You know I have been talking about training a lot this week (and I have some good examples coming your way, too) so there’s no need to switch it up now and talk about something else. I think I hear something—wait, I think it’s a dead horse being beaten in the back room. Poor fella.

Ok, all kidding aside, Bertha is back in the gym and we need to hit her up for some more stuff.

I have been focusing on switching up your training and providing your body with some much needed fuel for change (that’s what switching up provides) so that you can either increase your fat burning or move through a plateau. I have already spoken of using confusion or demand and within demand I spoke of tempo. So I have put some stuff out there for you to sort of chew on and I am going to add to it today with functional training.

This is really being addressed to my major “gym-heads” who just can’t seem to walk away from the 3, 4 or 5 day splits.

I love a good split, you love a good split, everyone at some time in their lives has really enjoyed a good split but for the love of all that is holy…DIVORCE THE SPLIT. Ok, I’m sorry…I’m back now. Took a sip of water and walked around a bit. ;o)

Changing up the way you work out between full body and body parts is a great way to add to your training tool box without having to think too hard. Now say you are not ready to fully adopt the full body routine and giving up the split almost gives you hives. How about adding some functional moves between your current split to add a new dimension of caloric burn to your workout? Bodyweight exercises and functional based moves add a level of intensity that is not always present in every weight workout.

Say you are doing a push/pull circuit. Let’s take a vertical push and vertical pull routine. Although you can kill yourself in it, you are not going to burn as many calories as you would if you moved your entire body. BUT, you are not willing to give up your back and shoulder day or your chest and shoulder day and etc. SO, let’s have some fun with those days instead. Take your OH Press/Lat pull down superset and make it a tri-set by adding on a set of burpees. First, you just added a “wind-sucker” to your set so you’ll be sucking wind in no time. Two, you just added another demand to your shoulders so you’ll be feeling that. And three, you’re going to round out the look of the body because functional moves use every muscle, not just this little itty bitty one over here when you move your arm like so.hehe I’m being a wise guy but what I am saying is that functional exercises round out the muscles by hitting them from every direction. You are not frontal plane only or sagittal plane only. You are all 3 planes of motion depending on the move and that’s what we’re really shooting for isn’t it?

Moves such as transverse lunges, burpees, pike push ups, weighted bridges, split jumps, unsupported rows with movement, rotation of any kind and so on can be strategically placed in your workouts to add difficulty, a cardio deficit and variety. Now that boring split isn’t so boring anymore and you are hitting every part of your body without giving up your split or sacrificing too much extra energy. Make sure that the exercises you add do not add much in the way of time. While I want you to experience something new with your workout, I am still a huge advocate of ‘get in and get out’. If you make a 40 min. workout into an hour plus because you added too much stuff in, that’s not cool.

So Bertha has now learned to lift a bit heavier, slow it down a tad and add a functional component into her splits for an added benefit. Soon we’ll be tackling that loose skin on the belly… OH BOY!;o)

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I wish I could listen to music all the time. I mean everywhere I go. Never turn it off. I would jam all the time.

I’d have to change up what I listen to and all (you ever listen to one too many dance beats and want to hit yourself over the head with an anvil?), I don’t want to get sick of genre or anything. But I do want to be submerged in music. It has energy…fun…optimism…wreaks of creativity and most importantly, rhythm (aka tempo).

Everything in life has a rhythm. I know what you thinking right now and I just laughed out loud thinking it too, “Oh no, I don’t and you do NOT want to see me dance.” That may be true but you do have a natural rhythm about you. When you get up, when you go to bed, when you eat and etc. It’s inbred into your system and can take an act of God to get you to change and at times it is necessary to change. If I sent you to the weight room right now without thinking about what your goal was and I handed you a weight and said, “Go”, you would most like lift at a certain rhythm/pace that you have been forever. There is no reason to change. The move will feel familiar to you; the speed will feel familiar. You could trace your movements in the dark.

Now on the one hand, that’s good stuff. Who wouldn’t want to be that confident in the weight room? On the other hand, that’s a huge problem. Your body is tired of you. Bored with you. Knows all about you and has moved on. You are like John and Kate to your body—so yesterday’s news.

I promise I won’t start on my ‘you need to lift heavy rant’; instead I will help you to gain more out of your lifts than you may be now.

A simple weight lifting tool that can make an exercise go from bearable to pukeable is Tempo. It is one of my favorite things to play with and can give you the most gains. Here is a perfect example of when tempo is a gift from Heaven:

Side raises. Love them or hate them they are a great burn. If you are lifting a weight that is nearly impossible to go up from (say you can do raises with 15’s, 20’s would KILL you) then you need to find a way to make them harder. Tempo will do this for you. So what is it exactly?

Typically written as 3 numbers, but can be written as 4, tempo will show up on a program like this: 301, 211, 3111, etc. What does it mean? The amount of seconds you are to lower the weight, pause at the bottom, lift it and then pause at the top. This is great stuff when you want to convey to someone that the lift should be powerful—not slow. You would have them perform it at a pace of 201 or 211. If you wanted it done explosively, then you would denote that as 20X or 31X.

Why would you ever want to do this? Well, to beat your own arse obviously! Take a walking lunge. Feel free to just aimlessly walk around the gym for a while with some weights in your hand and call it effective. The first time you did it, it was. Now, a year later and in the middle of your plateau—not so much. How can you take an effective move like that and make it fresh again? Start the walking lunge with a BB on your shoulders and in the standing position. Step out and *quickly* sink into the lunge (you almost look like you thought there was a step there or something and missed it—but don’t fall;). PAUSE for 1 full second. In fact, say the word pause. Shift all of your weight to the forward leg. Push your heel into the floor and lift yourself up on a count of 3. Your tempo for this move is now 311. I call these Moonwalks and they hurt like heck. Go heavy while doing it and you cannot walk the whole gym like you used to. You should be able to do 6 to 8 of them. Walk on only one side at a time and you’ll really hate me.

So here it is again: 2210

Lowering the weight 2
Pause 2
Lifting the weight 1
Pause 0—this one is often left off of the count

To give you an idea of how fast you are lifting now, you most likely are lifting at a tempo of 101 right now if not very heavy, 102 if heavier. Adding a second onto the lowering and a pause at the bottom will change how many reps you can do and will most likely shorten it. Try it next time you lift.

Tempo has been around for a long time. I, myself, have been writing programs with tempo for ages and during that time I have gotten a good amount of feedback about it. There are 2 common threads that you will hear about tempo: it’s complicated and it’s hard to think about speed, form, etc. all at the same time. In other words, it detracts from the lift. I beg to differ on the first one, can understand on the second one. This is just another tool in your toolbox. It shouldn’t define you any more than it should limit you. Try it and see how much it changes your lifts but don’t get all wigged out about it and throw a weight across the gym. That could get you in jail and then you’ll have nothing but time on your hands to learn tempo there. Use some common sense and ease into it slowly by just trying to vary the speed at which you lift. When you feel good about it, begin counting. Soon you will be kicking your own behind and thinking you are the mack. Hey, whatever gets you going, you know?

Tempo really is an easy way to increase demand without having to add more weight or cut out any more cals. If you are signed up on my blog, I will be sending out a program this week with ways for you to try this out (sure, when I learn how to use the function…bwahahaha). You’ll get to see how tempo really feels and you’ll have a great template to follow when you want to add it in on your programs. I am going to use all basic exercises so you won’t need a glossary to figure out the moves. Feel free to email me at jodiojo@comcast.net if you have any questions or just reply off of the blog blast. Looking forward to hearing how you do…

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Back in the day, and I mean back in the day (cuz man I’m old;), I used to troll the internet for training and nutrition information. Not so much the theory, because I hope if you are starting out in this field you are getting your theory from books first and people second, but for down in the trenches information. I looked for the kind of stuff you won’t find in a text book but more from the guys at the gym who really have changed their bodies—not just talk about it. Since you were limited to the folks at your own gym in terms of exposure, I was smart enough to know there were a whole lot of other people out there who had some good knowledge to share, too. Back then it was much easier to find than it is now simply because there were less people on forums giving out erroneous information than you have today. Now you have folks who become mayors on forums and take it over with some of the most outlandish info you have ever read. I had to give up reading that stuff about 5 years ago and I haven’t looked back since.

There is something to be said for experience. A perfect example of that are grandparents. Are they not the most unbelievable information resource available to you? At one point in your life you probably bled them of everything they know about “the homeland”, their mothering stories, how their labors went, how granddad fed a family of 8 on a salary meant for 2 and so on. You can look up all that info in a book but it’s not going to tell you what 75 years of their lifetime can.

So that brings me to this post. I recently read a book (which is funny for me to say that because right now I am averaging 2 books per week) on nutrition for athletes that completely made me wanna kick some body’s behind. Let me preface this statement by first saying it was a well written book with some valuable information so the theory wasn’t the problem. My issue with this book stemmed from a ton of theory but no application info. I HATE THAT! More importantly, he actually says in the book that this is a one of kind book (I beg to differ) and no one else is addressing this issue (he isn’t either) and he’s going to tell you how to do it (but he doesn’t), yadda, yadda, yadda. The book left me wanting to schedule an interview with him so I could pummel him into the floor with application questions because that’s what I wanted to know.

So, in the interest of ‘wanting to know’, there will be a few posts this week that discuss things that happen when dieting or the result of dieting that no one else is ever going to tell you. This is important stuff so come with an open mind because I am most likely going to tell you things that are contrary to everything you may be reading about on the ‘Net. Some will be nutrition related and a lot will be training related because it’s just as important as nutrition. So let’s start with some definitions, explanations and statements that need to be qualified:

It’s 80% diet and 20% training: Yes…for the folks who have a high bodyfat and are new to training. But if you are lean (1st definition: lean = 18-20%) wanting to be leaner (leaner = anything below 18%), training is everything. Why? Because you have already cleaned out your diet and you’re not going to have this miraculous drop from food.

Let me set up this scenario for you:
Bertha has been dieting steadily for 2 months. She has lost about 12 pounds and is a decent body fat now (18%). She loves her size but what Bertha wants now is to lose more body fat, tighten up her bum (it’s at her ankles) and fix the loose skin on her tummy (she could hold fruit with it). Her diet is on point and she sticks to it religiously (meaning she has cheats when she wants and is on track at least 90% of the time) but she is not satisfied with the results so far.

Bertha trains 4 days per week, does cardio 5 days per week and yoga one time per week. So far everything looks good and you’re thinking, “Well Bertha just needs more time dieting and she’ll be fine” right? Well let’s see…flash forward 6 months. Bertha has now lost an additional 4 pounds and is 16% bodyfat and if you look at her you think she looks great. In fact, she does! But Bertha wants more because her bum still touches the floor and her tummy still looks like an accordion only she can’t diet any harder. What more can she take out of her diet? Should she drop her cals to the point where she is starving? Wait, it must the be the fruit. Let’s take all the fruit out her diet? Umm…no. How about those pesky starches? I knew brown rice was bad. Umm…no again. Ask her what she’s doing in the gym.

What causes your body to burn body fat (forget weight) when it doesn’t want to? Confusion. Keep your body guessing and it will keep burning. Once you become stagnant in your eating and your training, your body becomes comfortable. It knows what you’re doing, when you’re doing it so it is not going to give you more than it needs to no matter how badly you want it to. Also, demand. This is a trickier one to master than confusion because it takes a bit of savvy and trust on your part—both of which elude the frustrated dieter. Lastly, resolve. Beyond elusive, downright scarce when talking about dieters, resolve is when you may try something unconventional but smart (raise cals, cut back on cardio, etc) to kick start the process again even though you think it will make you blow up like a tick on a dog.

Confusion: The hot topic right now for everyone and typically written as metabolic confusion. Read this as interval training, Tabata method, circuits, crossfit, kettlebells and any other kind of “kick-my-butt-until-I-feel-as-if-I-could-puke” training methodology that promises major fat loss when you do it. Does it work? Yep! Should I do it all the time because it works? Nope!

There is a time and a place for everything and confusion is a great weapon in the arsenal to be used in two scenarios: you have a ton of weight to lose (read that as 15 pounds or more) or you have only a little bit to go (no longer can measure your progress on the scale, it’s all about the mirror). If you are outside of this window, see demand. Why? Because you cannot burn the candle on both ends for too long so this will stall you after about 3 to 4 weeks if you are in between. And if you are in between, you’ll need more time than that.

Demand: I always start here because this is where most women fail themselves. Demand means you are asking more of your body than you were before, only you are not going to feed it more so it’s going to have to go into your reserves to help you out. This has nothing to do with increasing cardio. In fact, quite the opposite. This is all about as my girl Heather puts it, “grunting, farting and spitting” in the gym. LIFT HEAVY. And I mean heavy. And when I say this I do not mean low rep only. I mean whatever rep range you may be lifting at, make the last 2 reps feel like death! Lift with intention. Lift like you mean it. TRACK what you lift b/c if you have not raised the weight in some time, I’d want to know why. I cannot tell you how many times I have had a conversation where I am trying to “diagnose” the plateau and I found out that the client is not lifting heavy. Not because they haven’t been told, but because it’s either hard, boring, hard and boring, scared, nervous, don’t have a spot, need a trainer, yadda, yadda, yadda.

If you are worried about injury, get a trainer. If you can’t lift it to use it, get a spot. If you just can’t get into it, get over it. But no matter what, GET TO LIFTING HEAVY. If you have been using the same weights long enough that you recognize the wear pattern in the handle, then that’s a problem. Can’t go up in the weight because of the huge jump with db’s? (15# db to 20 db# is a big jump) Buy platemates! These are 1.25# magnets that you add to your weights. I don’t care if you hold a 15# and a purple 2#’er with it—GO UP IN THE WEIGHT. Like my rant? You should hear it live, it’s even more animated.

No such thing as an easy program, you just didn’t want to kick your own arse that day! As all of us fitness professionals always say, make every rep count.

Resolve: This is when experience kicks in and you need to find someone who can speak some sense into you. This is much harder to sum up so it might get its own post, but basically you went one step too far and now you need to back up. To do this, you are going to have to trust food is not the enemy and endless motion is not the answer. This needs a post. I’m on it.

So what is Bertha to do? Change up her lifting. Start by lifting a small car and progress to a van when she feels like she has the hang of it.;) Do not increase cardio, do not cut cals, just lift like you mean it and you will begin to see changes again. You know there’s more to it and we’ll get to it, I promise.

We’ll be kicking Bertha around for a couple of posts. There are other things we can help her with like, true plateaus, body weight exercises and their benefits, using fat to change your body, etc. Tons of things no one ever tells you but you should know.

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Imagine if it were that simple. In fact, if it were that simple we would not be in the weight crisis that America seems to be in now. For starters, most women are “starvers” before they are ever “eaters” meaning they will forgo food all day long only to eat one meal, possibly two that day and not overeat in the two meals that they do have because they are truly used to operating on such low cals. Secondly, women tend to be more active than men in their day to day lives and if it was just about cals in vs. cals out, activity would have to count for something once dieting and they would begin to drop something.

But it’s not just about that. There is so much more to it and it seems that every time I turn around there is some new “guru” out there telling you how you should just ‘push away from the table’. If you have been trying to lose weight, or better yet, optimize your physique by losing the last 10 to 15 pounds for a while and you have some clown telling you to just “push away from the table” when your diet is cleaner than a dish straight out of the dishwasher, it could get ugly. I find the battle to look good naked is not represented well in the diet arena. There are no studies done on those who are lean (18% to 20% body fat for women) trying to get leaner (12 to 14%). There is nothing out there that tells you the leaner you get, the harder it is to get there again should you gain weight. There is nothing out there that acknowledges REPEAT dieting and the struggles that you incur.

Plateaus, stubborn weight loss, weight loss after a sudden, dramatic gain, weight loss on a seasoned athlete, etc. all pose very difficult situations in which a person can try to lose weight and most likely not succeed on just the simple “cals in vs. the cals out” method. Some situations truly require patience, creativity and intimate knowledge of the human body to be able to shed the weight. Others require you to know a bit of endocrinology or holistic medicine. Regardless, just trying to balance eating less with working out more is not going to get you to your goal, you’re going to have to experiment some.

There are many factors that affect a person trying to lose bodyfat in an effort to be lean. Let’s look at some of them:

Diet History

If you have never dieted before, you will most definitely fall under the CIVCO umbrella the first time you try. In fact, you could even do Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig and get fairly good results. Whatever you do it does not matter because the body has never gone through a diet before so it will respond to a new stimulus almost immediately. However, if you are a career dieter, you will notice right away that the more you diet, the harder it is to lose. When I say this, I do not mean the length of time you are on a diet, I mean the amount of times that you have gone up and down in weight.

Hormone Profile

Hormones are complicated. Do I need to say anymore? Add in an autoimmune to the picture and you have a recipe for frustration. Hypothyroidism, PCOS, Syndrome X, faulty menstrual cycles etc. can slow your progress down to a grinding halt where you never seem to get past the “same 5 pounds” you keep going up and down. You may starve yourself to death but if any of these issues remain unresolved, you are doing nothing but digging yourself further into a hole emotionally and possibly physically.

Muscle Mass

Depending on the amount of muscle mass you have, weight may fall off easier for you than others. The more muscle you have the easier it is for you to get lean. This is not the same as losing weight, this is about losing body fat. If you desire a very lean appearance and you lack a considerable amount of muscle, you will find that you are required to do a bit more than the average person to achieve it. Now I need to be more specific here: I do not mean you need to be muscular or have popping biceps, I want to make that clear. But you do need to have some muscle on your frame. Whenever I have a client who is doing “everything right” and yet cannot seem to get as lean as they want it is typically due to the fact that they lack significant muscle mass for their frame. Again, not the same as needing to look like a body builder of any kind, but you lack the amount of muscle necessary to provide an adequate base BMR to help you out with your dieting.

Supplement Abuse

If you previously abused fat burners, energy drinks or other stimulants, you are in for a battle. Again, you can argue CIVCO all day long but in the end, you are in a permanent plateau until you re-establish equilibrium to your system. I find that it can take as much as one year of “fixing” for every one year of fat burner abuse. This, of course, is purely anecdotal information as I have never seen a study that addressed this phenomenon but I have had plenty of experience working with clients who once abused fat burners.

Set Point Theory

Most of us have heard of this theory and if you have not I will sum it up for you in this way: your body has a certain weight that it wants to be or stay at and it will take an act of nature to successfully move past it or keep from moving to it. If you come to me wanting to lose a particular amount of body fat and want to be a certain weight and have either never been that low before in your life or have not been it in more than ten plus years, I am going to give you the hairy eyeball first and ask you how much it means to you. Am I being a Debbie Downer? No, I’m being realistic. Before you embark on a hard journey, I am giving you a chance to adequately pack for it. So you need to get a big enough bag that can hold your emotional fortitude, ambition, motivation and resolve or be open to the fact that it might not happen.

You may honestly be in a true plateau right now as you try to reach your ideal (not your body’s ideal) body weight. If that is the case, do not be discouraged by those that tout the CIVCO mantra. Their experiences are much different than yours in that their clientele just wants to lose weight. That is much different than what you desire. Because you strive to be leaner, you do not apply to their general public studies performed on general public people who have lots of weight to lose and many habits to change. There are very few studies, if any, on lean folks who eat clean who want to lose another “10 or so” pounds but now find it hard to so. Instead, keep searching for information that speaks to your exact situation and that will help you to stay focused.

Now you know I am eventually going to cover every scenario in this post so stay tuned as I focus on metabolism this week. So much to cover and so little time to get it out to you. *sigh*

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I love alcohol.  Seriously. 

Nothing beats a great glass of wine with an even better steak dinner.  It can be relaxing, yummy and almost daring depending on how often you indulge.

But consuming it on a regular basis is not going to get you the body that you want.  It may get you some extra pounds—not because it makes you gain weight, but because it drops your guard and you make bad choices—or possibly some temporary relaxation, but drinking in and of itself makes for a crappy cheat meal.

Occasionally I will read of a trainer saying it is ok to have a drink with their meal as a treat and to count it as a cheat meal.  I hear you trying to keep the client focused and not putting them in a “box of denial” and normally I am the most easy going of folks when it comes to rules.  But alcohol is one that I have a no tolerance policy for when you have a goal that you are trying to reach. 

I get it, too, that it is easy for me to say that because I am no longer shooting for that “look” anymore.  But when I was going for it, I did not drink.  Ever.  Not at Christmas parties, birthday parties, never.  Just was off limits. 

Why?

Because it wastes so much precious time. 

It’s as simple as that. 

Alcohol does not cause you to gain weight.  It just keeps you from losing.  After you get over the dehydration caused by your drink or two, you then have to go about shuttling all the toxins through your liver.  That takes precious time away from your liver to do the thing it likes to do: breakdown fat.  So how do we make this work as a “cheat meal”? 

Once a month if you want to keep progressing—and it would be the only cheat that I would have that meal, that day, that week.

I am typically asked if it matters if it is “lite beer” or “gin vs. vodka” because of the calories.  This has nothing to do with calories.  This has everything to do with the fact that your body does not recognize alcohol as anything but a toxin.  It is not a carbohydrate.  It carries 7 cals per gram when carbs carry 4.  It takes about 24 hours to make it through your system and it is a stimulant typically causing you to have an increased appetite—i.e. munchies. 

Some of the biggest arguments I have had as a nutritionist have been about alcohol.  I get it, it helps you relax.  I know you want to have a glass every night but I am telling you, it will catch up to you more than anything else in your diet.  I can tell when I drink.  I don’t like it so I have since stopped (although I turn 40 this year and I can tell you it is going down!  Sorry…time to focus.)  being as casual about it as I have been the last year and a half so I am back to my original policy of general avoidance.  But for the brief time in my life that I let it back in to my food choices, I could tell the difference and it was not worth it.

Cheats are personal.  Some people can do the nibble thing.  Others need a meal and that’s it.  Some need to know that have the freedom to have something whenever.  Regardless, choose your weapon of choice sans alcohol when you are trying to lose weight or affect a change in your body.  Nothing is worse than wasting time and that’s exactly what alcohol does for you.  Wastes time.

Previous Series Post

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Ok, we’ve all hit it.

It’s inevitable.

The dreaded weight loss plateau.

What in heaven’s name do you do now? 

If you’re like most women, you panic!  [Picture Gotham City burning; the Bat signal on the clouds; nothing but mayhem below—you get the idea!]  You start googling everything under the sun.  Here are some classic examples:

how to break a weight loss plateau

how to add intensity to cardio

how to lose 5 pounds in 5 minutes

hacksaws and their effectiveness (I see we’re getting desperate here)

It’s right about now when all rational thought tends to leave your mind.  You can no longer be trusted with your own exercise program.  You are as volatile as Elizabeth Lambert on a soccer field with a sea of pony tails in front of her.  Basically, put the keyboard down and back away slowly. 

Let’s be smart and think about this.  What causes a weight loss plateau?

1)       You’re in a rut. 

Have you been doing the same routine since the gym opened 3 years ago?  Seriously, when’s the last time you changed your workout?

2)       You’re too chicken to raise the weight.

If you have been lifting the same 10 pound weights since you can remember, it is time to make your exercises harder.  You must gradually increase resistance so you can keep challenging yourself.  Now, if you do this and you realize you can lift a car by yourself or one of the stones in a strongman competition, I would venture to say that that is not your issue.  At that point, you need to keep reading for other ideas.

3)       You do the same intensity workout day in and day out.

Your idea of an interval workout is leaving the remote by the tv and standing up in between commercials to change the station.  You need to branch out and add some hutzpah to your routine!  No matter who I talk to about this, I always find someone that knows this to be true but still doesn’t actually *do* it.

4)       You’re a hamster stuck in a wheel.

Now you’re the opposite of 3.  You are so neurotic about your exercise, you are doing plyos on Mon., Wed. and Fri., marathon training on Tues., Thurs., Sat. and Sun., Yoga on Wed and Sat, Jujitsu on Mon. and Thurs., Rock climbing every other weekend, bootcamp Tues. and Fri. and etc.  You have more going on than a bingo hall on a Friday night.  Less is more in this case.  Back it down and you’ll lose 5 pounds right away.

5)       You’re starving.

Have you pushed the cals so low you don’t even realize you’re biting your nails for extra protein?  When’s the last time you took a break dieting?  Every woman is on some kind of diet at some time in her life.  Have you been on one just a wee bit too long?  Do you count everything that you eat?  Or measure everything?  Have a hard time letting go of the structure?  Believe it or not, if you walk away from this for a week or two, you’ll probably break the plateau.

There are countless reasons for weight loss plateaus, these are just a few, and all of them are frustrating.  Before you make any rash moves, take two minutes to be as objective as you can possibly be about your program.  Keep track of how you are feeling and how you are doing with your program so you can spot trouble before it happens. 

Keep in mind, three things have to be the same for 3 weeks in a row to constitute a plateau:  bodyfat, pictures and weight.  If you are only checking one of those, it is not a true plateau!

It’s time for me to start a new series.  I have not decided on what it is going to be but I have kicked the idea of a weight loss plateau around.  Just know, another series is on the way very soon and like the ones before, will be very informative. 

Ok, get to the gym and start raising that weight!!:o)

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We are back from the weekend and I am truly hoping that you kept it together Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Now is the time to get serious about the goals that you have laid out for yourself for the week and do a mental program check to locate anything that could be holding you back from making progress.   Let me prepare you before you start reading that this is a mini rant.  There is absolutely no doubt about it.  The only thing that might get me a bit more riled up than this is driving.  And that rant is coming soon, too!  Maybe on a Friday so I can give you some humor to go into the weekend with because I am truly unstable behind the wheel. Hehe

1.        I have tried everything but…

At some point in your lifetime of dieting or goals you are going to come to a point where you may not be able to go any further but you still have room to improve.  As frustrating as I know it can be (trust me), most of the time it is not true.  You’ve come to a stop.  Your progress has not.  Any time I ask this person what they are doing they begin to tell me a long list of “I thinks” instead of “I knows”:

“Ok, so what are you eating.”

“Every day I eat…” (Already I am going to pounce on them like a cat on a runaway ball of yarn!)

“Ok, do you measure what you are eating?”

“No…because…”  (Insert some story that made my eyes roll to the back of my head thereby prompting the use of smelling salts to get me back.)

“Do you track what you’re eating?”

“No.  I eat the same thing…” (Ummm…no you don’t.  Even if you do eat the same thing every day, which is going to make me have a hissy fit, you still have slight variations to the day.  If you do not, you are not human and at that point you have the wrong coach and you are looking for District 9.)

Let me first qualify this rant before I enter into it by saying that this is for those who have plateaued.  In the beginning, you do not have to be as stringent as this.  Think of this as the last 10 pounds folks or those who have been dieting long enough to stall out—no need to shake in your boots newbies, but I am coming for you soon. 

At some point in your dieting you are going to become lazy.  It’s as simple as that.  You will act like you are “old hat” at this and you will begin to cut corners.  Then, when it does not work like it used to, it’s the diet’s fault.  As if it just decided to leave you hanging or something due to some hidden diet grudge.  You get out of this what you put in to this.  I am not telling you to become a slave to tracking for the rest of your life, I am telling you to become a slave to tracking for as long as the plateau lasts and then move on (and by tracking I mean measuring food portions and creating menus).  When’s the last time you saw a race that wasn’t timed?  Or a hockey game with no score (Oh look, another puck in the net.  I’m not sure how many that is, I just like watching them skate up and down the ice!)?  You haven’t.  And think twice before you tell me that weight loss to you is not the same as a game/even/competition because every time you step on the scale, look in the mirror or try on some clothes you are keeping score whether you like it or not.  So, suit up for the game, please and get out your food scale, journal and variety and get to work.  Or, make the mistake of telling me, “I have tried everything but…”

2.       I have tried every exercise but I still can’t grow my…

This is just like number 1 so I am not going to spend any time here.  Check list please:

When is the last time you changed your lift routine?

When is the last time you went up in the weight on an exercise?

How long have you been using those same 15’s for shoulders?

Do you track your workouts? Good, what do you do with that info?  Oh you just track it…riiiiigggght.

3.       I am following my program but…

I don’t understand this one.  It blows me out of the water.  I am, alongside so many others, a fitness professional.  I diet/train more people in one month than the average consumer can come across to ask questions to in one year!  But no matter what, I always get one person who will modify their program before they even start it because they know better.  Now don’t get me wrong, if you want to pay me a good amount of money for you to program yourself—that’s a win win for me.  But do me the favor and tell me when you cut me the check so I don’t have to bother putting something together for you.  I want to just go shopping with what you just paid me and not have to work.  Thanks.

The number one reason you hire a coach is not because they are going to give you something revolutionary (although that is nice when that happens) or something no one else knows about (don’t tell anyone about this amazing new food combo: oatmeal and eggwhites…shhhh), you hire them to know you objectively because you, yourself, cannot and to then program you based off of the information.  The problem really becomes apparent with you having to admit who you really are as opposed to who you want to be!  In other words, it’s not that you don’t trust the coach or believe in the coach or you would not have hired them, it’s more that you did not like the answer/program they gave you.  Let me put that in laymen terms for you:

“My girlfriend blah blah does blah blah and she has great legs so I started doing that instead of blah blah.  Is that ok?”

“Well let me see…your girlfriend is rather on the tall, slim side with not a lick of muscle in her legs and you are 4’10” with enough muscle in your legs to drag to a tractor trailer 2 blocks without taking a rest.  Let me go out on a limb here…NO.”

Get over who you want to become and accept who you are!   You are not Megan Fox so stop pouting because you were not given her program!  And if you are programming yourself and do not have a coach, stop wondering what Megan Fox is doing and go find someone who at least resembles you and do what she’s doing!  Write out your program and tweak it weekly.  Do not hop from thing to thing just because you spoke to someone in the gym.  Let’s make some sense of this.  Cool?

The Moral of the Story:

Let’s make this a good week.  Let’s break some plateaus. 

1.       Track what you are doing and improve where necessary. 

2.       Challenge yourself in the gym this week.  Go up in a weight or go a few extra reps.  Whichever.

3.       Embrace your program and follow it so you know what to change when it is not right.

Menu planning goes out this afternoon so keep an eye out for that., tomorrow we are back to Performing Beautifully so you will be spared from my ranting and we talk a little bit more about your bum this week!  Yeah!  In the mean time, challenge yourself and get to it!  WOOP WOOP!:o) 

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