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

Dang it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GUIDELINES FOR WEEKS 12 TO 9:

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

PITFALLS

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

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

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

“How did you get your arms that way?”

“How many days a week do you workout?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are some things you just can’t explain.  There’s no rhyme or reason for it, they just are.  Things like:

• Why people must slow down on the highway when someone is pulled to the side of the road.  Not emergency vehicles.  Nothing important.   Heck, there doesn’t even have to be someone in the car!  They just slow down.  GRRR.

• Why my kids need to talk to me as soon as I get on the phone.  I mean AS SOON AS.  I could be sitting there attracting moss and no one notices.  Phone gets near my ear and they want to know why the earth rotates on an axis.  REALLY??

• Why there’s no one in a store until I have to check out.  I went in the store because it was empty but something about the purchases in my hand attracted an aggressive mob that suddenly stormed the front of the store.  It’s uncanny I tell you.

And the best of all…why some food combinations just do not work when you are trying to lose body fat.

If you are a trainer and you are thinking about specializing in fat loss then one of the best things you can do is have all of your clients bring their food diaries in to you—even if you are not doing their nutrition.  Tell them you want it for accountability reasons but really you want it to protect yourself from falling victim to The Bermuda Triangle.

There are just some foods that when you eat them on a consistent basis, they keep you from progressing.  I do realize that we are in the middle of no starchy carbohydrate phase in this world but I caution you from dropping all starch from your diet on a long term basis–it is the kiss of death.  And I also realize that some of us think we’re cave men or permanently on a beach somewhere or whatever diet you may be following, but I do not ascribe to any of that stuff so I’m not here to back up their theories.  For as long as I have been doing this, there is nothing wrong with eating food in its whole and natural state while losing weight (the real problem lies in the fact that that is becoming hard to find nowadays) and you can eat just about anything you want if you have it in moderation ßnotice the word moderation.  Ahem.  America’s weight problem has only been for the last 40 years and starchy carbohydrate has been around a whole lot longer than that so there you go.

But if you are going to open up your diet (and you should!!), then you need to know the ground rules for some nefarious foods and combos that can wreak major havoc on your waistline.

Low Carb Tortillas

Can you have one?  Sure can.  Two?  Maybe.  How about one with your lunch at least 3 days a week?  Nope–wouldn’t do it if I was you.  I don’t care how low carb they are either.  You could pass them off for a piece of shoe leather they have so much fiber in them and I *still* wouldn’t have more than 2 in a week.  And these are huge with folks who love breakfast burritos so the minute you spot one, jump on it because I’m sure they’re not reporting all that they’re eating.

Peanut Butter

Yes, it’s a good fat…A good fat strategically placed on your thighs.  Why is peanut butter so bad?  Because as you are scooping it, you’re eating it.  And you’re eating it every day.  Twice a day.  And then sometimes you just open the jar and smell it.  And accidentally have a teaspoon of it.  PB is just something that is truly not measured.  Yes, you put 2 T on your food diary because that’s what you’re willing to admit you ate.  For some reason, though, you are buying a jar a week and sometimes you are running out mid week.  2T my behind!  And there are other reasons why but honestly, those are small in comparison to the amount of PB that you consume.  Seriously.

Protein Powder

Ok…start breathing again.  Let me explain how this makes the list so you can stop weeping in your chair.  When you see this show up more than 2 times in a day, you have a problem.  I can guarantee you, where there is a plateau with a clean eater, a plethora of protein powder follows.  Shakes are good in moderation but they stink at long term body composition change.  Also, stop getting the powder that is packed with all kinds of other stuff, too.  Complete physique staller right there.

Artificial Sweeteners

Get them out.  Now.  Don’t eat anything diet and note all the products that they do show up in and weed them out.  Walden Farms anything, Crystal Light, protein powders and diet drinks are just some examples but the list is much longer than that.  These are absolute body fat loss stoppers.  They could shut down mid afternoon traffic with the stuff that’s in them never mind your body comp change.  Don’t walk away from these, run.

Low Fat or Fat Free Cheese

Nothing to say here other than you are what you eat.  And cottage, ricotta and feta do not count, they are fine in your diet once in a while.  Keep in mind that I am not a fan of dairy.  Another post for another time.

Caustic Combos

These are foods that by themselves are not bad but when they show up in the same day food journal cause drama:

Steak/salmon and any kind of whole grain bread. Don’t do it.  Even Ezekiel is off limits. And if you do, don’t get on a scale for at least 4 days, maybe even 5 to be safe.

Rice and beans. Yes, it’s a staple for some but for you it’s an albatross around your neck.  I know…you need a protein when meat is not appealing but this ain’t the one.  Keep looking.

More than 2 processed foods in a day. Turkey bacon, chicken from those huge Costco/BJ’s bags—even raw, boil in a bag brown rice, perdue chicken short cuts, actual egg beaters (the brand) and so on.  You get the point.  They are real close to the real thing but they’re off just a tad.  Too many of those in your diet and you’ll never change that body from flab to fab.  Remember, we need to dot our I’s and cross our T’s.

Gum w/Xylitol

If you are chewing a pack a day of this stuff, just stop doing cardio now and go sit on the couch because it’s not making a difference any more.  If you wonder why, go back up a few to artificial sweeteners and take it from there.  Besides complete unrest for the tummy, you bloat on a level that is unexplainable.  You may even find yourself modeling for an Anne Geddes picture with your pregnant belly sitting on a perch.  Not good.

These are just a few that come to mind without thinking too much.  Remember, these are fine to have in your diet once in a while but not on a consistent basis or in high quantities.  Walking away from everything starchy is unrealistic and stifling so be smart about when you do bring them in.  It makes a difference.  And truth be told, there is nothing revolutionary on this list but you’d be amazed at how much of this stuff you may be consuming without realizing it.  It’s always nice to have a reminder.  The one I almost always catch people with is the artificial sweeteners.  Check what you’re eating!

I am about to begin my next series so hang tight for that this week.  Hit me up below if you have a question of a food you eat regularly and wonder where it stands.  Woop woop!

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

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

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

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

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

TWENTY SOMETHING

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

THIRTY SOMETHING

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

FORTY SOMETHING AND BEYOND

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

For all age groups, you must:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something about Brody’s confession of eating his supper, Heather’s supper, part of the sofa, two of his chew toys and a squirrel really disturbed Santa.  Maybe he’ll get his Christmas wish of self control after all…

Over the past 3 days we’ve been in denial, walking the plank and cycling around town all in the name of recognizing our behavior so we can stop the cheat meal from becoming the cheat week.  Right about now I would love to be able to give you some cute little bullets with pat little answers that says if you feel this way, do that or if you feel that way, do this.  Clearly, it’s not that simple so bear with me as I give you some insight as to what you are looking at in terms of moving beyond the issue without really “curing” your ailment.  Remember, all of these issues are conditions of the mind—not body so there is not any physical solution to shut these issues down.

Denial

If you have not had the denial meltdown, yet, you’re going to think you are invincible so anything I say here is moot.  Keep reading my blog until you do melt down and then come back to this and pick up where you left off.  But if you are past the point of thinking you’re Wonder Woman but not so past that you’ve changed your behavior, here are some things to help you through this stage:

• OWN the fact that you are not doing something that is amazing and worth endless praise.  Thinking that everybody should notice how strong and dedicated you are sets you up for feeling like a major fraud when you lose your tree on a box of cereal when you get home.  Because you are going to lose your tree on a box of cereal eventually…

• DO NOT worry about what others think of you.  Honestly, most folks are so wrapped up in their own stuff that you could pass out at the dessert table and they still wouldn’t notice never mind you not having a treat.  Honestly, I am a pretty attentive person and have a tremendously giving heart and even I would be challenged to notice you if you went down in front of real butter sugar cookies.  I’m just sayin’.  And I love you.  Imagine a room full of folks who couldn’t care less about you.  It’s tough out there.

• STOP thinking that you are the only one of your friends/family/colleagues that is healthy and no one has your dedication and so on.  That may be true but when you have a rough spot—and you will—you will be too embarrassed to own it with anyone to deal with it.  Do not forget that denial is not TRUE “will power”.  It is a false mentality set up by a really strong goal.  Once that goal is gone, ‘you is in trouble, girl’.

Rigidity

If you’re wondering if you are rigid or not, ask yourself if you got annoyed or even mad when you read my definition of rigidity.  If you thought at any point that that’s just what dedication looks like or that’s not me and I’m not changing my routine or shut up, you’d be rigid.  I also expect you to realize you are rigid one of two ways:  you read the definition and break down crying or you one day realize no one wants to hang out with you anymore.   Either one is a good indicator.  Here’s something for you to think about:

INNER DIALOGUE is your friend and you need to create an effective one for many scenarios that you find yourself in.

I can’t miss a workout this week or eat off plan.

Why?

Because I can’t.  I’ll be off my plan.

So?  What’s going to happen?

I won’t make my goal.

Really?  And if so, ok…then what?

Well, I have to make my goal.

Have to?  Why?  You gonna self destruct if not?

No.  Don’t be stupid.  But I want to make my goal.

Well that’s good but ‘wanting to’ and ‘having to’ are not the same thing.

You see where I am going and why this is important.  Put this in perspective for yourself when that inner voice rises up and tells you that you are useless unless you are in shape or that you are lazy because you took a day off from working out when you had bronchitis.  And follow the rabbit trail all the way to the end so you can snuff out this argument the next time it comes up.

Eat Cheat Cycle

Unfortunately, this is the hardest of all three cycles to break from because it’s not so extreme and noticeable.  You can go a really long time before owning the fact that you are doing this and then when you figure out you are doing it, you can go even longer before changing it.  This requires:

• HONESTY.  First admit that you can’t get it done.  Seriously.  Cry Uncle and stop the madness.

• INTROSPECTION.  Why are you fighting for this goal in the first place when it’s obvious you don’t want it.

• OWNERSHIP.  Once you know what it is, take responsibility for it.  Don’t try to put another goal on it to silence it.

• ACTION.  Whatever it is you are avoiding, you need to face it, deal with it and then move on from it.

If you are in this cycle you may have said any of the following:

The reason I can’t stay on plan is because it’s too strict.

Actually, the reason is because it’s not strict enough.

Or it’s too complex, I need something simple.

Or it’s too much to put together.  Can’t you just give me a menu.  I don’t want to think.

I can’t make it after work.   I need to go to the morning.

I can’t go in the morning, can you make it Fri thru Sun?

Anybody?  Sound familiar?  You are in the Cycle then…

I hope this helps you somewhat.  I have had to go through some serious inner dialoguing, getting over myself and ownership to get to a point where the only thing that can really take me down now is the food itself.  That’s a better place to be than to be fighting yourself AND the food.  There are many other things to consider—it’s not just one—so look at this as one aspect of your journey to maintain this lifestyle beyond the first 12 weeks…

I tend to write in series because it makes it more interesting and I get the chance to develop it more.  If you have a weighty topic you are looking for some answers for, hit me up below or shoot me an email.  Either way, if I can delve into it, I will.  We have to keep our heads on tight if we want to make our bodies right.  Cool?  Woop woop!:o)

I don’t know about you (Actually that’s a lie, I do know about you but I’m going to act like I don’t know about you so you can stop feeling like I’m staring at you—and just you.:) but I notice that for most of us struggles with cheats, treats and chocolate (yes, it gets its own category) come in cycles.  We’re not always struggling and we’re not always winning.  We have moments or seasons, if you will, of chaos and mayhem that take us down more than normal and begin to chip away at our dieting confidence until we feel like we “suck”, “we’ll never get it done”, “why bother” and so on.  The best thing we could ever do at this time is go to maintenance eating but that’s actually the last thing we do and so begins the battle.

Heather the slave driver putting them through and endless up/down cycle of cardio.

How Does This Happen In The First Place?

Sadist Masochism.  No really, we love to torture ourselves.  I think some of us are so good at this that we have it down to such a degree that we can determine the level of torture we want to inflict on ourselves based on whatever drama is going on in our lives at the time.  Lots of drama means we drag out big whips and chains and cat-o-nine tails in the form of huge weight loss and per4mance goals and not so much drama means we want to just take off a few pounds here and there.  Ever done this?…

Aunt Betty Ann* has a big work project coming to completion at her workplace.  She’s been on the project for a while and it is finally coming to a close within the next 6 weeks or so. It’s a huge project and the tension at the job is thick. Three months from now is a big race that ABA wants to run in and she’s been waiting all year for it to come around.  Four months from now ABA’s sister is getting married and she’s going to be in the wedding.  Suddenly ABA feels like she needs to lose at least 10 pounds for the wedding.  She knows the race will help with a few extra pounds—she hopes—but the stress of all that’s going on begins to weigh on her.  So what does ABA do?  She starts a 16 week diet to get ready for her sister’s wedding (because that’s exactly what we would all do) but she can’t stick to it for the life of her.  She’s nibbling, dabbling and wavering more than she’s dieting and working out.  Of course she thinks it’s because the plan’s not strict enough and she has too much choice so she changes what she’s eating from chicken, broccoli and an occasional sweet potato to wallpaper paste, shoe leather and dust (you know those earlier choices were taking her down).  Now that her diet is more realistic, she should stick to it, right?  NOPE.  Now she thinks it’s her workout schedule and she’s not working hard enough to stay focused because she keeps finding herself eating a lit bit of this and a little bit of that.  Finally, ABA realizes that she’s not going to make goal so she scraps the diet and throws caution to the wind.  Does this sound familiar?

When I first started to come across this scenario years ago, I used to believe that it was the busy schedule that made ABA unsuccessful at staying on track.  I would tell her she was nuts for trying to diet during all of that commotion and to either wait until everything calmed down or zip some things out now.  But then I began to realize that she wasn’t interested in dieting when it all calmed down.  At that point, she was happy with herself (kind of) and was really in a maintenance way of thinking and what was really going on was her trying to manage her chaos through the scale.  This is really destructive in nature but is such a pattern with type A women that it needs a name.  I’m working on it.

What we do is find something we can mother all over while everything else in our lives is “going to he** in a hand basket” because as far as we’re concerned, our weight is controllable.  Now is it really?  NO.  But we think it is at the time and we’re going to whip it around like an amusement ride at the Brockton Fair.  I’m not going to build this now although I have a lot to say about this topic because it is SUPER relevant to us but it’s too big to tackle in this post.  But I am going to say that this is a function of emotion more than it is a physical issue that you can just control.  “Not eating the treat” is not going to work so knock it off and trying to tighten up the diet to make you stop is even more pointless.   Stop beating yourself up because you can’t stop eating the cookies on the counter and start inner dialoguing with yourself about how you can focus your attention elsewhere while you are dieting.

This is THE most common of the three scenarios presented and unlike the other two, there’s very little resistance here.  This is the one that can make you gain weight because you are not denying anything.  You are not focused–you are just wrecking shop.  Every day you “try” to get it done and every day you say you’ll do better tomorrow.  Twenty pounds later, you realize you’ve gone through 45 “tomorrows”.  There are other reasons for this, too, besides the one above:

• You denied yourself for so long (scenario #2) that you have begun to unravel and can no longer justify locking it down anymore.

• Your head has not caught up with your heart.  This happens when you keep shooting for a goal that you really do not want anymore but have not taken the time, yet, to reconcile that with your head so you keep gunning for it.

• You want something for all the wrong reasons and your heart is smarter than your brain.

• You’ve lost passion for the goal.  You want what you originally fell in love with but somehow that has been stained by reality in some way and you can’t admit that.

These are permutations of the same thing, pick which one is yours.  I suffered from 3 of the 5 and it took me a long time to get my head back in the game.  Some of you have sent me some of the best emails with battle scars as to what this looked like for you and how you came out on top afterward.  I want you to know that I have heard all that you have said and am using some of it tomorrow as I talk about how to move beyond all 3 eat-cheat cycles.

Email me or leave a comment below if you have a story you want to share or have any questions on what I’ve talked about so far.  I would love to hear from you: Jodi@trans4mationstation.com or add it below.

Suggestions come tomorrow! Woop woop!!:o)

*Depending on how long you’ve known me and I’ve been telling you stories, Aunt Betty Ann is a regular on the scene.  She’s completely fictional alongside her husband Uncle Peanut, cousin TayTay and Frank.  Try and keep up with them.

Do you mind if I ask you a question?  Why do we as women think we are so tough?  Where did this come from?  I mean really…when did this happen?  I have been having some of the most interesting conversations in the last month or so that always leave me wondering, ‘who is she fooling?’  I am not even referring to clients, although I have had a few of those too.  But normally, if I am bringing it to the blog, it’s not a client situation that I am referring to.  So back to my question:  who are we fooling?  And why are we pretending so hard?

I’m sure you know me enough by now to know that I’m getting to something so why don’t I just get to it already, eh?

I get tons and tons of questions in my line of work.  Tons.  But some of them show up more often than not.  I told you about the tight bum one and the stretch marks on the tummy/thighs but another one that is rearing its ugly head again that we need to put on the table is:

Why can’t I stop cheating on my diet?  How do I have a cheat meal and not continue to eat like that for 3 days?

I have hit this topic from a physical standpoint by telling you foods that are completely off limits if you are dieting for a specific reason but if you are not and you just want to live this life, you really do need to learn how to navigate the world of forbidden foods with greater finesse than just straight denial.  Trying to abstain forever will never work and basically you are setting yourself up for failure.  Let’s look at some of the ways we try to do this and see where we go wrong in them.

I Don’t See That Chocolate, Do You?

Ok, this has to be the WORST way to manage your life and I hope that if you are doing this now that you will work hard to find other more effective ways to keep from eating treats.  This is the official “tough girl” approach that lasts as long as the passion for the initial goal does.  Once that goal is gone, you have a better chance locking yourself out of a car you are sitting in than you do locking down your desire for a treat.  If you think that the steel resolve you have now will last forever, I have a jar of peanut butter on my desk right now that says it won’t.  I’m just sayin’.  So let’s all be honest and get out of denial cuz we’re getting wet here.

And please do not let me make you feel like you are the abnormal one here.  I am as human as you all are and I will be the first one to admit that to you.  So, why am I talking about this?  Because I was once a “tough girl”, myself, and a very good one at that, and then one day…

Honestly, mom.  I tried to lock it down.  But then that frosting just called my name.  Shame.

I have learned first hand that denial is not only ineffective, it’s torment.  For instance, back in the day when I had zero sense in my head and dieted for events, I would be somewhere like a bbq or what-have-you and they would have a full dessert table set out with all kinds of yummy stuff.  I wouldn’t get 10 feet near that table and would stick to whatever I brought or allowed on my diet at the time.  Now there’s nothing wrong with that if I had a normal reaction to the table which would be more the way it is now.  If I walked by the table today, I may survey a bunch of stuff on there, choose a small piece of something or nothing at all but I could walk by the table completely unaffected. Not back in the day, though, I avoided the table because if you stood me in front of it, tough girl would show up and say, “No, really.  I’m good.”  But the real girl on the inside of me would be screaming in my head, “DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE WITH THIS SPREAD.  PLEASE.  IS THAT REAL BUTTER OVER THERE?  HOLY COW!!  ARE YOU KIDDING?  AND THE CHOCOLATE!  I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW YOU COULD COVER THAT IN CHOCOLATE!  IT’S EVERYWHERE!  STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!!!!”  My face, however, wouldn’t give away anything.  Aside from the odd sweat bead that would form on my forehead, I’d be cool as a cucumber.

Now, seriously, is that anyway to live?  For the rest of the night you are AWARE that there is a table with treats on it.  And you’re going to leave there proud of yourself that you held out only to get home and eat 1.5 cups of oatmeal w/ chocolate protein powder and raspberry preserves talkin’ ‘bout, “Mmmm, that was good.”  Riiiigggghhht.  That’s why you just ate 3 servings worth and emptied the jar of preserves in the oatmeal…because it didn’t do “the trick”.

What ensues after an encounter like this is pure chaos and mayhem inside of you for at least 3 days, but possibly more.

There’s resentment: Why can’t I have a treat.  What the heck?  It’s not going to hurt me.  Everyone else can have a treat.

There’s bitterness: I bet someone got sick off of that stuff.  And if they did, they deserved it.  They shouldn’t be eating that stuff anyway.  That’s why they’re all (fill in whatever blank you want here).

There’s paranoia: I should have just had a piece.  No, I would never be able to stop and then I’d gain a bunch of weight and then I’d never be able to work out again and then I…

Finally, there’s platitudes: If I want to look like everybody else, then I’ll eat like everybody else.  I need to Just Do It.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  And so on…

And when all this finally calms down in our heads and we are done torturing ourselves 2-3 days later, I go back to my original question and ask you, “Who are you fooling?”  the same way I finally asked myself, “Who am I fooling?”  None of what just went down was “tough” unless you are referring to the torment itself.  I didn’t accomplish anything because although I didn’t take my angst out on the dessert table, I took my angst out on myself which is 20 times worse.

Denial is number one, The Plank is number two.  We talk about that tomorrow.  Yes, we’ll get on the better side of this when I am done laying it out because there is one.   Woop woop!!:o)