Before I delve into how our girl is a survivor and how she is much smarter in her attempts to diet, I want to back track a bit to yesterday’s post.  Under Stalemate, I mentioned a bevy of things our girl was no longer sticking to like she did the first time around and I failed to mention how important that was.  When we diet the second time, third time and even fourth time around, we become less and less detail oriented.  We excuse more and more of our indiscretions but yet we look for the exact same results that we had when we were following the plan to a T.  As soon as we realize that we are not progressing like we did before, we then use that as a weapon of mass destruction against ourselves, our purpose, our success in life, our relationships and so on.  So we do it half heartedly but judge it whole heartedly.  It’s a bad combo.  What can we learn from that?

Myth: We are really on point while dieting even though we’re not tracking anything or fully adhering to anything.

Fact: We know when we are on fire and we know when we are going through the motions.  We are not disappointed with the plan when we do not get results—secretly we know we shouldn’t have any.  We are actually disappointed with ourselves because we cannot stay focused.

Failing forward: The longer we diet, the better we get at knowing when to start a plan and when to cry ‘uncle’.  Much like learning how to separate emotion from the task at hand, knowing when to start a diet and knowing when to wait is an art in and of itself but it can be done.  We begin to learn that there is a difference to committing to a plan and “cleaning up our act”.  The latter is best used when it is not a good idea to diet but staying where you are is not a good idea either.

Won the Battle, Lost the War

She reached goal, folks, and you would think that she would be excited but she’s not.  In fact, not only is she not excited, she’s actually panicked about it.  For her to make goal she had to do a bunch of things with her diet and workouts she wasn’t exactly prepared to do and now doesn’t know how to back out of them.  For one thing, she does cardio 2 times a day, 7 days a week and has no idea how to back out of that.  She also eats less than 1000 cals per day, no fat, no cheat meal and hasn’t seen a starch for weeks.  She’s exhausted, cranky, weather beaten and bitter because this isn’t what she had in mind when she first started dieting.  She feels sort of trapped.  On the one hand, she loves her body but on the other hand, she feels like a slave to it and can’t imagine keeping the pace she is at indefinitely.

Myth: Maintenance is hard.  It is actually easier than you think but our girl is confused right now.  She does not realize that the only reason she is in this spot is because she forced a situation in the first place.

Fact: The longer you are at a weight, the more you *own* it.  It will take more to make you gain weight as time goes on and you will do less and less to maintain it.

Failing forward: Eventually we begin to learn that we can’t just *stop* things.  We begin to see that there is a method to this madness and that a slow taper will keep our results while we lighten the burden on our bodies.   As we do this, we start to learn what’s a trigger food, what causes us to have insomnia, what’s the least we can do and still sane and what’s the most we can do and not collapse from exhaustion.

The Smoke is Clearing

Flash forward a year and our girl is doing ok.  Not great, just ok.  She has much to learn about being lean and staying lean but seems to be up for the lessons.  She rebounded again from the last diet she did but nowhere like she did the first time.  The second rebound was about 7 pounds and the manic frenzy of eating was not nearly as dramatic as before.  However, she noticed that her body on a whole is different, her weight distribution is not close to being the same and she is developing acne for the first time in her adult life.  Something is up but she’s not sure what.

Myth: We just diet, get lean and all else stays the same.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Fact: If you want to maintain this lifestyle long term, you need to get smarter about what you are doing to your body being this lean.  There are good and bad consequences and you should know what they all are.

Failing forward: With as much drama that comes with every diet, we look better each and every time we do it.  Our weight distribution tends to even out, our body composition changes more favorably and we have less and less mood swings when done the right way.   However, when it’s not done the right way we can develop disordered eating patterns, burn ourselves out and go the complete opposite direction of health and wellness and head down a long dark corridor of confusion and disillusionment.  Failing forward is the right way.  By giving ourselves permission to not be perfect, not always be on a plan, gain a few pounds here and there and like working out for other reasons than how we look, we begin to embrace this as a lifestyle instead of a means to an end.  What I would love for us to see on a whole is that every week of your diet is a learning experience—not a test.  Therefore, you are there to take notes…not score a 100.  If you look at your dieting in this light, it will change the way you react when you “can’t get everything right”.

I wrap this all up tomorrow on audio.  I have some things I want to say more than write so I hope you meet me there.  In the mean time, get off your back and cut yourself some slack.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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…may make or keep you fat.

Meet Fat Fox.  He’s my daughter’s stuffed animal who has turned my house upside down.  We have arguments over whose turn it is to hang out with Fat Fox.  He’s the man.  However, when you think you *look* like Fat Fox, that’s not cool.  Especially if you’re orange.  That’s a bronzer issue.

You would be amazed at how much you really do not know about losing weight or being lean.  The whole ‘cals in vs cals out’ thing?  Nonsense.  The no starch but ‘healthy veggie carb’ thing—only a matter of time before you find a bunch of insulin resistant folks out there because of this misinformation.  The ‘lean’ craze that hit everyone who eats meat about 10 years or so ago—holy helpless hormones, Batman, we’re beginning to see the effects of that surface now.  Our girl is no different in what she thought about dieting.  What she thought to be fact is actually fallacy and now the struggle begins.

Back in the Battle

About a month after Armageddon, our girl is ready to get back to dieting.  She’s officially disgusted with herself.  Mirrors?  Thing of the past.  No, our girl is not dressing up anymore or wearing her cute gym clothes, she’s in a baseball cap, black baggie sweatpants and a too big T shirt.  She’s switched gyms because there is no way she can go back to her old gym and face anybody a month after her glorious goal date.  It’s too fresh and raw for her.  So she joined a gym on the other side of town and got back into the swing of things.

Failing forward: You will never rebound with the same magnitude again.  You may rebound again, but it will not be as great as the first time.  Changing gyms is extreme and really speaks to the severity of insecurity our girl had.  However, some of us wished we had changed gyms but stuck it out anyways.   What our girl is really suffering from is the fall from the top.  I’ve alluded to this here.  I will tackle it for real some day in a longer post, just know it’s coming.

Watching Grass Grow

The second time around is nothing like the first.  Nothing.  First, it’s hard to get that fight in your spirit again.  You know how hard it’s going to be.  You know how much you’re going to have to give up for it again and you’re not sure you want to.  There’s also no romance left to this battle:  the little nuances of seeing the body change, the cool reaction of all your friends when they would see you and not knowing what all the phases of dieting would be like so you looked forward to each one.  Second, it is WAAAAAAAYYYYYYY harder to lose weight each and every time you diet.  If you lost 2 pounds per week the first time around, you’ll lose 2 pounds per 2 weeks and possibly 3 weeks the second time around.  It’s hard.  It’s laborious.  It’s like watching grass grow.  So here’s our girl…miserable, heavier than her initial weight and profoundly disillusioned.

Myth: Many girls believe they have “metabolic damage” at this point and that’s why they cannot lose weight.  That’s not exactly true although they have jacked up their hormones which is what’s causing the delay in weight loss.

Fact: This is going to sound insane, but if you want to try and lose weight right after a rebound, you need to at least start with a re-feed of some sort and then s-l-o-w-l-y start to diet again.

Failing forward: At this point, patience is a virtue and we seasoned dieters tend to understand this.  We do not look for progress the first 4 weeks or so and instead, give our bodies time to get back into the groove.  Learning to separate our emotions from the task at hand is not easy and takes a good amount of practice and emotional fortitude.  But going for the gusto here would do more harm than good so she has to ride out this storm in slow motion.

Stalemate

Eight weeks in and our girl weighs 2 pounds less than when she started.  She picked up right where she left off and can’t understand why the scale isn’t moving.  Yes, she’s had a few breakdowns here and there.  A whole pint of ice cream, a few days of endless nibbles, some cookies and a few other indiscretions not worth mentioning but that shouldn’t be enough to stop her progress, right?  She’s missed the gym a few times, too, and she doesn’t keep track as well as before but she’s still in the gym 7 days a week so what gives?  She also doesn’t measure what she’s eating and she has the meal plan memorized so she knows what she’s eating every day so whatever.  She’s on it…yes?

Myth: Picking up where you left off will give you the results you had before.  Somehow you think your body should just snap back in place because you’re back to eating the same boring chicken and tasteless green beans.

Fact: You didn’t start off your first plan at 7 days a week and no condiments, why would you start there now?  Torturing yourself does not make your body conform faster.

Failing forward: We begin to discover the tricks of the trade and what really produces change in our bodies.  We do not lose weight because we exercise and eat right, we lose weight when we cause a *change* in the body great enough to elicit a response from it.  If you’re used to running 5 miles a day, you will not all of a sudden start losing weight doing so just because you declared yourself on a diet.  You must do something different or more to elicit that weight loss response from your body.  As we mature as dieters, we begin to realize this by actually backing off from dieting when we really do not need to.  This keeps us from having to go on 10 calorie diets and run a ½ marathon every day for cardio.

We’ll pick her saga up tomorrow when she finally gets to where she wants to go but now finds maintenance about as fun as getting a colonic with a central vacuum attachment.  More to come! Woop woop!!:o)

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I began this series by pointing out the four phases of dieting which are success, rebound, dieting after rebound and maintenance.  Each phase has a unique characteristic of struggle associated with it that is present with almost all dieters when they are in that particular phase.  As we mature as dieters through experience (both positive and negative), we slowly but surely learn to fail forward.  These phases and their quirks no longer bring us down and we begin to make it through the obstacles faster.  Some of us do it by learning and some of us do it by adapting.  The latter is not healthy and if I remember, I will talk about this at the end of the series.  If not, it’ll come up again I’m sure and I’ll make you aware of it then.  Today, however, is dedicated to the characteristics of the rebound phase and how detrimental it can be.   Our girl did go on vaca and gain a few pounds, but it didn’t end there.  She came home and really sealed the deal.

Ok…so this is a hobby horse but you get the point.

Unpacking

It’s been 3 days since she’s landed back home and to say things have gotten worse is an understatement.  At first it was all about ‘just feeling better’:  you know…stop the bloat, eat healthy and feel ‘clean’ again.  But no matter how much she wanted that, she couldn’t stop eating junk.  Lots. And lots. Of junk.  Suddenly she hates chicken and the way it feels on her teeth when she chews.  And she loathes the smell of tuna fish from a can although she’ll eat it from a packet.  And don’t even mention cottage cheese! OY!  Amid all this repulsion of good food, is this strong desire to eat ANY kind of bad food.  Chips in any form, chocolate, bread, ice cream and peanut butter is all she had on hand when she first came home and that wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught.  She went out to dinner with friends and killed a bottle of wine by herself AFTER she ate the bread basket, all the oil that came with it and the dessert she ordered.  And this was all in the first three days!!  As she unpacked her clothes, she sat in shock of how much she’s packed in her mouth in 72 hours and the pounds keep adding up.

Myth: We have control over our eating and when we don’t it’s a lack of will power.  This is true if you’re talking about turning down dessert not when your dessert starts on one end of the kitchen cabinets and ends on the other.

Fact: If she does not intervene, this will not “just end”.  This will go on for a good amount of time.  For some it’s weeks, for others it’s months.

Failing Forward: Our girl will soon learn that when the sugar monster shows up, he must be tamed by the FAT guy.  Good fat silences the sugar demon.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this.

Stressing

When the initial smoke cleared from her free-for-all, our girl mistakenly thought it was ‘safe to go back in the water’ and 2 days after the first eating spree ended, the second one began.  This one was less fervent and far more insidious because instead of her eating a ton of junk endlessly, now she ate really well all day but then lost it at night.  Or she would have a crappy breakfast, great lunch, no dinner and a box of junior mints to top off the day.  She didn’t know how to eat and she didn’t know how to stop the onslaught.  She feels bigger than she ever did before she even started dieting and now she’s out of control.  What the????????

Myth: Now that I eat healthy, I’ll never go back to eating crap again.

Fact: We are driven by emotion, not by health.  If you think you eat the way that you do because of health, you have another thing coming in way of revelation.

Failing forward: Stick to eating small meals often even if they are not super clean.  When this goes down, give up the rigidity of rules or you’ll hold yourself down longer than need be.

Lamenting

Now what?  Why go through all that dieting only to end up here?  Our girl feels trapped.  Who can she tell?  Who would understand?  Better yet, who would care?  She has never felt so lonely before in her life.  This has got to stop.  This weekend is it, she decides.  I’m getting back on plan and I’m going to get this all off.

Myth: You can just get back on plan.  Good luck with that.  You’ll probably take a hostage by meal 2 and demand a ransom of a gallon of ice cream and some fudge sauce or you’re fleeing with your hostages.

Fact: Your issues at this point are out of your “will’s” control.  They are hormonal and emotional, there is no will in that.

Failing forward: If this ever happens to you, lose all structure.  Stop trying to conform to something and just accept that you are a hot mess and no amount of planning is going to fix that.  As soon as you let go, you’ll be more in control.

There’s more to this craziness.  Pull up a chair and stay tuned.  We need to talk about when she starts dieting again.

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I’m sure we’ve all had a little of what our girl went through on vacation at some point in our lives.  We may not have had it while on vacation, but we certainly had it in our everyday lives.  Slowly spiraling out of control is both physical and emotional;  knowing which one is which is imperative to moving forward while falling apart.

Do not diet into a vacation or honeymoon. There are two things we never think of when we diet but yet they kill us in terms of emotion and food choices:  cortisol (being crazy amped for weeks on end) and low estrogen (suddenly realizing you were craving a loaf of bread as you are *eating* the loaf of bread).  Planning for a vacation, emotionally investing ourselves into dieting and making sure everything is all set when we do finally go is exhausting and can really get our stress levels up.  When you finally come down off of your high, you are left with this gaping hole in your soul (emotion) that needs to be filled with bread.  Scary.  However, dieting all that time causes our estrogen levels to plummet the leaner we get thereby causing our bodies (physical) to scream for carbohydrate to temporarily raise our estrogen levels.  So for a good week or two after dieting we are always ready to launch a full out attack on anything that even looks like it could hold butter.

Failing forward:

• Plan your goal date at least 2 weeks before you are to go away on vacation.
• It will be hard to bring your emotions in line before then but it will be doable to bring your eating into maintenance before you go.  Eating more fat and minimal carbs during this time will help you to get past the uncontrollable munchies.
• Since you can’t keep the high from being high, you can keep the low from being super low by making sure you have plenty of sleep before you go.  Do not wait to catch up on sleep thinking you’ll do it on the beach because that will be a disaster.

Do not diet on vacation. If this lifestyle is new to you, try to make 2 meals a day be good choices while on vacation.  Do not try to diet the whole time you are away, it’s just too much pressure.  The more you try to deny yourself, the greater the desire to throw yourself head first into your plate.  Total waste of time.

Failing forward:

• Have a good breakfast on vaca.  Try to have protein then because it gets harder throughout the day.
• Do not try to eat every few hours and do not worry about mixing foods or eating meals without all the right components.  Instead, enjoy yourself and the week will happen more organically.  I cannot stress this enough.  Those that are successful on vacation will always tell you that they didn’t think about it and it just happened.
• Do not drink midday.  There is something about sitting at the pool midday with a martini that just screams red alert.  By the evening, you’re ready for dinner without utensils and eating in your birthday suit.  Not good.  You are an official lightweight now and for some reason, wine is much more dangerous to social behavior than liquor.  Keep that in mind.

Do not think that you have “blown it”. Could she have saved the week after the first few days of a free for all?  Yes, but only emotionally.  Physically she could not have done much to stop the carb nightmare from going down but emotionally she could have resisted the temptation to throw in the towel.

Failing Forward:

• At some point we all realize that what’s going down is not necessarily what was in the original script.  Whether it’s actual weight gain, bloating or feeling like crap, it really doesn’t matter, all 3 of those register as disaster on the emotional Richter scale and will make us feel as if there is no hope or no way out.  Failing forward here would be done by regrouping.  This cannot be learned here for the first time so my hope would be that she began to learn how to do this while dieting.  I call it ‘inner dialogue’ and it is just a simple conversation you are going to have with yourself that reminds you that everything is A-ok.  This simple conversation can spare you countless  pounds on your backside if you learn how to do it and will get you out of a tough day in a heartbeat.

Stop worrying about what others think. I LOVE when I say that because I know some of you want to throw a brick at me but I really mean it.  You would be amazed at how much we all think alike and that the fears that you have are the same fears another women has and she could be hotter than hot.  They/we/them/us/all of us are insecure in some way, shape or form and if someone tries to say they’re not, tell them I said, “Liar, liar pants on fire.”

Failing forward:

• The only thing that’s going to get you back to where you want to be is facing the storm of your *perceived* judgment and weathering it.  Once you realize this, it will no longer have a grip on you and you will just go about your business of losing weight again.
• Somehow we all seem to realize that most people are so self absorbed that they don’t even notice we’ve put on some extra weight.  But if they do, we can always remind them of when they did, too.  That normally gets them to back it down if need be.
• This is not a one time task.  You will have to do this over and over again so the sooner you get to trying, the sooner you will get to doing.

She’s home and settled in and wants to lose what she gained.  She’s back in the gym and in for the shock of her life when one month later she’s still the same weight.  Hang tight.  Woop woop! )

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Women are natural sadists—well, while dieting at least, because I swear we diet just to beat the living tar out of ourselves.  Although, most of us will tell you we diet for a specific reason:  vacation, wedding, event and so on.  Our girl is no different.  She was going on vacation.

It looked so peaceful.  Too bad it had 14 pounds lurking in the tide.

After 12 weeks of dieting, endless hours of cardio and more poundage moved in the gym than on a shipping dock, our girl is looking darn good (if I don’t say so myself) and traveling through the airport with confidence and ease.  She made goal and she is pretty darn pleased with her results.  She couldn’t wait for this day and has been having dreams of drinks on the beach with all inclusive meals and treats while lying pool side in Aruba.  This has been what all the suffering was about and she cannot wait until she is on the beach in her new bathing suit feeling comfortable in it for the first time ever.

I don’t know if any fitness professional has ever told you this so I am going on record saying it now:  do not ever diet into a vacation.  Do not do a 12 week countdown into drinking, merriment and revelry.  The only thing worse than dieting into vacation is going into an all you can eat buffet with someone getting off a 40 day fast.  Don’t do it. Not to mention metabolism-wise, it is the biggest mistake ever.  Lots of damage done with this one.

The resort is gorgeous and the weather is surreal.  She thinks this is going to be the most amazing week she’s had in a long time.  Her journal entries are as follows:

Day 1: I am exhausted.  Had to beat the front desk down because they messed up my room but when they saw the look on my face that said, “I’m about to blow a gasket.”  They suddenly found a solution.  I need a drink but I want to be good.  I told myself that I was only going to have a treat a few times this week and I really want to save it more for the end of the week.  I want chocolate bad but I am waiting for the midnight chocolate buffet on Wednesday night before having any.   Time to check the menu for healthy options.

As newbies we all start out with good intentions.  But then it soon goes to hell in a hand basket.

Here is where we begin to fail: unrealistic expectations of ourselves.  First, vacation is meant to have fun–not spend a week dieting in a different country.  This isn’t her lifestyle, yet.  She is working on making it so, but it’s still so fresh in her system that to expect her to go into an eating and drinking smorgasbord and not lose her mind borders on being irresponsible.  Second, she forgot to factor in the fact that she will have no will after the first drink.  At that point, all bets are off.

Day 2: Who knew that I was gonna be that much of a lightweight now?  Hope no one got a picture of me dancing topless on the fondue bar.  I am so bloated and feel like crap.  I swear I just killed all the work I did to get here in one night.  I could not stop eating the bread they brought to the table.  Ugh!

At some point in our dieting we all end up being humbled by the Carb Demon.  This guy is no joke when he shows up.  Whatever control you may have thought you had, goes right out the window whenever he makes an appearance.  Some of us have been known to defy physics with some of the things we can eat on a “bender”, our girl was lucky enough to stop at 2 bread baskets and 3 martinis.

Nothing on here said anything about it causing grown women to eat entire back rooms of restaurants.  They should have warning labels.

Day 6: Obviously I blew this week on Sunday so the rest of the week has been a wash.  I’m glad I was smart enough to pack another bathing suit just in case.  The only thing I can fit in right now is a moo-moo.  I don’t know why I can’t stop eating like this.  I will never get my act together.  I knew it was too good to be true.  I’m meant to be heavy for the rest of my life.  Those chics in the magazine are just gifted.  Why bother.

I get it when we feel like this because at the time we are so low emotionally that it is sad to even think about sometimes.  But this has to be the ultimate in inaccurate statements.  The girls are not gifted and you can stop eating like that.  What we didn’t know before we began to diet was what our bodies were going to go through at the pinnacle of our dieting:  low estrogen levels, high cortisol levels and a mind ready for a fresh game of “highs and lows”.  Alcohol after dieting is a no-no.  Carbs after dieting without being interrupted by fat first is a no-no, as well.

Plane ride home: I can’t let anyone see me.  I am so embarrassed.  All that hard work out the window and for what?  A bunch of drinks?  I can’t wait to get back and just clean up the diet and feel good again.  I just want to ring myself out dry and empty my stomach of everything.  Oh man I feel like death.

Little does our girl know that this is just the beginning of her drama.  Just having her girlfriend pick her up at the airport put her in a frenzy because she didn’t want to have to explain why she looks so different.  The emotion brought on from a sense of failure and the difficulty she is about to have thinking she can just “lose that weight again” may be more than she bargained for…

Tomorrow I walk you through all the ways she could have failed forward on her vacation and saved the amount of damage that was done in this one week.  Once this whole vacation week and the following week are all said and done, our girl will have gained 14 pounds in 2 weeks.   Much to talk about…

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Starting any new plan, especially when it is something you have never done before, is exciting.  Starting a new diet plan that promises transformation that you never imagined you could achieve is even more exciting because it holds such promise with it:  a new body, a new level of fitness or a new level of health.    When something like this comes along, adherence is hardly the issue.  Instead, keeping our heads wrapped on tight is normally the problem because we become obsessed psychos with a goal to accomplish therefore failure in the beginning stages is mild.  However, as time goes on, the lessons learned are deeper and harder to spot.  Track with me through this series as I build a case for failing forward from the ground up.

Weeks 1 thru 4

Man, food shopping never seemed like such fun.  Strangely, it’s okay that our dieter only has a few items to choose from because as of right now she still loves them all.  Bland food and limited choices are actually a joy right now because who wants to think about what to eat?  She’s too worried about how she’s going to fit in workouts, cardio, meal prep and still keep up with life.  By a few weeks in, though, she’s got a rhythm and she’s feeling good about life.  She barely survived the first cheat meal but now that she’s over the shock of cheese on her palette, she can get on with this dieting thing.

Good stuff: Organization.  Not sure where it comes from but we suddenly have our acts together here.

Bad stuff: Perfectionism.  This will not rear its ugly head until later.  Right now it’s in check but it was conceived during this time of dieting.

Failing Forward: The Cheat meal fiasco.  Typically we figure out what we can and cannot have as a cheat meal as soon as we find ourselves eating through one whole bag of mini Reese’s peanut butter cups by ourselves.  All of us start out thinking we’re only going to have “this” only to find out that we also want a little bit of “that” and some more of “this”…  It can get ugly.  We also find out fun things like foods that shoot through us faster than Hailey’s comet, 5 ways to bloat your belly bigger than a bull frog and the ever elusive diet secret of retaining water like a dry sponge dropped in a small lake.   But we learn this and that is a good thing.

Weeks 5 thru 8

The fun of this is not so much anymore.  Our dieter is tired.  Cardio has increased, choices are less and she’s getting pretty hungry.  A girlfriend of hers is always criticizing her for not being around like she used to be and work seems oppressive all of a sudden.   There are changes in the body but not enough for her.  She’s thinking, “I thought there would be more.  I thought by now I would look different.”   She’s packing all her meals, making all of her workouts and it’s still new enough that she’s putting up with all of these demands with a good attitude but it’s wearing thin.  What she didn’t plan on while dieting like this was the emotion that has come with the whole process.  Up one day, down another, how come everyone keeps asking annoying questions?  This needs to move along faster.

Good Stuff: Resolve.  Never really had it before but somehow we manage to gain some through this part of the diet.

Bad Stuff: Impatience.  Because we don’t see enough happening we start cutting things out on our own and not following every detail of the plan.

Failing Forward: We’re not as smart as we think we are.  By upping the ante on the plan sooner than we were supposed to, this put us in a position of burnout way earlier than we anticipated.  Even though we’re hyped, we’re ready for this to be over yesterday and we can’t help but feel like ‘just give me the body already’.  For the first time ever, though, we’re sticking with it through thick and thin and that is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Weeks 9 through Finish

Just got the plan update and our girl can eat a leaf, a berry and a bean and not necessarily all at the same time!  She’s hit ground zero.  She hates her food choices, she’s tired, she’s in perpetual motion and she can still pinch some stuff.  What’s up with that?  So although there have been many pluses about this process, she’s not sure they outweigh the negatives, yet.  Flash forward to the end of the diet phase and it’s vacation time.  All that dieting to look good in a place 3000 miles from where she lives, go figure!  But she did it and she’s proud of it.  She’s lost 18 pounds in 12 weeks, took off countless inches and feels like a million bucks.

Good Stuff: We made goal.  The first time around seems so easy that we convince others to do it, too.

Bad Stuff: Lack of knowledge.  Dieting to go on vacation is one of the biggest no-no’s ever and she’s about to find out why.  Our next post is all about this and where we really begin to see what failing forward means.

Failing Forward: Nothing right now.  But a storm is a brewin’ and it’s not cool.

There are four major phases to dieting:  the initial success, rebound, dieting after rebound and maintenance. We just went through the easy part, we head into the jungle tomorrow when we talk about the week of vacation.  Get your bathing suits out.  We’re goin’ in!  Woop woop!

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If you really want to get a chuckle, look at my resume from when I first started working.  I have done just about everything under the sun from delivering newspapers to designing balloon catheters and stints for angioplasty surgery.  I went to school for mechanical engineering and biology and graduated with the expectation of going into the biomechanical engineering field but that never happened.  Instead I took my first job as a chemical engineer—don’t ask how I made that leap—and had an eclectic career path in engineering that ended with me working for the state as a civil engineer (Dear God in Heaven will this madness stop?—again…don’t ask how I made that leap).  The only common thread during all of those years was I was an athletic junky.  I wasn’t a gym rat, yet, just an athletic junky and I taught group fitness classes after work every night.  I did this until 2001 when I took another leap, only this one was a leap of faith and dropped the engineering altogether to see if I could make it as a full time trainer (I did this to be a SAHM.  I still love engineering.)  Years later, here I am as a janitor of Starbucks.  Oops, that’s coming soon…not there yet.

It’s important for you to know my background because it speaks directly to how I think, train clients and determine what a failure is and what is not.  In the world of engineering, there is no such thing as a failure per se (unless a client dies as a result of your design and then that’s not just a failure, that’s a tragedy and a lawsuit.), it is more like ‘that was good information’ and now you know better.  Obviously, good engineers get closer to the mark, fail faster and fail cheaper but failure in some way, shape or form is expected (preferably in the design stage, though, so as to avoid lawsuits).  The process is best described as iteration and is what I live my life by in terms of how I do things.  I really couldn’t care less if I mess something up and many times I get excited when I do because it means I making progress.  The question is, am I going to hang out crying over my failure or am I going to say, “Crap.  Now why did that happen?” and do something with it.  At that moment, the choice is mine to do with it as I may and glean from it as many golden nuggets of info as possible.

Over the next few days I want to walk you through a diet like I did before, only this time I will walk you through with you seeing through the eyes of the dieter and the dieter going through a few 12 week cycles instead of just one.  We can all learn a lot from this, including myself, because we all have a certain amount of perfectionism that we bring to the table that inevitably holds us back from forward progress.  However, the main thing that I want to show you is that almost all of us have survived dieting by iterating to some extent and if we just fully embraced it instead of poo-pooing it, we’d fail forward faster.   The fact that we look at it as a failure as opposed to good info is a primary reason as to why so many of us become discouraged and head into the land of moping.  I also want us to see how we regroup while dieting.  Some of us have become very adept at looking at our pasts and seeing where we made mistakes, but in the land of engineering that takes way too long and wastes way too much time and money.  We need to be more efficient in our failing.  We need real time data and real time “fixing”.

Meet me here tomorrow, dressed for the gym with your cooler packed as we start our 12 week diet.  I look forward to losing a few pounds with friends.   Hit me up below if you want me to mention anything in particular.   Woop woop!

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Last week I was a nudge, this week I am a nag.  Sorry, but she’s climbing out through the afro please make room for her.

This is the last post in this series and I have a few things to say but my mind is everywhere right now.  Have you ever suffered from, “…and another thing”?  I am suffering from that right now.  I have a bunch of little things to add in but not enough to make it a coherent post so I’m going to do the Tourette’s thing right now and just blurt a bunch of stuff at you.  Bear with me while I do this.

Starch vs. No starch

Not everyone should be zero starch.  I know folks like to tell you that it’s the best way to lose body fat and yadda yadda yadda but I have been in the business for 15 years and from all that I know and have seen I can absolutely tell you that that’s not true.  What I have noticed though is that some do better with lower starch than others.  Here’s a very simplified overview for you (shamefully simple):

Bubble—Starch is not going to make a huge impact on you in terms of having it in your diet until you want lines.  Try not to live without it every day because you limit the effectiveness of it as an aesthetic tool later on.

Butter—Starch must, I repeat, must stay in your diet.  Not a ton.  At least a serving a day should be in there.  You will never be rock hard so there is absolutely zero point in going starch free.  What it really does is set you up for a midnight carb binge that rivals anything the food network could conjure up and that’s saying a lot.

Befuddled—you are like the bubbles.  Dowhatchalike.

Dairy

Nice and easy and always portable, dairy is a great protein option…if you like carrying a gallon of water under your skin and 2 pounds of mucous in your sinuses.  But some of us are addicted so I’m not going to go on an anti-dairy rant.  I’ll save that for another post but…

Butters—avoid dairy like a moldy dish of food lodged in the back of your refrigerator.   Especially cheese which is the anti-butt food.

Supplementation

My audio post for Butters spoke about high dose fish oil and how it can help you reduce the effects of cellulite on the bum.  Done correctly and with supervision, you can really make some great changes in the appearance of your back side and also lighten up any stretch marks.  I am a lover of Omega 3.  Here are some more of my thoughts:

Magnesium—is a must in any physique athlete’s diet.  If you’re taking it as a cal/mag—stop.  You have plenty of calcium in your diet and do not need more.  However, you do not have enough Mg.  Try it as Mg glycinate, taurate or malate because they are easily digested and will give you less rumbly tumbly.  Mg can wreak havoc on your tummy and make you feel like you are going to release your colon in public without any notice—oh the thought!  Why Mg?  Great for the metabolism and insulin sensitivity and helps with anxiety/depression which is common among us athletes.

B Complex—add this in if you’re not taking more pills than a 70 year old man.  Honestly, it can be overwhelming.  Great for metabolism and your skin.

BCAA’s–Here’s another one that’s good for everyone.  Add them in prudently.  If money is an issue, have them on training days only and do it in 3 month stints.  If it’s not an issue, call me so we can have lunch and talk about angel investing–just throwing that out there.  But then have it daily and your dosage will change based on your workouts and rest time.

This is not my official supplementation post, this is only in context of making a smooth but plump rump so if something is missing that you think should be here let me help you with that by saying, “No it’s not.”

Cautionary Note

You can get on the web now and see amazing pictures of butts everywhere.  They will be smooth, perky, strong, super human and most of all naked so you can see every detail and feel bad about every dimple you don’t see, as well.  Let me remind you of something you may already know but maybe think you’re exaggerating or are not quite sure of:  very few people are natural anymore.  If you aspire to do this without the aid of anything besides food, vitamins and minerals then you have to be careful of what you use as a pin-up for success.  At the very least, they will be taking a fat burner, at the very most it can be scary.  You cannot be in this industry (clean eating) long term and have to be lean time and time again without some kind of “help”.  With that being said, you may not be able to achieve naturally what others have done with chemical assistance and it helps to know that when you’re in the middle of picking yourself apart for the 3^rd time that day.  If being natural matters (and it does to Jodiojo & Co.) then tuck this away in your mind for safe keeping or you may find yourself compromising your beliefs further down the road in pursuit of something that’s not attainable naturally.

For My Jammers

I said in a previous post that I would give you a place to go for help with your butt training.  If you want get specific with the information I provided about weaknesses and technique, go here.  He is great.  I ran into his site a while ago from Nick T.’s site (he’s another guy I really like) and instantly fell in love.  Not because of his training info, although that’s great too, but because he is humble and he gets it.  Both Nick and Brett are a breath of fresh air in a crowded industry of shouters.  Get on their sites and absorb.

If you are signed up for extra info from my blog, then you received the email with my 3 favorite exercises.  Let me know yours when you can.

This has been a great series and I’m really glad y’alls like it, as well.  Hit me up below with any thoughts.  I’d love to hear them.  The next series is Failing Forward.  Let’s make the best of all the mistakes we do while dieting.  How do you salvage your diet when everything seems to be going wrong?  If you have anything in particular that you want me to cover in this, let me know!  Woop woop!

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 For Butters Or For Worse [10:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I am a nudge.  I won’t deny it.  Many of you who know me are thinking the same thing right now.  Actually, you’re thinking:  “I love you, girl, but you annoy me.  You always say the thing I want to hear least that day (always said with pure love).”  That I do.  So why should today be any different?  I figure, as long as I am fulfilling your need (i.e. supplying you with butt changing info), then it’s okay for me to fulfill my needs (i.e. get you to see how destructive chasing a body part can be).

I always say I love what I do but today I want to be more specific:  I love you.  No, seriously, I do.  I love you tremendously—even if I have never met you.  Why?  Because you are just like me and I love that.  Whatever you do now, I’ve done before and probably twenty times more than whatever you are doing now.  I love to talk to you.  I love to know what makes you tick. I love to hear about all of your successes.  And I love to see you happy.  NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING (in the context of my line of work) makes me more happy than to call a woman who is having a “ah-hah” moment.  It’s like music to my ears.  You can hear my smile over the phone.  It’s crazy.

But now think of the flip side of that.  When you’re unhappy, I’m concerned.  My heart aches because I remember what it was like to be in a not-so-good place and how isolating it can feel.  It’s not like we want to talk about it because we feel like people will think we’re crazy, whiny or the worst of them all—weak.  We don’t want to admit we have some faults or somehow can’t get it together so we just “keep on keepin’ on” hoping that no one notices we just ate an entire package of double stuff oreos in two days.  We’ll quickly regroup from that only to be the most rigid dieter this side of the buffet display and after a while it all gets so annoying doesn’t it?  Somewhere in all that lunacy, we find balance and we settle into a body that is good…decent…not bad–however you want to describe it, please do so.  It’s not like we’re super disgusted, it’s more like we’re just not satisfied.  This is where body part obsession takes root and becomes a bit alarming.

Our bodies can be nice to look at so it’s great to keep them well oiled and maintained but their primary purpose is to function for us not appear as trophies.  We have bums for a reason and it’s not to serve as a beacon of failure for our diets or our lives.  They are meant to hinge us at the hips, move us from side to side and help us get the heck out of Dodge when necessary.  They have a primary function in the body; not a secondary function like our tummies (yes, tummies are our core, but ideally our abs and back serve as our core/trunk and nutrition makes a great tummy—not crunches).   This is a huge thing to think about, seriously, because as you pound away at your booty you may be setting yourself up for some major surgery later on.

Although I love writing, I stress when I set out to write articles like this because on the screen they can read as preachy or judgmental.  I can tell you without a doubt that nothing like that is going through my head right now.  What’s running through my mind is what I was like when I wanted nicer shoulders and the only word that I can think of is “fixated”.  It was my main focus and I cared about nothing else besides my shoulders.   Fortunately, I was interrupted from destroying my neck/shoulder region (or unfortunately if you know why I was interrupted) because I really do think that if I continued on I would have had two grapefruits sitting at the top of my arms like a dot on an i.  Of course, reaching over my head or putting a shirt on wouldn’t be possible but dang it all, I’d’ve looked good! (I made that double contraction up. Work with it.

Function matters.  A lot.  I know we do not all have access to the top physical therapists out there (or have the awesome Heather on their staff) but it is worth it if you can at least once in your fitness career be evaluated for your weaknesses.  If you have tight hip flexors and weak glutes to begin with, when you go to do any of the exercises mentioned you run a high risk of not engaging your glutes properly thereby killing your progress.  You think that you aren’t doing enough so you keep doing more of the same and your weaknesses snowball from there.  If you train for function more than you train for form, you will be much better off.   The catch here is twofold:  1) to get over yourself enough to embrace a new way to train other than strict body part training and 2) to take the time off from hard training to do any necessary mobility work if need be.  How many of us really do anything preventative?

I know what you’re thinking.  “Then teach me to do it the right way, Jodi.  What am I missing?”  I can’t, it’s not my gig, but I know whose it is and I will give you that info at the end of this series.  I have a little more to talk about and I don’t want you to lose your focus by focusing on your bum which is the focus of this series.  You need to focus!  We haven’t even touched dieting, yet, and how you diet does make a difference in what your bum looks like.

Where does this leave you then?  What’s my point in drawing your attention to function and not form?  Balance.  Make sure that your program has balance.  Spread out the butt stuff throughout the week or do a good butt workout once, maybe twice in a week.  But do not go crazy and make every day a butt day by putting in something in every workout.  That’s not good.   Here are some guidelines for you:

1)      Limit the plyometric activity to no more than twice a week. This means sprints as well as pure plyos.  The pounding action of sprints and plyos take a toll on your spine and your feet.  Ease up, killah, before you look like your Aunt Ethel who is all of 4ft 3in by the time you’re done jumping.

2)      Have someone take a look at your program for obvious imbalances. You want to cover all planes of motion in a full body and have something with lateral movement if just a lower body.  Whether you do this in the warm up or in the program itself it doesn’t matter.  Just make sure your workout is not one big variation of the step up.

3)      Pay attention to injuries! So many times I talk to girls and they are working through some major junk like it’s nothing talking about, “I just need to look good for my…”  Listen, if you show up walking like Quasimodo, was it worth it to you?  Knock it off and see a physical therapist!

Nutrition is next.  Some radical supplementation talk for you butter butts and a few other things.  Hang tight.  Woop woop! )

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