern. By 1984, Nautilus had become a household name and could be found in more than 3000 gyms; today most gym-goers are not familiar with the brand, yet alone the exercise principles that Jones and Darden promoted along with the Nautilus machines.
Jones' Work Lives On
However, Arthur Jones’ work lives on through Darden’s books - books that changed the way I thought about exercise and diet. He was the first author I read who promoted the idea of building muscle to lose fat - a method I employed to lose 140lb.
We spent a fascinating couple of hours discussing Arthur Jones, exercise, diet, and the state of the publishing industry before Ellington kindly gave me a signed copy of his latest book "The New Bodybuilding for Old-School Results".
“I’m old-school”, he says, “I believe in hard work and discipline because that’s what’s required for best possible results” – a message that’s reinforced throughout the book.
“It’s the best book I’ve ever written”, says Darden. That’s saying something, considering he’s published 49 books and sold over five million.
It’s clear that "The New Bodybuilding for Old-School Results" is a labour of love for Ellington. It’s the distillation of 45 years of hands-on experience in the iron game. It’s one of the best books I’ve read on the subject of high intensity exercise. For anyone who wants a comprehensive look at the history, characters, and principles of effective exercise and how to apply them to their training, it’s second to none.
Long, Lean Muscles
Shortly before I left, Ellington introduced me to his lovely wife, Jeanenne. Jeanenne, as Ellington points out, has fantastic genetics for strength training. She was an athlete in college and took to brief, high intensity workouts like a duck to water – and it shows. She has long, lean muscles most women would die for - disproving the common misconception that lifting anything heavier than light dumbbells will make women muscle-bound.
Jeanenne very kindly took a couple of snaps of Ellington and me standing in his gym and I departed for Orlando.
Driving back, I couldn’t help wondering if Arthur Jones’ contribution to the world of fitness would be lost forever. I sincerely hope not.
You got fat by eating too much. Ask anyone – fat people, thin people, and anyone in between - they all know you get fat by eating more food than you need. If you are honest with yourself, so do you.
No one is forcing you to eat food that makes you fat. You choose to eat it. And never mind that your brother, sister, or best friend can eat as much crap as they like and look like a cover model. You can’t. Wishing you could pig out on chocolate and beer and still look like Brad Pitt won’t make it so – not even if you are Brad Pitt.
Let me ask you this: even if you are “big-boned”, have some “glandular problem”, or you believe there’s some celestial being crushing your will to resist every time you see a donut, what are you going to do about it?
You see, even if these things were true, nobody else can help you with them. It’s up to you.
My Very Own “Glandular Problem”
I have diabetes. I inject insulin daily. Insulin makes you hungry. This makes losing fat “more challenging” as my doctor eloquently put it.
If I misjudge the dose and take too much insulin I have to eat more food or I will end up in hospital or worse.
As I lost fat, my body needed less insulin. This meant adjusting my injections. But sometimes I took too much insulin and had to eat more food. It would have been easy to give up in the face of this, but I accepted that I might not lose any fat some weeks and carried on.
I didn’t choose to have diabetes, but I did choose not to let it stop me losing fat. It was my choice.
It’s Up To You
Taking responsibility is the first step towards losing fat. You have to take responsibility for what you are putting into your mouth, and you have to take responsibility for exercising.
Don’t let anyone tell you different.
The world is full of people who will take your money for telling you that it’s not your fault, that all you need is their special diet or supplement or workout. None of it works; the work has to come from you. That work starts by making a decision to change.
Decide now to be thin and follow through with action. If you don’t, that’s your choice.
When I was fat, I knew I was eating too much. I didn’t calculate how many calories and how many grams of fat I was eating because I didn’t need to. It was a simple equation. The amount I was eating was making me fat, so to lose fat I needed to eat less.
I eliminated calorie-dense foods like beer, biscuits, and sweets, and I increased lower-calorie, nutrient-dense foods like vegetables, lean meats, and fruit.
I reduced the amount of bread I was eating by switching from thick-sliced to medium-sliced bread. The plan was to reduce it further if I needed to by switching to thin-sliced bread. As it turned out, I didn’t need to.
I also cut back on potatoes and rice.
Here’s a quick rundown on a typical day’s eating:
Breakfast
Breakfast is usually one or two poached eggs (depending on how hungry I am but usually two) on two, medium-slices of wholemeal toast with Bertolli spread or similar. Along with this I have grilled mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, and a very small glass of pure orange juice.
Lunch
For lunch I usually have a couple of slices of ham, turkey, or beef on three, medium-slices of wholemeal bread. I spread the bread with light salad cream and English mustard, and top it off with tomatoes, lettuce, and radish.
With lunch I have an apple.
Twice a week, I have red salmon on my sandwiches.
This lunch is very similar to the one I used to eat before I lost weight except for a couple of reductions. I switched from four sandwiches to three, and I substituted light salad cream and mustard for margarine.
Dinner
For dinner I like to eat plenty of steamed vegetables and some meat. Here’s a typical dinner:
One chicken kiev breast, carrot and swede mash, broccoli, cabbage, leeks, and half a bag of boiled Rice. English mustard and gravy.
Drinks
I drink water and tea made with semi-skimmed milk throughout the day. After dinner, I usually have a couple of pints of very weak, diluted cordial (orange, elderflower or Vimto).
Notes
I never eat anything I don’t like. Many diet books recommend strict adherence to a pre-set menu. I know people try to follow these menus to the letter even if they include foods they don’t like. I have done this myself. Eating food you don’t like will make you miserable. If you don’t enjoy your meals, you won’t make it a lifestyle change.
It’s Monday. Time to get your diet head on again. Your holiday is just around the corner and you don’t want to look like a beached-whale in those Speedos you bought last summer.
You’re determined this time. You can do it. Straight to the gym after work, then home to a plateful of tossed salad and wholemeal croutons. This week is detox week.
By mid-morning you start to hear the siren-call of coffee and chocolate. And the lonely cottage cheese and lettuce sandwich in your lunch box has begun to lose what little appeal it had.
Next thing you know, you wake up at your desk surrounded by chocolate wrappers and cake crumbs. You’ve done it again; you’ve raided the office sandwich cart.
What went wrong?
You became a diet casualty. You put yourself under so much pressure that you had to let off steam before you even got started.
Somewhere between your high-fibre breakfast and your second cup of de-caf, you became obsessed with “forbidden” foods. After wrestling with your food demons for a couple of hours, your motivation went out the office window and took your resolve with it. By the time the sandwich lady wheeled into town, you were ready to sell your soul for a chocolate muffin and a cookie.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Even though I had a lot of fat to lose when I started – far more than anyone I knew – I took a long-term approach. I’m in this for life, not just for my next vacation. Guess what? I got lean and they are still struggling to lose weight (imagine that!). Most of them have less than 20lb to lose, but after more than 12 months of stop-start deprivation, they have either put more weight on or they stayed the same.
They are trying to torture themselves thin and it doesn’t work. If fat loss is torture, how can you make it a way of life? You can’t.
You don’t need to put yourself under pressure to lose fat. Leave the diet casualties to their quick-loss diets and take a consistent, long-term approach. You’ll lose the fat and the sandwich lady will feel a lot safer when she visits your office.
When it comes to exercise, we have been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, "Which exercise burns the most calories?" we should be asking, "Which exercise increases calorie-burning power?"
"The reason 95 percent of today’s diets fail to keep your weight off", say Vash, Zak, and Carlin, in their book ‘The Fat to Muscle Diet’, "is that they cause you to lose muscle tissue along with your fat. These muscle losses are critical. They slow down your metabolism and reduce your calorie-burning power."
The solution to this problem is to prevent muscle loss so your metabolism doesn’t have a chance to slow down. Strength training is the only exercise that can do this.
Strength Training Increases Metabolism
Strength training not only prevents muscle loss, it can also promote muscle gain. When you gain muscle, you increase your calorie-burning power.
What about combining strength training with aerobics to increase the calorie-burning benefits? Unfortunately, this causes overtraining and leads to muscle loss.
A more effective way of building muscle and cardiovascular fitness is high-intensity strength training with short rest periods between sets.
My Fat Loss Workout
Here’s the high-intensity strength training workout I used to shed over 140lb of fat:
Leg Press
Chest Press
Pulldown
Shoulder Press
Biceps Curl
Abdominal Crunch
On Mondays and Fridays, I performed one set of 3 to 5 slow repetitions on each exercise. Anytime I got 5 repetitions on an exercise, I increased the resistance.
At first, this workout took 30-minutes to complete. I can now complete the same workout in 15-minutes using more resistance on each exercise.
This workout, along with a reduction in food, led to consistent weekly fat losses. My weight didn’t plateau, and I didn’t need to reduce my food further. I was able to do this because I increased my calorie-burning power by getting stronger.
My Weekly Weight Loss
An Elegant Solution
If you ask the wrong question, you will get the wrong solution. To be able to ask the right question, you need to understand the problem. The problem is not a lack of aerobics; the problem is diet-induced muscle loss. The solution is strength training.
My friend asked a doctor who was running on a treadmill why he never saw him in the weight room. The doctor said it was because he wanted to lose weight.
“Weight” being the operative word because when my friend told him that dieting and running would cause him to lose muscle, the doctor said he didn’t care as long as the weight came off.
This is a sentiment shared by many dieters. They don’t care what their weight loss is comprised of – fat, muscle, bone, brain tissue – as long as the number on the scale goes down.
Muscle Loss Slows Down Your Metabolism
Muscle losses slow down your metabolism and reduce your calorie-burning power. This makes fat gain much easier. As the number on the scale falls, the chance of you regaining the weight increases.
The only way to prevent these muscle losses is strength training.
The number on the scale tells you nothing about muscle mass, or how you look, and it won’t tell you when your tendency to get fat is increasing.
One day in September 2007, an eye doctor told me if I didn’t take care of myself, I could go blind. I have diabetic retinopathy.
This news was - as my friend, Joe, says - “just the kick up
the arse” I needed. I was so scared of losing my sight, I decided on the spot
to lose weight.
Before that day, I believed that losing weight took lots of
willpower. I soon realised I was wrong. Losing weight doesn’t take willpower;
it takes “want power”.
"We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one.Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now."
-George Sheehan
That warning from my eye doctor made me want to lose weight
more than I wanted the foods that made me fat. At social gatherings when the
dessert menu came round, it didn’t take willpower to resist - I simply didn’t
want any.
People tell me I have lots of willpower. Then – usually with a
mouth full of dessert – they tell me they are “weak-willed”. They are not
weak-willed; they just want dessert more than they want to be slim.
James Gordon said it best:
"It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some
people are ready to change and others are not."
