It is 2 days before our wedding date and guess what?  We didn’t make our goal.  Our seamstress didn’t have to let the gown out any more, but we don’t look like the cover model that we thought we would and we didn’t hit our goal weight either.

Dang it!

Yes, I know…sad.  But true, nonetheless.  And we didn’t make goal in a few ways, not just on the scale, because our virtual diet is going to have a real ending as opposed to those commercials that make you think everyone is successful.  Everyone that is…except you.

Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.  Walter Anderson

I want to stress this point until I sprain a finger typing on my laptop keyboard:  realistic goals = success.  Dreams are great motivators only to the degree that the 1 size-too-small pair of pants hanging in your closet is.  In theory they are great to keep us going, but in reality they cause tremendous disappointment because they are so out of proportion to what we can expect as the outcome that nothing could satisfy our hearts at the end.  I am all for motivating quotes and rah rah shishcoombah type encouragement but only to a certain extent.  Then after that, we need to be yanked out of the clouds and have someone slap some sense into our heads.  Here are some facts:

• You will not diet into a great shape the first or second time around.  Maybe the third, though.  Even then, you will still be able to pinch something, jiggle something or point to something that you do not like because it’s not your body that is lacking, it’s your sanity that is.
• You will not maintain it without some level of work.  If you want something extraordinary, you have to put the ‘extra’ in to get it.
• The scale weight does not necessarily reflect the way your body looks.  This goes both ways.  I have seen folks excited that they hit goal weight and they look like someone beat them down with a bag of flour and I have seen women fall short by 5 pounds but be absolute stunners in the process.  Get over the number.  If it means that much to you, tape it on the scale and it will always read that and you’ll be good to go.
• Just because you “stopped eating” the junk does not mean that you will automatically begin to lose.  Where’s your sacrifice?

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.  Peter F. Drucker

We would be able to go back and see where the disconnect happened in our plan if we were 100% on it.  I’m not saying that we cheated or anything, no—we were “following” it the whole time.  But the plan we were on was a hybrid plan.  See, we all do it.  We get our plan from our coach or from whomever we charged with the responsibility of dieting us at the time and upon opening it, decided that they were no longer qualified to do the job.  What were they thinking to tell us what to eat and when?  And don’t they know that that would make us hungry or possibly even cranky so there is no way we’re going to stick with that?  And we don’t have to let them know that we know better than they do, we’ve been dieting ourselves for years.  They just learned about us yesterday.  So we’re going to eat whatever we want for meals 3 and 4, do as much cardio as necessary and lift the way that we want to lift and if it doesn’t work out….well that’s their fault.  They should know we didn’t really want a plan to get us to the goal, we wanted our own plan—the one that fictitiously works in our mind—validated.  Affirm us that we were on the right track and all we needed was for someone to tell us about some new egg whites and oatmeal that we have never heard about before so we could get on with the weight loss thing.  Sheesh.

• Either you’re in or you’re out.  Get off the fence and stop being a couch coach.
• Get over yourself.  Yes, you read a lot.  Yes, you know a thing or two about nutrition.  But objectivity is impossible when you diet yourself so you are not hiring someone who necessarily “knows” more than you or even “knows” you; you are hiring someone who is not you.
• Once you change a plan you negate the outcome.  Period.

Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.—Mark Knopfler

We’ve done everything right, according to the book and we had a very realistic goal and we still didn’t make it.  What gives?

• If you’re healthy and nothing medically stands out, you have been dieting too long.  Time for a break.
• You may have something medically going on that you are not aware of.  Only healthy people lose weight easily. Keep that in mind.
• Things you may not be aware of:  birth control, thyroid meds, food intolerances, stress, liver issues, chemicals in your diet, heavy metals in your body and the list goes on.  Depends on how your diet goes to be able to figure it out.  There will be telling signs.

That was the longest diet I have been on in years.  What was that, 7 days total?  I think I cheated at least 4 times since we started.  Shame.  Next series is on obstacle races like the Tough Mudder and such.  Not sure when that starts but it’ll be within the next few days.  Hang tight and hit me up below with questions or via my email if you like:  Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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We’re near the end of this great journey through our virtual tour of a 12 week diet but we still have yet to conquer our fears and deal with a goal that does not come to pass.  Let’s not waste time and just hop right in.

I have thought about this all week long in terms of how I was going to present fear to you.  My initial thought was to sort of pick up where I left off with ‘pressure’ and tell you about the fake voices in your head and how they control you.  However, I know that some good brain cells were set on fire with that post so I will put out those flames later on with another post when we go into the series that discusses the after effects of this diet.   What I feel that most of us lack is an understanding of how real those voices and feelings seem at the time and because of this, how much they can rob us of a healthy dieting experience.  If we can acknowledge in our hearts—not our minds—that those voices are just fear and they are not real, then we may be able to make it through this diet without making any rash, harmful decisions.  But it is the acknowledging that is the hard part.  We have such a tough veneer that most of us aren’t honest enough with ourselves to share that we have fears.  Real fears.  So real, they seem like people in a room to us.

FEAR is an acronym in the English language for “False Evidence Appearing Real”. Neale Donald Walsch

Hands down, the best weapon in war or any other kind of battle is intimidation.  Warring parties would try to convince the other side that they had an advantage in hopes of getting them to surrender without even going to battle.  In many instances it worked and a fight was avoided.  When it comes to something such as dieting, the enemy isn’t another country warring against us; the enemy is in our mind and it will stop at nothing to de-rail us from our goal.  It is real, it occupies real space in our brain and it can become so real that we could almost have a conversation with it on the couch.  Actually, we do have a conversation with it on the couch.

I want to stress this concept to the point of ad nauseam because you may fail to see its relevance and impact in your life.  When you are 7 weeks into this diet but your only 1/3 of the way to goal, it is fear who is going to remind you of that.  When you are in the gym and you suddenly feel portly compared to the week before, it is fear that is making that happen.  When you are deciding on adding extra cardio into your program when you know you shouldn’t or cut out carbs before your plan tells you to, it is fear that gives you the wherewithal to that.  Fear becomes your best friend.  He goes from being just a topic you discuss with someone you trust to a scary man with bad breath who is real, mean and standing right next to you.

As dieters, the things we fear seem so silly when we say them out loud so we keep them to ourselves and it is there that they become true villains in our minds.  They literally take on the human likeness of a 6’3” tall, large frame, ominous looking and strong male who stalks us wherever we go.  He pops up at the most inopportune times and refuses to leave us, even after we have convinced ourselves for the 20^th time that hour he is a figment of our imagination and nothing is going to happen.  He has bad breath and is happy to breathe on us any time we feel we are losing control of our present circumstances.  Thus if life begins to squeeze us emotionally through work, home life or friends, here comes fear to keep us company through that by giving us something else to worry over instead of the real issues at hand.

He makes us anxious.  He makes us get up, go to the cabinets and eat like there is no tomorrow.   He can tell us to take a not-so-good ergogenic aid because without it we will never get to where we want.  He’ll talk all day long if we let him—and we do!  We argue with him, reason with him and even shout at him if we’re alone.  He is in full control and we are at his mercy when he strikes because we 1) want to deny that he is real and 2) do not recognize the behaviors that he brings out in us because we keep denying he is real.  More than anything you must acknowledge his presence to get rid of him or he just keeps sitting at the dinner table in your mind feasting on your sanity.

I’m not even going to try to address conquering fear here and for the most part of this series I have only pointed out emotions and actions without going into how to get over them.  This is mainly because it is not that simple to “fix” and this post is already longer than the line of traffic at a cheap gas station without adding that in.  I promise I will get there.  We have much to cover in the coming months and I think it best to get your mind percolating first.

Tomorrow I will wrap this series up by giving you the last two weeks of the diet.  It may interest you to know that we do not make it to goal the way we want and so I will cover what to do when that happens, as well.  This has been a great series and I really appreciate all the emails and comments.  Keep ‘em coming! Woop woop!

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Week 4 is here and now we’re into remembering what food used to taste like.  We actually reminisce from time to time what cheese was like and how awesome it is and we wonder if we’ll ever have it again.   Then we think of the goal date and snap out of it.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEK 4

• Anything and everything extraneous comes out of the diet.  Everything.
• Condiments like mustard, vinegar (any kind), ketchup and so on are still fine but all else has to go.
• Lose the nutbutters and any other inefficient fat to trim back on the choices.
• Increase water and maybe even cardio at this point.  You should be 2/3 of way to weight goal or size goal by now.

PITFALLS

• You will cut out too much, go too extreme and doubt your way into misery.
• Get objective feedback.  If someone says you look good—believe them or don’t ask them.

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”  Eric Hoffer

I opened up this series by stating that dieting is personal and it is about this time that we begin to realize how personal it is.  With 4 weeks left to goal, we are visibly different than when we started and we are just now getting a true taste of how intoxicating adoration can be.  But there is an ugly relative of adoration who reaches just as far into our souls but is nowhere near as nice.  This relative is known as unwarranted comments and it is quite powerful.

I think we all in our lifetime have had to swallow a dose of someone else’s vinegar and for the most part, we can handle it.  But when the comments come daily and most of them from people you do not know, it becomes a bit much.  Soon we begin to stoop to their level with retorts that are not necessarily pleasant or with shame/anger that makes us sulk for the rest of the day because we have had a personal lifestyle choice judged by a complete stranger.  It is vital for our survival to understand that our choices have condemned theirs and do not truly reflect who we are but more what they are not doing, so we must instantly reject their comments and not receive them in our hearts.  I am sure you think you do that when you get in your car and text your girlfriend the whole exchange that went down, but the fact that we thought about it after it happened enough to text someone the whole exchange, means that we made it ours.  Stop, right then and there, and categorically reject people’s unnecessary, hurtful opinions by loving them with everything you got.

I know you’re going to ask me how to do that so let’s get right to it:

SCENARIO #1

You’re at a restaurant.  You just ordered a meal that was initially lasagna but after all your substitutions and requests it was essentially baked cod with steamed vegetables (we have a talent for this).  The waitress is annoyed, to say the least.  She takes the time out of her day to snarkly say to you “I think you can afford to have a little fat in the meal, don’t you think?”

Bad response: “I think I can afford to have a whole lot more than you, killah.  Meet you on the arc trainer in the morning? Hmmm??  I’ll bring the motivation, you bring the rest of the steak n cheese you’re going to have for dinner tonight and we’ll have a good time.  Don’t you think?”  Umm…not the way to handle that.

Good response: “To be honest, I’m super blessed to be able to afford this meal of which I am really looking forward to.  Thank you for asking.”  Said with a sincere and true smile.  Finish by telling her you like her hair or something.  Works great on getting the point across that you are not in the least bit affected and you are into giving folks second chances.  Don’t be surprised if she’s your best friend by the end.

SCENARIO #2

You’re at the gym.  You’re working out in typical leave-me-alone gear:  hoodie, hat, ipod, smelly shirt with baggy sweatpants.   Everything about you says “back-the-heck-off.”  Here she comes…off your right flank…there’s nowhere to hide…she’s gotcha now:  “Wow.  You look great.  When is your wedding?  Four weeks?  Great job, girl. I can’t wait to see your pictures. (This is called The Setup.  Don’t worry, she has an agenda.)  Are you worried that you’ll be able to keep it off after?  I know lots of girls who rebound after dieting like that.  It’s so extreme, ya know?”  WHAMMO!  You didn’t even see it coming.  That’s called the old let-me-pee-in-your-cereal-trick.  Works like a charm.

Bad response: “Extreme?  You’ve been here for 2 hours, talked to 8 people, been briefed on the tactical operations happening on cardio and surveyed the weight room and you want to call me extreme?  Girl, you better realize you’re in a gym and go find yourself a weight.  You know, those heavy things that change your shape (look her up and down)—for the better.”  At this point I would say you’re bitter.  Go eat a starch.

Good response: “You know I have thought about that and I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Nothing I am doing right now is extreme but I honestly cannot tell you what I will be like at that time, I’ve never done this before.  I hope you supported the girls who rebounded.  That has to be hard and I would think they need support more than anything else.”  That leaves her realizing that she just said something nasty.  It may take a while to seep in, but it’ll get there.

SCENARIO #3

You’re at your in-laws.  It’s Thanksgiving.  You’ve got a MIL who doesn’t mince words.  No set up needed for this one, she’s heck on wheels, “Frank, pass the plate to your wife.  She’s needs some more food on her plate.”  Now looking at you she adds, “You’re getting too skinny and quite frankly it’s not attractive.”

Bad response: “You have hair on your chin, you’re going to tell me what’s attractive?  Not for nothing but–”  Now I’m going to cut you off right there.  Knock it off, that’s your MIL.

Good response: “I thank you for your concern, BettyAnn.  I do wonder, at times, if I would know if this ever got out of hand but I know that I can count on you to keep my head on tight.  I am comfortable where I am at now but it’s comforting to know that you have my best interest in mind.”  You just put a cigarette out in her head with that comment.  Works even more if you mean it so show some love there.  Got me? She’ll be wondering the whole night if that was for real or not.

I’m afraid the last one is about fear.  Get ready for that on Monday.  In the mean time, let me know some of the crazy things people have said to you and how you’ve handled it.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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Time is flying on this diet (what’s it been now, 4 days?) and we’re at that junction where if I was working with you back in the day my tone would go from super supportive coach (Oh girl, it’s fine.  You’ve got plenty of time.  Pick yourself up and keep it moving.) to edgy coach (We do have a goal, you know.  I know you don’t understand how 2 pounds of chocolate could add 10 pounds of fat, but I took bioenergetics and I understand!).  Ok, I’m just kidding…it only adds 5 pounds of fat.  And I wouldn’t be edgy…I’d have a tone, though.  Just sayin’.   Er…moving on.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEKS 6 & 5

• Cheat meal becomes a “really good meal” at a restaurant or from home that is cooked with full flavor and fat but nothing processed.  No cheese then.
• Diet goes down to a few select choices for STarches, veggies and fruits.  Keep protein wide open.
• Start rotating something here:  calories, starches, fruits, etc.  And it depends on your goal as to what.

WHERE YOUR HEAD IS AT

• Panic.  Straight, unadulterated panic.  It’s a scary area right now in your brain.  Nothing rational going on in there.

WHERE YOUR BODY IS AT

• You should be 1/3 of the way toward goal or you need to regroup.
• You will not have any definition at this point.  You should just be smaller.

“A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat.”   Erma Bombeck

Six weeks into the diet and you are beginning to lose more than just body fat; you are losing your best friend.  She had no desire to diet like you but opted to simply do her thing alongside of you and offer her support.  However, you are changing, she is not and life suddenly became complicated.  This happens with a spouse, with parents and with co-workers, it is not just limited to friends.  Most of us automatically think that it is them, right?  I am sure you have had this discussion or read this somewhere a 1000 times and it was presented to you in a way that makes you feel justified because they are not where you are, they just don’t have the discipline and yadda, yadda, yadda.  But it is much more than that.  What if I told you that what was splitting up your friendship/marriage/work friendship was simply emotional protection on your part?  Instead of being your bestie she’s now your “competition”.

I use the word competition here lightly.  I do not mean that you are competing against her in a real, physical sense or that she’s some new jealous psycho friend who stalks you at the gym by showing up in the parking lot with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (although, that would be sight to see).  What I am referring to is emotional competition; which for us as women is fiercer than anything that would happen in that gym parking lot (unless she covered her face in Vaseline and took off her earrings.  If that happens, get out of there quick).

Emotional competition is the struggle we enter into when we decide to change our bodies on a radical level and then try to live life normally.  This is not a onetime struggle that can be resolved very easily.  This is not about us “not getting along with our friends anymore” so now we just move on.  As bad as that sounds, that’s easier than where I’m going.  No, this is about the battle we now have with the world that says “I am having such a good time eating whatever I want, going wherever I want without worrying about when I’m working out and just casually living and loving life—why can’t you just…?”.  Every day is now a mental mêlée where we must re-commit to our goal when we hang out with our friends.  Every day is a test of will when we cook for the family, go to a family function or visit friends.  Every day it seems like the fight gets more and more intense and we have a harder time justifying why we are doing this.  We are emotionally torn between hanging out with those that we love and pursuing our bucket list goal of a great body.  This is not a simple conflict.  This is a competition.  This is about two separate lives competing for our undivided loyalty.  Neither wants to cut us any slack and they both scream, “It’s us or the highway.”  So what do we do?  Turtle.  We crawl inside of our shells, tune out the world and then we hop on a forum and find like-minded individuals who are chasing the same goal.

Not good.  Not cool.

Why is this a bad thing?  Because this is an extreme lifestyle and we just shut out all contact with the outside world.  Now we live in a fish bowl and we’ve already discussed how pressured we are merely living this lifestyle.   Our entire day becomes centered on how we look.  Not directly, but in a “well…yeah…” sort of way.  We spend our entire day looking at pictures of other women, keeping up with their workouts and searching out new recipes.  There is not a lick of balance in our lives and then we wonder why we’re losing our tree over things such as someone eating our pre-packed meals in the fridge.  I mean…don’t they understand??  It took all day to cook that! UGH!

But we didn’t shut them out because they did something wrong or they violated us in some way.  We shut them out because we couldn’t take the competition.  We couldn’t deal with the choices that we were facing so we just stopped making them a choice.  I know what you’re thinking, “I don’t do those things anymore so why do I want to be around it?”  And no, you don’t, but you can find a common ground with them.  You have to; you are rejecting their lifestyle—not them.  Life is about compromise; balance is about sanity and you need both.  There will come a time when this lifestyle is passé for us and we will be forced to walk away from it.  When that happens, if we handle this the wrong way, there will be a bunch of people we love that we will have to say I am sorry to and that does not always feel good.

Am I the only one who feels like they need to give somebody a call right now?  I will go over this one again from another angle in another series.  Til then, there are two more to talk about and then we wrap the diet up on its own.  Hope you are keeping up.  See you tomorrow!  Woop woop!

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We’re at that part of the diet where we begin to doubt.  We’re 8 weeks and counting and we’re not seeing enough of a change to feel comfortable about the goal we set out to achieve.  Hang in there because many times what you do to “speed things along” is actually going to mess you up more.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEKS 8 & 7

• Get rid of miscellaneous foods now.  Anything you may have been eating that does not have as much “cluck for its buck”:  low carb tortillas, beans, lentils, corn, peas, sugar snap peas…etc.
• Focus on STarches such as steel cut oats, shredded wheat, oat bran as well as the usuals like yams and brown rice.
• Eliminate any tropical or dried fruit and focus more on the heavy hitters that have high vitamin impact.
• Cheat meal stays the same for now.
• There MUST be a rhythm in your dieting by now.  You cannot still be “getting it together” at this point.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW AT THIS POINT

• You will change in the mirror long before you will on the scale.  You will see the changes, but your weight may not reflect it.  That’s ok.
• You will not have very defined arms and abs right now because you still have a good amount of non essential foods in your diet.  But they are necessary for sanity, so leave them alone.
• Doing extra cardio may help you short term regarding your goal but will kill you long term in terms of maintaining.  Don’t add anything in extra.

“Have no fear of perfection–you’ll never reach it.”  Salvador Dali

With all this adoration comes something new that you didn’t think you would ever have:  pressure.   Suddenly, people are watching you everywhere you go.  Whether you realize it or not, they started watching you the first day you showed up to work with Tupperware and smelly food.  That fact that you ate often, on a schedule and you regularly turned down sweets at the office screamed, “I am doing something different.  Yoohoo!  Look at me diet.  Wooooohooooo! Here I am making you feel bad about my choices.”

“Hawk eyes” begin to pop up here and there.  These are women whose x-ray vision is so keen for weight loss changes you would think they were part of some government agency specially trained for enemy warfare via the human body.  Their noses have been trained to pick up as little as a 2 pound weight loss and their eyeballs are calibrated in grams—not even pounds.  And they will make you feel like they are supporting you the whole way but you kinda feel like they are waiting for you to fail.  The sad thing is—some are.  But not all of them.  A few of them are encouraging family members and friends who want to support you on your new endeavor which makes you feel like you’re not just dieting for yourself but for them, as well.  Pressure.  It’s mounting.  You’re getting closer to the goal date and the expectations are growing.    You wonder…

Am I changing enough?

{Pinching something somewhere no one can see} What about this?  I need to lose “this”.

I am not changing fast enough.  I won’t make it.

There is a voice that pops up in your head about four to five weeks from whatever thing you are dieting for that starts to taunt you.  It says you can’t do this.  It says even if you do “do” this you still won’t look good.  It says that you won’t be able to maintain it so why bother.  It says that you have never done anything right, why will you now.  This voice is adept at getting to your core.  It knows your weak spots.  It’s going to bring up every bad memory that you can think of and when that doesn’t work, it starts threatening you with new ones.  Things that aren’t even related to dieting become the focus of your anxiety.  If you don’t make goal, you won’t get that promotion at the office.  Your husband will figure out you can’t achieve anything you set your mind to therefore he’s probably wondering how you really parent the kids.  The women at the park where you bring your kids won’t want to talk to you if you can’t make your goal.  They’ll laugh at you behind your back and not invite you to things.  Pressure.  Irrational pressure. All of it from you, almost none of it from outside forces.

Our pressure is different than that of other dieters.  We are not trying to attain a waif like body that is gaunt and thin and it is not weight loss “at all costs” either.  We treasure our muscles and love our shape—we just want that shape to be without the ripples and the dimples.   Therefore, when mainstream magazines and shows talk about diet pressure, we tune them out thinking that we don’t qualify.  And we don’t, or at least not with that type of pressure.  But we are type A folks; high achievers.  We get ‘er done and we do it efficiently.  We also want to be recognized for doing so.  Gradually, this goal represents a whole lot more than it did on the onset.  It becomes the litmus for whether we are getting married, graduating college, going to the moon and so on.   And then because of that, it becomes the goal that must happen because there is nothing else.  It’s ‘going down’ because there’s way too many people involved now and too many people know.  Pulling out now means failure everywhere.  Not making goal means failure everywhere.  The saddest thing about this is none of this really matters.  None of it.  The hawk eyes will always be just that—hawk eyes.  And if we weren’t doing this with dieting, we’d be doing this with something else so why can’t we just ease up?

Man, if we thought this was bad, wait til we add in competition from our family and friends.  Oh boy.  Let me know below what your experience has been like with not letting yourself off the hook.  I think we can all relate to this one.  See you tomorrow.  Woop woop!:o)

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I love new beginnings and not because I am a poor finisher of things, although I am sure that has some kind of bearing because it typically means whatever it is that I am starting requires a new notebook or journal and possibly a new set of pens.  You have no idea how deep this love goes of journals and pens but I am sure you are getting a sense.  Regardless, new starts represent a new chance to finish well and when it comes to dieting for 12 weeks, that is something we want to do.

To ensure we finish well, I will split this into 2 separate cities pieces where the mechanics such as “the guidelines” and the things to think about are on top and the emotional piece that plagues us throughout the diet is on the bottom.  The former will have very little dialogue during this series.  I will be doing something like this again and when I do, I may say then why I do what I do and why this works so well (because it does work so well).  The latter is all about me yapping away so get ready for me to dig up in our egos and not-so-good thoughts while dieting.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEKS 12 TO 9:

• Open up your diet so that your choices are pretty much ANY food that is whole and natural.  ANYTHING.
• Tightly monitor caloric intake by measuring  and weighing everything.  This is for the first 3 weeks only.  Even veteran dieters!
• Cals are on point if there is hunger at bed time.  Not starvation.  Hunger.  You cannot measure this accurately until the second week.
• Shut down all nibbles.  Create a menu first.  Not a food diary…a menu.  If it’s not on the menu, don’t eat it.
• Make sure you have Starch in your diet at this point.  STarchless too soon KILLS your results.
• No cheat meal until end of second week.

PITFALLS

• Expectations are out of whack.  We covered this last series.
• Pollyanna view of either ‘this super fun thing to do b/c we have a cooler and Lulu’s that match it’ or ‘it’s unbelievably dreadful and why-can’t-you-understand-what-I’m-going-through, for-Heaven’s-sake-I’m-dieting.’   Yeah…we’re avoiding both of those mindsets.
• We start where we left off.  WRONG!!  Everything needs to be new.  Do not “re-package” what you ate last week and call it a diet this week.

“Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.”  Raquel Welch

Adoration is a double edged sword that is sharp in both directions of cut.  When dieting, it comes in the form of endless attention and questions about what we are doing and how we are doing it.

“How did you get your arms that way?”

“How many days a week do you workout?”

“So tell me what you eat on this so-called diet.”

The onslaught doesn’t start right away but about 6 to 7 weeks into your program you can tell you are doing more than just a regular diet.  I think when this occurs we all have mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand, it feels good to garner so much attention.  We may not be able to see the changes, but someone does and it motivates us to keep on suffering through the chicken, turkey and tuna.  Furthermore, they see the changes enough to react so strongly and we think ‘wow’.  Suddenly we have a pep in our step and the world is an ok place to be.  Our confidence is boosted, our mortgage is paid, we just found $10 in a coat from the winter—heck…life is good.

On the other hand, it is toxic.  First of all, it is more intense and powerful in nature from those that are amazed than if you were just “regular dieting”.  You are not just getting smaller, you are getting ripped.  Your body is changing in ways you didn’t even know it could change.  Muscles in the shoulder, veins in the forearms and little lines in the belly are all signs that your work is paying off and to them, this is just as new as it is for you so they want in.  As far as they’re concerned, you’re holding out. You have some secret they need to know about and regardless of whether you are busy or not, it has now become your responsibility to ‘fess up.  I have been at barbecues, weddings and other social events that I attended to enjoy myself and mingle and have been pinned in a corner by someone who wanted to know everything about what I was doing to look that way. Intrusive is not a strong enough word.  Obnoxious rolls on the tongue a little…

Second, you don’t just receive their compliments and overt adulation as the outside of you looking good.  You receive them as if the inside of you is looking good, too.  You are being validated.  Whatever quirk you may not like about yourself has just flown out the window because you don’t just look good; you. look. good.   Depression, sadness, loneliness, rejection, financial worries, jacked up relationships, family tension, boredom and a going nowhere job have just been eradicated in one weekend of over-the-top compliments.  None of that matters right now.   All that matters is that they keep noticing because you are on a high right now—a very dangerous one, but a high nonetheless.

Your workouts are stronger and your dieting seems easier.  Turning down the treats is not very hard because of your iron clad will that suddenly showed up via UPS.  At the beginning you couldn’t even walk by a Panera bread without licking the window, now you’re baking treats for your kid’s school party because you have that much confidence in yourself and your abilities to shut down the cravings.  And it is at this time that we make the mistake of believing that we are doing this.  That we are in control and have somehow mastered the carb demon that seems to live in so many of us women.  It is here we move from confident to cocky even if we don’t show it.  We may never show it but we make this conclusion in our mind that we have arrived.   That we’re special.  Disciplined.  Admired.  Strong.  And because of those things, somehow…better.

I look forward to hearing how this series is for you.  If you have any questions about the diet portion, hit me up below.  And you know I’d love to know if you ever experienced any of the adoration portion, as well.  Til we meet again.  Woop woop!!

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When I thought about this topic I envisioned going into detail about what it is like to diet for 12 weeks and to describe what you were going through week by week alongside the diet.  I will do something like that eventually but that’s not what this developed into.  Instead, I realized I was more interested in how we are affected by the act of dieting hard core for any length of time while laying out a 12 week program for you.  If you have never done one before, this will give you an idea of what one looks like.  If you have done one, this is a great refresher on the fundamentals.  Mixing both emotions with form and function is hard so please bear with me as we enter into this series together.  The emotion is not one-to-one with what’s going on in the diet because they overlap as the diet moves forward whereas the diet, itself, is a linear progression.

Before delving into the topic head on, it is imperative to discuss the use of the word “diet”.  Any time we set out on a journey to achieve something in regards to our body, whether it is to lose weight, lose body fat or change our appearance in any way through the consumption of food, I refer to that as dieting.  I use the word as a verb:  “I diet clients” or “we diet down toward a goal”.  I find that that terminology can really mess some folks up because we associate that word as a state of being that we are always in because we are typically depriving ourselves of something somewhere.  I call that living life and do not want you to confuse the two.

Dieting is personal.  Every aspect of it is an invasion into your personal space that exposes your private weaknesses, insecurities, deepest desires and biggest fears.  When we first embark on the diet all we care about is the outcome.  We are no more interested in how it may affect our mental health or any hidden pitfalls than we are in the current presidential debates.  We want to be down X amount of pounds or that much tighter at the end of the journey and we don’t think too much more about the process even though we are about to open ourselves up to endless scrutiny.  Once we start our program, our friends watch us, our co-workers watch us, our spouses watch us and we even watch us.  (There are those times, though, when we hope no one is watching such as when we dig the peanut butter jar out of the trash because we just have to have one more tablespoon since we threw it away for the same reason.  Did I just put that in print?)  Public examination is to be expected but it takes on a whole new meaning when we set out to make dramatic changes in how we look.

Weight Watchers, The Zone, South Beach and so on are what I call “general public” diets.  And here, they are a noun.  They make you smaller but they do not necessarily change the way you look.  I know at some point we have all dieted the standard way, made goal and then thought, “I look the exact same as I did before I started only I am just a little bit smaller.”  For lots of “general public” folk that’s a great outcome, for us, though—not so much.  As a result, we entered into the world of clean eating not knowing what to expect or whether it would really change the way we look but we knew it was worth the shot.  Well, it not only changed the way we look, it drew more attention to ourselves than if we walked naked down the street covered only by a fig leaf and a ferret.   Moreover, we began drawing women to us like flies to fly paper armed with more questions than those annoying questionnaires you get at first time doctor visits.

If you were seeking to draw a lot of attention to yourself, guess what—it worked.  But for most of us, that’s not what we wanted.  Somehow we wanted to look really good in a ‘don’t look at me’ sort of way.  What we initially wanted was to just feel good in our clothes by having tight abs and a bum that could support our jeans.  We were a little tired of moving the pooch out of the way to button our pants or finding our bums still touching the chair when we stood up.  We also wanted a goal worth shooting for.  Something that said we did more than just the average dieter as well as prove to ourselves that we could put our minds to something and stick with it.  We weren’t asking for the world and we certainly didn’t sign up to be instant celebrities at our workplace although that is what we became.  So what didn’t we take into consideration when we first started this journey?  Adoration, pressure, competition, unwarranted comments and fear.

As the diet unfolds, so will the emotional drama.  I hope you will stay connected for the next few days as we set out what a 12 week diet entails and discuss the emotional impact of all of our changes.  I’ll brush you up on the guidelines if you are rusty and firmly establish them if you are new.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you all.  If you have any thoughts already or are looking for me to cover something in particular, let me know.  Either leave me a comment below or hit me up via email at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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I feel less than truthful.  Well, maybe that’s a little over the top but I feel obligated to let you know what I am all about.  Not Jodiojo or MP4, etc, although ultimately they end up being one in the same, but me.  Jodi.  The psycho woman with the big afro and personality to match.

Many of you have been allowing me into your minds/homes/lives for years and the trust level you have with me is astonishing, and at times unnerving, but that trust is what has allowed me to be as open with you as I have been.  Whether I am sharing about my personal experiences or my work in general, they are directly tied to me.   Every day I put them out to be read, inspected, surveyed and basically judged by those I do know and those I don’t.  Essentially it is the same thing you do with me when you first work me so I am not saying any of this to garner self pity.  I, instead, pray that you read on and see where I am going with this.

I would be lying to you if I tried to say that teaching/coaching/blogging is easy.  At times, this can be paralyzing because as a group fitness instructor turned personal trainer turned mommy turned coach I have lived my life publicly, although I am one of the most private people you will ever meet.  My body, my thoughts, my creativity and my work are all subject to immediate judgment and unlike your average employee who is brought in for a yearly review, I receive mine in real time from many different “bosses”–not always in the kindest ways.  Imagine the emotion of a 5 year old who works diligently on a craft so that he/she could hand it over to whomever for them to say, “Good job”.  That’s a crucial moment that can really crush a kid’s spirit if given the chance.  I lived that way.  I am a super softy who used to wear their heart on their sleeve.  It took nothing to rattle my cage even though you would never ever know or ever think that I had that kind of emotional capacity.  But as I continue to understand myself and women as a whole, more and more I realize how silly this has been all these years.  We cannot, and should not be governed by what others think of us.  We’ll go crazy if we do.

I serve the lean community; those of us who aspire to have a body that is worthy of nakedness.  I have been doing so for 15 years now.  On paper it is a great goal to have but in reality, it can be very caustic.  A goal is never bad in and of itself (assuming it’s legal and not socially awkward), it’s what we become to get the goal that’s the bad part and being fit can have that affect on us.   Debilitating control, daunting rituals and endless comparing can suck all the life out of a great endeavor and make it like a millstone grinding us down to a nub.  We’re not happy until we get there and then when we do get there, we’re still not happy.  So when I think about what I am being party to, I constantly have to remind myself that yes I am here to get you from A to B.   I am here to make you laugh, because we all need to laugh these days.  I am here to keep you safe while dieting because it’s a jungle out there.  And while all of these are well and good, they’re not my absolute, true goal for you which is why I feel less than truthful today.

When I realized how silly it was for me to allow others to decide how my day was going to go, I also remembered how *real* the pain was.  Even though I didn’t want to feel that way, I couldn’t ignore how real it was.  Rejection is reality.  It’s how the world operates.  Feeling exposed is definitely not fun and most of us have grown up with some adult making us feel less than special at some point in our lives.   Thus we walk around proving ourselves constantly through our jobs, our personal belongings, our relationships and without a doubt…our bodies.  Our actions scream “I am important.  Look at what I have done.”  The crazy thing is one day we realize that no one is listening to us shout because they themselves are shouting and life has become one big shout fest.

I cringe at the thought of coming off “preachy” but I need to let you know that that’s not what I want here.  I do not want us to shout in any capacity.  Do I want us to have healthy bodies?  Heck yeah!  Do I want us to be happy with the work that we have done in the kitchen and in the gym?  You betcha!  But when I sit down to write that’s not what I’m thinking about.  I’m thinking, “How can I relay this information in a way that’s fun to read and educational but drives the point home that leanness is just a lifestyle—not an answer.”  It is not going to solve world peace or change the economy and it certainly isn’t going to make people like or accept you more.  If they do, run from them because they are not the ones you want in your life long term anyways.  I know you are thinking, “I read all this to get to that point? Really?”  and I am going to tell you yes.  Because I know firsthand that we can think we know things in our minds and yet, be thoroughly betrayed by our hearts.  We need to live this lifestyle because we feel good doing so and because it makes sense to us, but not because we are proving to whomever that we are somebody now that we have a ‘hot body’.

There is no doubt that this is going to affect how I write and what I write about.  All of us here at Jodiojo think like this on a personal level, not just on a company level so I know they are all nodding their heads as they read along.  This is important for me to point out because when I go into my series on goals or on body types, if you don’t understand where I am coming from you’ll have a hard time picking up what I’m putting down.  I also want you to understand my mindset when I write a post because I can be blunt, funny and loving all at the same time and I never want you to forget the loving part. Reading the truth is not always comfortable.  We need to understand our motives for things since that’s what drives us during a 45 min. cardio session whether we realize it or not.

It is rare for me to pose for a picture so this was a huge gem of a find on my hubby’s computer.  I had dubious motives back then, let me tell you.  Sad thing is I still own those shoes.  I very low maintenance.

Ok, I have blathered on long enough.  I’m not sure what series I am going through next but it will be a deep one because clearly I’m in that sort of mood.  Keep your hands in the ride until we come to a complete stop ladies.  This could get ugly.  Woop woop!

Obviously I have a wise-guy side to me and I occasionally let her loose.  But just as much as I can joke about dieting, I can switch up real quick and become serious about it.  This is one of those days.

January marks a time when we make statements like ‘this is my year’ and ‘I’m not going to be X anymore’ and so on.  It’s a time of declaration of absolutes and professing our allegiance to steadfast mindsets that may or may not be healthy.  We feel the pressure of the world bearing down on us to be healthier, have a better body, fulfill our bucket lists and ‘get-er-done’.  Suddenly we look back on the year in regret instead of thankfulness; disdain instead of pleasure.  As great as Facebook and Twitter are in terms of keeping us connected to our great aunt once removed who lives in Alaska, they are caustic to our self esteem and inner peace because of the constant conflicting chatter that seems to remind us every day how much we have failed.  Everyone seems more successful than us and everyone certainly has a better body.  Somehow, we missed the boat yet again so this is the year that we don’t miss it.  This is the year that we’ll maintain our weight all year long or get those ab lines that we desire.  But as those thoughts circulate in your mind, I ask you quietly, “At what cost?”

Being lean is more than just suffering for the cause.  It’s more than a secret society of really tough chics who talk big talk.  Get on any forum right about now and you have girls lamenting about how hard it is to work out day in and day out and if only the general public adopted their level of discipline.  OH how the world would be different and no one understands how hard it is to workout and diet like they do. If you listen to that long enough, you’re going to begin to think you don’t do enough.  That you’re not good enough.  That you need to diet a little harder, a little longer, lose a little more and so on.  The problem with this is that they are headed down a dark road that has almost no healthy way of return and you are now headed down that road with them, but faster.

I get it that as women we need support.  If we didn’t this blog wouldn’t exist.  But let’s make sure that what we are seeking from the internet is in fact support.  Finding likeminded individuals is key to our survival and making sure we are up on the latest diet/research information is a must.  Sharing successes and woes is a part of this lifestyle as well as subscribing to all the magazines that support clean eating and living.  But there is a limit and that limit is reached when the rhetoric becomes acerbic and you are no longer making decisions based on solid feedback from your pictures/stats/coach but on insecure comparisons coming from the web.  There will always be those louder-than-normal leaders of the pack that update more than the Wall St. ticker tape, post more pics than the Wonderwall website and claim more success than Ed McMahon out patrolling with a cardboard check so don’t allow them to change who you are and how you do things.  They are doing all that because they themselves are insecure.  You hopping in and joining means you are trying to out “insecure” them.  It’s craziness.  Whatever path your diet takes you on, stick with it until you have credible information that says otherwise.  Whatever you originally intended to lose, stick with it unless you have an objective third party say to you, “No, you should lose more.”  Write down all the goals that you want to achieve now and then have them validated by someone sane before you go to put them into action.  I’m telling you, many a metabolism has been broken during this fragile time.

One of the main objectives of this blog and of Jodiojo as a company is to keep you safe and healthy while dieting.  I have given you my story, I have spared you my pain.  Extreme dieting (my downfall), fat burners, questionable ergogenic aids and eventually, hardcore substances, may seem so foreign to you at this moment.  But when you get knee deep in dieting, say mid February, and you have not lost a pound because this is the second, third or maybe fourth time you are “dieting” to get lean, they will become quite attractive to you and I am here to scream “Get your head out of your behind, girl, and get some sense in your head!”.    Here is the way it may play out for you this year:

TWENTY SOMETHING

The majority of your weight is lower body but the more you lose/gain you begin to see that it shifts.  This is a good thing.  You will be slow to lose in the beginning, but it will become more rapid by the end.  Do not come out the gate at full blast.  Increase cardio as you go through your program with it peaking by 8 weeks into your program.  Anything sooner and you’ll screech to a halt.  On average, 1.2 pounds/week will be lost but it won’t come off linearly like that.  It’ll come off in spurts but by the end of 12 weeks, you can be down 14 pounds safely without major rebound.

THIRTY SOMETHING

You are not much different than the 20 something girls except you lose a bit slower.  You average about 0.9 pounds per week with a total weight loss of 11 pounds in 12 weeks without having to kill yourself.  You clean up your lower body faster at this age as this is the ultimate muscle building time.

FORTY SOMETHING AND BEYOND

I made the mistake of not saying and beyond the other day and all my 50 something ladies beat me up in my email.  First, I had no idea there were that many of you reading and second, I will never make that mistake again. In terms of weight loss, though, it is slower.  Much much slower.  The cool thing is you do not lose as much muscle dieting as you do in your 30’s, the crappy thing is that you lose 0.67 pounds per week with a total weight loss of 8 pounds in 12 weeks.  And for some of you, you might have to kick up the intensity to make sure that that happens.

For all age groups, you must:

• Keep your diet open in the beginning and then begin to take away choices as you go along.  Taking out too much too soon stifles progress.

• Increase intensity as the weeks go by.  Do not start your program where you last left off.  Big mistake.

• If you have only had a few months off from dieting, don’t start now.  Wait.  You need at least 4 months in between major dieting programs to achieve any kind of results.  If you start too soon you will stunt your progress and truly frustrate yourself.

• You will not lose weight doing less than what you did before so do not expect much in the beginning of your program.  Give it time for your body to respond.

We owe it to ourselves to do it the right way since we have come this far.  Protect that blessed vessel that you have been gifted with by making sound, prudent decisions during this time of transition.  Honor your health with common sense and emotional well being.  If you need someone to chat with, hit me up.  I’m always around.

Last up…skinny fat.  This is a tough one but shorter than all the rest.  If you see anything not covered but would like more info, let me know below in the comment section.  Woop woop!

I think one of the things that plague us as women is constantly wondering if what we are doing is enough.  Honestly, I could also go so far as to say it is just constantly wondering X and then you insert the fear here (x=if I’m good enough, if I’m the only one who…, if I’ll ever be…) but that’s been brought up here so I’m going to be more specific today in referring to if what we are doing measures up to “enough”.

The obvious question here is enough for what?  Enough for weight loss?  Enough for muscle gain?  And boy is this a tough question to have you answer just off the cuff.  If I ask you ‘enough for what’,  you will say in one breath that you want to get lean, add muscle, be more athletic and have 2 babies all before lunch time.  And I have learned not to be so silly as to say, “Which one means the most to you?”, because that question opens up a one hour dialogue about the meaning of life that you were not ready to answer thereby sending you into a tail spin (and me for a drink).   I’m not going to do that today so you can calm down and keep reading.  I am sure you did a nose dive under your table getting ready to rock back and forth in fetal position fearing one my probing moments with you (unless you’ve never spoken with me before and then you’re an innocent victim waiting to be had by one of my conversations. Hehe…) but I can assure you that is not the point of this.  Today is all about defining—but you know me…this may go further after that—and the next few posts are about the actual guidelines.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT HERE?

First, let me just say before I even begin to talk about what’s enough, no whining!  NONE.  I already know the texts, calls and emails are about to follow when I put this out here that ask me, “Do I really have to do all that?”  Yes.  You do.  Now knock it off.  What?  Do you think I’m writing for some sick sadist side of me that needs appeasing?  I’ll admit I have my days but for the love of all that’s holy I’d never put those days in print.  So, yes, you must do all to get what I am saying—if you are the genetically average.   If you have anything exceptional in your genes, then you need to “chew the meat and spit out the fat” as they say as to what pertains to you or not.  But other than that, there is no compromise.

Second, I am going to break this down by goal and within each goal I am going to further delineate it by age group.  For instance, I may give a general over view of what ‘building’ is and then go into what that looks like for a 40-50 year old, a 30-40 year old and a twenty something because it is dramatically different for all three.   If you are 45 and think you want to “build” like a 20 year old, you’re in for a big disappointment and most likely major weight gain in the process.  Our needs are different and need to be acknowledged as being different.

Lastly, I’m going to do this in a way that is very different from what you are probably used to seeing.  I promise to be somewhat technical, but I’m mostly going to be realistic.  Meaning that I want you to know what it really looks like to put these goals in action.   The burnout, the discipline required, the places you could awry, potential weight gain and other issues that crop up when we put this into effect.   They are way more important than any technical information and let me give you an idea of what this looks like:

Say I am talking about building muscle.  Most women think that you just lift heavy for 12 weeks and then you build a ton of muscle.  Seriously, I have people say I want to build my shoulders this winter.  Um…good luck with that.  It takes a whole lot more than a winter to build great shoulders.  But they’ve read somewhere that they need to eat X amount of calories more and set their lifting up in such a way that they get the max recovery and take advantage of the EPOC and so on.  Good info for sure and I will certainly have some of that info in there, as well, but I will also have a whole section called “Walking This Out”.  This section forces you to think about the emotional cost of gaining weight over the winter and all that comes with a building program.  It sounds romantic and fun when presented as this “amazing 12-week program to shape you”, it’s a whole other thing when you are at your holiday Christmas party up 10 pounds and feeling puffy.  At that point, you couldn’t care less about your shoulders and you are more worried that someone’s going to shoot your picture and put it in the company newsletter.

ARE YOU JUST GOING TO DEPRESS ME?

No!  Let me say this as nicely as I can… NO, now stop looking for an excuse to stop pursuing your goal!  Why are our New Year’s Resolutions never successful?  (Besides the fact that people bite off more than they can chew and the whole concept in and of itself is so cliché…) Because we do not count the cost ahead of time.  Some of us rush out into excitement and hop on the latest and greatest fad but that’s not normally the clean eating community.  For us it is more like whatever we choose we choose it because it is solving that current problem.  “If I just lose some body fat, I’ll be able to fit into my jeans and then I’ll be happy…”  But then in the middle of that quest, you realize that toting all your food around and not going to social functions made you more unhappy than the ten pounds you wanted to lose in the first place so you end up abandoning that goal in midstride.  For every goal you abandon, there is a closet in your mind that opens up and accepts that failure and piles it on top of all the others and then just when you need confidence the most—the door pops open and reminds you just how good you aren’t.  Let’s avoid that this year by knowing what we’re getting into when we set our goals and then putting the appropriate things in place to deal with the drawbacks.

For instance, in the case above we would talk about short term pain vs. long term gain.  What does it matter what people thought of you (and I really make you answer this and warning: it can be eye opening) and truth be told, you being 10 pounds up is still better than 80% of the office staff so why the worry.   When you think this through BEFORE you get to the party and BEFORE you put the goal in motion, it changes the entire situation and you are able to deal with it head on instead of being blindsided by it while holding a shrimp cocktail in your hand.

How about we get on with it already then?  Look forward to this being my next mini-series and I hope you enjoy.  I am not sure that I will start it tomorrow or Monday but you know if you are signed up on my blog or if you get me via RSS, you will be notified.   Until we meet again, start pondering ‘what’s the goal?’.  Cool?  WOOP WOOP!:o)