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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As we venture into the land of glutes, we need to address the fact that as women we do not all want the same thing from our butt training.  Some of us want bubble butts—firm and poking out.  Some of us want a nice bum minus the layer of cellulite on them—a.k.a. butter butt (nice ‘n smooth).  And then some of us want nice legs and are not sure whether or not to get psycho about the bubble part or not—befuddled butt.  To lump everyone into the same category is to do a disservice to you ladies so let’s chop today’s post up into a few sections to help everyone out.

Bubble Butt

Normally you are: lean already with either a flat bum, fused spine bum or misshapen bum

Very rarely you are: heavy.  I have yet to meet a girl with a large lower body who’s looking to bubble it out more.

Nutrition: clean.  You are lean so your regimen is most likely good.

Supplementation: normal

Your arsenal:

Bridging—weighted or unweighted.  Single leg or both legs.  Feet on floor or high on bench.  Squeeze at the top.

High step ups—the higher you can step, the better.  Form is a must.

Conventional deadlift—single or double leg.  Go deeeeeeeeep.

Hill sprints—also start block training is awesome.

Deep reverse lunges—step off of a plyo box if you can do it.  Go super deep here.

You do best with: double leg work if you do not have a bum at all; single leg work if you have one but no shape.

Butter Butt

Normally you are: soft.  You are about as muscular as a pillow.  You MUST make muscle first.

Very rarely you are: muscular.  I have seen muscular tops and soft bottoms (I mean squishy) but it is rare.

Nutrition: clean as a whistle.  Very little room for things like cheese or processed food.

Supplementation: necessary and high dose.

Your arsenal:

Metabolic cranks—lunges, plyos and band walks thrown together to make you sweat and lean out more.

Kettlebells—complete posterior workout all the time.  No break for the butt and you sweat like a mo.

Deep squats/deads—You need to lift like a man for a while.  Break some PR’s and kill yourself.

Lunges—Heavy.  Not so deep yet because you need to be heavy first.

You do best with: Heavy training with minimal rest that’s going to make you sweat and puke.

Befuddled Butt

Normally you are: fit but not defined.  You look good but no one’s stopping you to do a leg commercial.

Very rarely you are: heavy on the top.  It happens sometimes where legs are good, not defined but top is squishy.

Nutrition: moderately clean.  You are more training dependent than food dependent.

Supplementation: precise.  You don’t need much so what you do need should be precise.

Your arsenal:

Single leg everything—don’t care what it is, do it with one leg.

Sprinting—More on the 200’s and 400’s than the 100’s.  Get the hams involved long term.

Detail work—calf raises, bridging, glute ham raise.

Band walks and donkey kicks

You do best with: progressions.  Obviously we all do but you more than anyone because your training is going to evolve faster as you shape up and decide bubble or not.

Regardless of which butt you prefer, all physique training can (and does) produce unsightly side effects that tend to stain any of the work you do in the gym.  Some training does it more than others.  I find that when we train for a cause we tend to be more aware of the world around us.  When we train for a sport, we tend to be more competitive with ourselves and with others (not always a good thing but not always bad either).  When we train for our bodies, though, we tend to be more myopic and critical.  It is this one that I want us to be more mindful of because trying to perfect a body part requires a lot of “me time” and that can sometimes be bad.  Spending hours on our bodies can skew our mindset, our outlook on life and our sense of purpose.

Without us trying or even meaning to, if we are not ‘on it like hornets’, we can become pompous, mean hotties.  Trust me, it does not take much.  Yes, we’ll help a person out on Facebook or in the gym whenever they may have a question, but ultimately we want to be left alone to look at ourselves in the mirror.  Now, really…that sounds terrible and shallow and it doesn’t really go down that way—or does it?  This is a tough one to address and I am throwing this out there to think about but what do you want that nice butt for?  You know I ask this because I want you to think about what’s really going to happen when you get it, not what you want to happen when you get it.  We want to like what we see in the mirror and we want to be commended for our hard work in the gym (maybe not by a random person, but definitely by those close to us), but we don’t want unsolicited comments, judgment and creepy fans.  Nor do we want tension and strife from our friends and family who now think that we spend too much time on ourselves on a daily basis.  However, I guarantee you that you will get this.

If you are not actively changing the inside of you (i.e. patience, understanding and compassion) to match the outside of you while you do this, your butt is not the only thing that’s going to end up hard.  How many of us have met someone with a great body at a show, gym or event and complimented them and they were meaner than a junk yard dog.  Guess what.  She got the surprise behind door #2 and obviously wasn’t ready character-wise to receive it.  Usually when we say we want our {fill in the body part} to look good, we want the whole package (personality) to look good, as well, and somehow expect us to miraculously be different when our new bodies show up.  Umm…not so in reality.  We think we will suddenly be happier because now we look different but it’s not the case.  If you are unhappy while flabby, you will be unhappy while fit—I can stake my occupation on it.  So while you spend all the time you are going to spend squatting, lunging and stepping, take that time to do a self assessment and see if you need to become patient, kind hearted or available to others.  Honestly, you are doing it more for you than anyone else.  It’s a hard road to walk being hot.

Lots more to come…woop woop!!

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Before we try to master the back side and create a lump that hangs off of the end of our spine, I think it prudent for us to go through some basic training to make sure we are all on the same page:

Squat, Deadlift, Lunge, Step Up

If you want to use any of these guys to make a better butt, you have to go low, the move must be deep and you have to go heavy.  These guys prime you in your workout for other glute exercises so they need to be there.  Over the next few days we’re going to go through a couple of different movements to understand what makes a great butt and these four guys are a great place to start.

That’s Kas doing a deadlift from the floor.  First, she’s going light b/c this is a pic for something else.  Second, she is on the way up in the move, she starts almost with bum to floor and third, she has great legs.  You must go low to hit the glutes in these moves.  If not, your quads will be the ones to benefit.

Normally we like to find a step that’s about 18″ high for step ups, but if you are going for the bum, you gotta go high.  Here is a great place to start.  The advanced level of this move would have your box about 2″ higher than this.  You need to go deep to hit the tush.

This is a lunge leaning forward.  Kas is at the top of the move.  The most important part for you to see is that she is fully aligned while leaning forward.  The only thing that moves on her is her legs.  Her back knee will drop but those weights will stay right there–in line with the front leg.  This will smoke your butt off.  Your range of motion is small but your burn is big.

1)      Learn the movement unweighted. I know you have been squatting for years, but if you can do it, have someone analyze your form for you without holding a weight.  You’d be amazed at how you thought you had perfect form for all these years but you really didn’t.  The thing I see the most is “toe lifters”.  All of your weight sits in your toes and you do not sit back enough in the move.

2)      Deadlifts come from the floor. This means your bum does too.  I love the magazines with the workouts with the cool moves, but really—close the magazine.  Grab a heavier than normal BB.  Put it on the floor.  And deadlift it for real.  Drop your butt, keep your chest up, sit your weight back and go for it.  Now this, of course, is after you have done #1.  Please.  If not, your knees could cave in, your chest could fly forward and this could get ugly.

3)      Your knees could possibly hurt. What fixes knee pain is strong legs.  What makes strong legs will cause knee pain in the beginning.  If you have asked someone who is a professional and who you trust if you are doing #1 right and they say yes, hang in there then until you get stronger.

4)      Start with two legs first. Before you try to go heavy or fancy, master #1 first and then master heavy.  Once you have mastered heavy, then master fancy.  Do NOT go from basic to fancy without going heavy first.  What’s fancy?  That “crazy new move” you saw so-and-so doing at the gym that you have no idea what it’s for or why they’re doing it.   Or the favorite move of your favorite fitness model that looks so cool but you are not qualified to watch it, much less do it.  Fancy is useless without the basics and even more useless if you’re not going heavy.

5)      Do every variation possible under the sun. Just like I say with food, cardio and cheat meals:  MIX IT UP.  I know you love a particular exercise because it burns like a mother when you do it, but you have got to hit your butt from every flipping angle there is.  Now these guys are the base exercises, we have a few more types to go through before we’re done, but there are so many variations of these that it’s not funny.  The walking lunge is not the only exercise out there.

Food, food and more food…

1)      The number one thing necessary in your diet for a great butt:  consistency. Not perfection—consistency.   You need to consistently get in the right food so that it may do its work in the back.  This is what I said on Yin and Yang.  This is what I have been saying forever.  Stop beating yourself up over what you ate extra in the day and instead congratulate yourself for all the right things you got in.  TRUST ME…this will pay off more than you’ll ever know.

2)      Do not go starchless forever. Biggest mistake a girl could ever make.  I know many who do it.  You are shooting yourself in the foot.

3)      Learn to supplement when necessary. When we first start out, we buy every supplement under the sun.  About 3 weeks later we’ve remembered to take them once.  If you have a ton of cellulite and unsightly dimpling, you will need to supplement.  We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post, but until then, know that you’ll have to be intentional about this at some point but not forever—nothing is forever (see #2).

Take Stock In What You Have

Owning up to what you really have as an asset is a basic necessity of any physique athlete.  What I see are two things all the time and both of them are ugly:

False humility: This is the girl with the hot body who insists she doesn’t have one.  She’s on every fitness site looking for the thing that’s going to create a hot body when she’s sitting on a gold mine.  I get it, we can all improve but that’s not what this is.  She’ll beat off your compliments with a baseball bat and slice up all attempts to tell her she’s arrived with a machete but it’s not because she’s modest.  Quite the contrary.  But she can’t admit that to herself, let alone you so instead she mows everyone over in an attempt to keep the compliments coming.

Utter shame: This is the girl who may have great legs or nice abs or a great shape but may not be in the best shape ever.  So she could stand to lose a few pounds but she’s not a “fixer upper” or anything.  There’s clearly a great body under there and it won’t take much to do so.  But you don’t have a chance to say that to her because she’s too busy beating herself down like a bad viral YouTube video.  She’s disparaged herself more times in one conversation to you than anybody in her life has ever said about her.  And she’s just getting warmed up!  Listening to it can truly bring you down so you need to exit the conversation.  It’s awful.

We are going on to the next phase of building a great bum tomorrow.  We have 3 more days of this and lots more info.  We haven’t even really started, yet.  But before we can get into that super info and really explore our pin cushions, we need to appreciate what we have first.  If we do not do that, then all of our training is a waste because we will never think that we have arrived.

1)      I don’t care what you thought of yourself before this, but today, stand in front of the mirror naked and like what you see. Write out what you like—and only what you like—about your body right now.  If you want, you can wear underwear—but that’s it.  You are not allowed to have a negative thought about your body.  If you do, you have to start all over again.

2)      Figure out whether you are an utter shame girl or a false humility girl. You do not have to be either of them.  I only point them out because they are the hardest to change.  Anything else is teachable so don’t worry.

3)      Figure out why you want this. I’m telling you now, if you want this just to look hot you’re wasting your time.  You won’t make it.  But if you stick an admirable goal on it, you’ll have a better chance.

Ok…much, much more to come.  So many exercises, so little time.  Woop woop!!

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