You know when you go to the doctor and he tells you that you could stand to lose some weight. After the initial urge to punch him in the face, you realize your "no shit, doc" attitude. After all you have already cut back your calories to 158 and your eating one small handful of organic, grown in outer space, brown rice a day. You have increased your activity by walking your dog briskly for 30 minutes every night. Your taking hoodia and 47 other detox formulas and you drink 17 gallons of some type of herbal water that has some green weeds and lemons in it. You spend most of the day in the bathroom and you've lost 589lbs in two weeks. Your weak, feel like death and basically want to die. It's a helluva diet and exercise plan.
So you have a breakdown. "Screw this!", you scream. You get the biggest bottle of wine you can find, a giant box of chocolate covered cherries, a good vampire romance book and you hit the tub covered in rose petals and glowing in candle light. The downward spiral continues. You manage to gain 600lbs back in the next month and your too fat to walk your dog. Your dog gets fat and dies from metabolic syndrome. Sound familiar? I hope not. So put down the razor blades and step away from the sleeping pills. There is hope. And it's simple. You have to eat right and workout hard. So let's go back to the eat part cause that's what whoops everyone's ass.
Back in the day, when I was a weight management/control NCO in the army, I used to have to do the quarterly weigh-in's, bodyfat testing and counseling/referrals for those who failed. This was just one of my additional duties on top of everything else. But the weird thing was every time I talked to the fat bodies, I asked them what they ate and most of them didn't eat much. They normally ate once or twice a day and one meal was a pizza and the other was a 12 pack of beer. Then everyone says ah ha! that's the problem yup sure is - let's cut back and do more exercise uh huh that's the ticket. Yet when they calculated their required daily calories they still came up way short. Now, I was the only one around at the time calculating calories, that I knew of. So I would put the fat bodies that were interested in my nutrition concept, on my plan while the rest went to a registered dietitian. Of course, I also ran the remedial physical training program in my unit for those who failed the army physical fitness test. Many of the fat bodies were in the remedial PT program as well - shocker. The majority of the people who followed my plan did much better than the ones who followed the dietitian's plan. What was the major difference? How much they ate each day was the big difference. So the concept was solidified early on in my army career with hard facts of real people making real progress.
Years later, the same fundamental concepts still apply to my current clients. In the last 4 years, I have still not met anyone who has been truly overeating and needed to cut back on their daily calorie intake. Just the opposite has been true. People who come to me overweight and out of shape normally have been eating the wrong stuff, a couple times a day and their total daily calorie intake has been low. Society permeates this problem because everyone tells you to cut back and exercise more. If your calorie intake is already too low and you cut back and exercise more, you can't win.
If you need to get lean and in shape, the first thing you should do is calculate your calorie requirements and then see where you are really at in relation to where you should be. Most people will be shocked at how far under they fall. Unless you are truly overeating, which I have not seen to date, don't cut back. Get yourself eating the right amount of the right stuff at the right times and then you will see positive and retainable results. If you want help in figuring all that out, let me know.
Eric
Dempsey's Resolution Fitness
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