A false sense of security mixed with a fragile self image makes for a desperate woman on cardio.

Last week I spoke of how hard it is to get lean the second time around. How you think you will just do all that you did the weeks before and it will just magically fall off again. Umm…WRONG. As we go full steam ahead into this series, let me dispel some myths so we can all be on the same page for this series:

Law of Equitability
Basically, you cannot ask the body to less and somehow you miraculously get more out of it without some type of major “reset” in your system. This is a very hard concept to get through to people but I will try my hardest to explain.

If you just spent 12 to 16 weeks eating 1200 cals/day, doing 60 min of cardio/day, lifting 4 days/week, you are not going to lose weight doing anything less than that any time soon. So let’s say you gain 10 pounds back and you are ready to lose it again. It’s been about 2 to 3 months since you hit goal weight and you have been at this new weight that long. You decide it is time to get back to that miraculous weight you were at before and you think you are just going to start back up again and the weight will fall off. Most of us now know that it does not and what actually happens is that we can stay at that weight doing all that we were doing before forever. Why? Because your body responds to *change*–not absolutes. Whatever you were doing before now must be equal or greater to be able to affect a change in your body. The danger in this is that you can find yourself down to 1000, 900, 800 calories while doing 1, 2, possibly 3 hours of cardio/day to get the scale to move. Do not fall into this trap.

No matter how much water you pour in here, it can only hold 20 ounces.

Law of Diminishing Return
There is a point where no matter how much more you do, you got whatchu got. You ain’t gettin’ no mo. Got me? If you are lean for the first time, hear me as I speak: Pull back on what you are doing to do the least amount that you need to do to get what you want. Don’t get on a cardio “high” and start banging out more than necessary. Or even worse, don’t become paranoid that you need to do a small Olympic trial every week to maintain what you have. You are setting yourself up for failure when you go to lose weight again—and I can guarantee you you will have to lose weight again. The more you do now, you will have to do at least that and most likely more to get lean again. So if you start out gang busters at an hour of cardio/day, guess what? You own that now and then some later on and that is a slippery slope that is not going anywhere good, fast.

Law of Continuation
Taking a fat burner? Tried some other stuff here and there? Messing around with hormones or supplements? If you have introduced them into your diet for any significant amount of time (and this varies/substance) they directly reduce your chances of being able to lose the weight again without them. And just like the law of equitability, you must have more, use more, etc. to get more.

Yes, we’re jackasses.  But we’re still cute.

Law of JackAssery
Unfortunately, we all suffer from this one. Here is what this looks like…

You lose a ton of weight and you look great. To do this you are doing cardio 7 days/week, eating very clean—almost no cheats and lifting like a pscycho. You hit goal weight and your event/wedding/vacation comes and goes. You begin to slip on your program. At this point, what we all should do is enter into a place of maintenance where we back our plan down a bit and settle into a comfortable weight we can maintain. Sometimes that might be 2 or 3 pounds more than what you are right now but you still look good. But mentally we can’t do that. We’ve either been beaten into submission by the scale or have such a fragile self image now that the mere thought of giving up where we are sends us right to the stair master. So we begin to cheat and fall apart WHILE still doing 7 days of cardio, super clean diet and lifting like a psycho. We have more and more days of cheating, we become more and more tired and then suddenly we are up 7 to 10 pounds. But now, shoot to the law of equitability and we see that we’re in trouble. We have gained weight *within* our “cleanness” and now there’s nowhere to go but extreme. Whatever you do, when you know you cannot hang on or it is time to call “uncle”, open up your diet and back your cardio down. Let me repeat that, open up your diet and back your cardio down.

So much to talk about and so little time!

I want to welcome all the new people to the blog, we appreciate you reading us. And we want to welcome all the new ladies who have signed up for updates, we appreciate you as well. I have not sent out anything on this series, yet, because so many new folks were signing up but I will now. Too much to talk about!

Start looking at where you are in your plan right now. Is it sustainable? Is it reasonable? Do you need an intervention? If you can relate to any of this, I want to hear about it below or email me at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com and I will be happy to chat with you.